Posted: Tue 2 January, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Security, Thoughts, Travel |
In the Telegraph, there’s a very interesting story about what the USA does when you book a flight to visit them. The short answer? It’s probably better to pay cash
By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account.
Quite honestly, with attitudes like that, what on earth makes the US expect that people would still want to visit them?
Posted: Tue 2 January, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Travel, Work-related |
So, back to work, and all that goes with it.
Train journey in went OK, but then I had to renew my season ticket for another month. Simple, you’d have thought – but you’d be wrong. The drongo in the ticket office printed the season ticket on the wrong ticket paper, which means that it looks like it’s invalid. So that’ll be fun for the next month then. I questioned it at ‘customer services’, who agreed it looked wrong, and said to take it back to the ticket office. Doing so, a different drongo completely failed to print out a replacement for it (I’ve no idea why, other than general incompetence), then wrote the photocard identifier on the (dodgy looking) ticket, and assures me “that’s all it needs”. Suffice to say, I’m not convinced.
Getting in to work, my pass has expired (as I was initially due to only be here ’til 25th Dec) and no-one’s bothered to extend the authorisation. Hopefully that’ll be sorted today, so that tomorrow can get back to some semblance of normality.
Other than that, because other people have used the laptop that is my main work computer, I’ve now spent most of the morning reconfiguring it to how I want it. The tossers didn’t even charge it up, they left it with a completely dead battery – and in hibernation.
All in all, not a great start to the working year…
Posted: Tue 2 January, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Own Business, Web Development, Work-related |
Over the last few days, I’ve been writing a website for a small business that Herself is starting. It’s fairly cool, to be fair, and I’m pleased with the results so far.
One thing that’s been a complete pain in the arse, though, is that the business will initially be dealing with payments via PayPal – which is a good system, and works well in general – but man, is it a pain in the arse to get set up. Once I’m done, it’ll all work fine, I’m sure, and it’s been fun to write a shopping cart section for the site as well. Ah yes, the joys of eCommerce as well.
Anyway, it’s been interesting, and once it’s completed, I’m sure I’ll add some publicity somewhere, as well as sorting out the Google SEO stuff for it.