Posted: Mon 12 June, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Own Business, Sweary, Work-related |
Finally, it looks like my ongoing fight with the Inland Revenue may just be coming to a close.
Way back in March last year, I got a snotty letter from the Inland Revenue telling me that my tax return for 2003/4 was now officially late, and I was being slapped with a penalty fine of £100 as a result. OK, fine – except, well, I hadn’t actually received a tax return for 2003/4. I called them immediately, and told them so. “We’ll send one out, and put the account on hold” they said.
Did they fuck as like.
In May I got another demand – it was still late, another £100 had been thrown at me, and I still hadn’t received the bloody tax return in the first place. Another call, another promise, and finally a tax return arrived. I filled it in, enclosed all the shit they asked for (P45, P60, blah blah) and sent it back. Like a numpty, I didn’t send it recorded delivery.
Yes, Inland Revenue lost it. Along with all the documents. Oh shit.
Everything’s gone on from there, really. Two more returns (one lost, one finally received), shitloads of demands for money, invoices, the lot. Oh, and a similar scenario for the 2004/5 one, which started happening this year, to a disturbingly similar pattern.
Finally it’s all looking like it’s been sorted. It turns out that a company I was a director of, and left back in August ’04, hadn’t told Inland Revenue I’d left. (and had earned fuck-all with) So Inland Revenue thought I was still self-employed, and getting money from the company. Except I’d left them, and told Companies House so as well. Your standard “linked up government” *cough* scenario. I got a return for 2005/6 as well, but it now looks like common sense may have taken hold, and I won’t have to fill it in. That’s getting verified today, as you can imagine. I want that decision in writing. Ideally in 48point bold, with flashing lights.
And the final amount? After two years of stress, hassle, threats of court, (Well, being told the day before the court date “Oh, you’re supposed to be in court tomorrow”. I’m sure there’s some kind of statutory requirement to fucking tell me that? “Oh, we sent out a letter”. In a similar way to the other ones that I haven’t received? “Oh.”) threats of bailiffs and tax inspectors?
£150
That’s it. One hundred and fifty sodding pounds. It’s cost more than that, just in administration at their end. Hell, it’s cost me a bundle just in phone calls and postage. Pity I can’t count that against the payment.
Still, the cheque goes off today, and hopefully that’ll be the end of it…
Posted: Tue 6 June, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Thoughts |
Is it just me, or is the entire HD TV “revolution” just the teeny-weeniest bit hyped?
OK, sure, you can get “crystal-clear” pictures. (For the time being we’ll gloss over the fact that nearly all HDTV screens are plasma or LCD, and thus suffer problems with pixel-lag, blurring, blah, blah, blah) But to do so – and frankly the current crop of HD transmissions don’t make this worthwhile – means buying:
Currently it’s reckoned that to see HD stuff, you’re likely to need to invest at least £2,000 . All for nice “crystal clear” pictures.
So I’m sorry, but at the moment I really don’t see the point of shelling out for that. If it’s successful, the price for all this equipment will fall. It will become cheaper, more available, and there will be better content.
For now, though – well, thanks, but I’ll wait ’til I need to upgrade to that kind of kit.
Posted: Fri 2 June, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, General, Work-related |
(via Meish)
I’m wondering if I should show this article about “how not to manage techies” to Arsehole Boss.
However, I suspect he wouldn’t get it at all. Or would think it didn’t apply to him anyway.
*sigh*
Posted: Thu 1 June, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Charm School, Cynicism, D4D™, Work-related |
It’s been another shitty day, with “urgent” projects and amendments that need to be done yesterday.
However, it means that when push comes to shove, my mouth is on autopilot when it comes to Arsehole Boss.
AB : Lyle, you shouldn’t take these things personally.
Me : Oh, I don’t. I just assume that the world is filled with incompetent bastards who can’t find their own arses with both hands and a flashlight.
AB : … [ silence ]
Me : Know what? I’m rarely wrong.
Posted: Tue 23 May, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Travel |
Scene : A major commuter railway station. 8.30am.
A flood of people are coming off the train from London to work here. The flood is such that people wanting to get in to the station can’t.
Why?
Because the fucking twunts in the station have locked half the doors, so no-one can use them, in or out.
When I asked why this was, the first person said “I don’t know, I’m Revenue, I just check tickets.”
Well, can you pass the comment on to someone who does work in the sodding station?
“Oh no, I’m just Revenue. You’ll have to talk to the guy in the ticket office”
Grrr.
So I ask him.
“Well, I suppose we could unlock it. Don’t see why though.”
Because it’s busy?
“Oh, I suppose so”
Talk about enthusiasm. I bet the sodding thing’s still locked when I go home tonight.
Posted: Mon 15 May, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Geeky, Work-related |
Last Friday we had a problem with one of the company sites, which happens to be run on the Mambo piece of shit Content Management System. We’ve recently swapped servers for it, and moved to a hosted thing by Rackspace, instead of using the servers we own – supposedly this is a good move, because it gives us trained support people, rather than all relying on our lonely sys-admin.
Anyway, on Friday it turned out we couldn’t do some stuff on the site through Mambo, basically because the Rackspace servers are configured differently to the ones we did have, and Arsehole Boss didn’t bother to do the transfer properly, so we keep finding config problems on the “new” site where Rackspace runs things differently. In short, it’s a fuckup.
This “super-important” issue was raised at 4.45 on a Friday afternoon, and was “imperative” to be fixed before we left.
The email from me on Friday ended up as follows:
What we have established is the following :
- If you edit one of the existing links, then Mambo comes back with the "file not found" error.
- If you create a link, Mambo comes back with the "file not found" error.
- If you create a link – even to a local file on the site – Mambo comes back with the "file not found" error.
We believe that the Rackspace configuration is such that it will not allow any link for the downloads etc. to go outside the site’s domain. In other words, because of the way Mambo works (and this is not something that is alterable) whenever the docman system tries to link to a file, even on the site server, it makes an external call – i.e. it tries to go out to the web, to make an http call to get to the right place for the file. Why it does this for even a local file, I don’t know – that’s Mambo for you.
The fact that this method is shit is beside the point for now. The problem is actually with the rackspace config, and not allowing access to the outside world in this manner. This is a standard setting on hosted servers – it would be the same if we were trying to use an ODBC database connection ( i.e. to let the site use the company’s remote database, when it is on a different server)
This problem is NOT something I can fix. I can figure out *why* it’s happening – up to a point – but I can’t fix it. It is a combination of crappy coding on Mambo, and a standard security setting at Rackspace.
I do not have any contacts with Rackspace, and cannot currently start off any problem solving on this level.
At the moment, I can’t create *any* links through the docman module on Mambo, as they *all* use this method.
I’ve done all I can. I’m sorry that it’s not able to work, but I am at the absolute limit of my knowledge, both of Mambo and of Rackspace. If that is unacceptable, the only way to improve my knowledge is a training course on mambo and server admin.
The response from Arsehole Boss was a truly exhilarating piece of motivational speech… (and the spelling mistakes are included verbatim)
As I mentioned what we need here is a solution. This is still not a solution.
This is probably the most critical task the web development team has over the next 24 hours as without fixing this we cannot roll out our release which is critical to ongoing funding for the company.
If you guys are unable to collectively get togeather and find a solution – weather its via mambo or rackspace – the it raises greater concerns as to the ability of the web team to get the job done when in a crunch.
I suggest you guys focus on fixing this and nothing else before the end of monday.
It’s kind of worrying when your Chief Technical Officer (and Lead Developer) apparently doesn’t know the difference between Web developers and System Administrators, isn’t it?
Posted: Sat 13 May, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts |
(Previous post here)
Following on from that post about efficiency vs. bureaucracy, I forgot to say, the necessary documents from Comapnies House arrived the next working day.
And they were the right ones – how’s that for impressive?
But really, isn’t it pretty sad when all you have to do to be impressed with a place is to be dealt with efficiently, to get what you ask for, and get it when they say it’ll arrive?