Posted: Sun 24 February, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Own Business, Work-related |
All this week, Psycho Cat has been most annoyed by the continuation of the building work. Obviously it’s all disturbing his precious beauty sleep (or at least some of the essential 20 hours a day he seems to spend sleeping) and so he’s going to take it out on anyone/anything that comes close. Or – if that doesn’t work – just be bloody annoying.
His main traits so far have been:
- Jumping up to sit on the bookcase shelves (just where my wireless router is – the little fucker’ll be glowing before long) and then swiping at anything that goes past.
- Taking it out on Hound, who is currently cowering every time he comes close
- Annoying Hound by stomping in to the living room (usually Hound’s “territory”) to come and sit on/near us in the evening – and then going back to the previous option
- If no-one’s in the living room, showing his displeasure by taking a crap on one of the sofa covers
- Sitting on one of the kitchen worktops, glowering at anyone who comes in
or
- Annoying me, by coming and sitting either on the keyboard I’m attempting to use, attacking my hand as it operates the mouse, or sitting in front of the monitor.
Yesterday though, was the grand finale. Not content with those, he did this…
He’s even snoring, for fuck’s sake…
Posted: Mon 4 February, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Work-related |
So, as it turns out the interviews last week weren’t as successful as I’d thought.
The one for the permanent job hasn’t gone any further, as I don’t have a couple of things in my skillset that they deemed essential. Not important enough to put in the job-spec, of course, but still essential to the job itself. Which is a pain in the tits, because it means that I’ve wasted my time (and theirs) by going for something that (because of my not having those essential bits) I had no hope of getting.
The other one is even more irritating, truth be told. If they had stuck to their initial spec/requirements, I’d have got the contract and all would be well. Except the (non-technical) board changed their minds, and decided that actually the necessary work could be done 50% cheaper, and in half the time, so that having been in and interviewed well, all of a sudden I was too expensive, and the contract came down from three months to six weeks.
That’s the second one with that problem in less than a month.
Now I realise that it’s looking like financial times are going to be a bit tough for the next few months for a lot of businesses, but surely it’s a bit late to be thinking about that when you’ve already agreed terms with a recruitment agency, interviewed people, and spent money on it all ?
Ah well, more CVs and the like have been sent out today, and will be through the rest of the week/month, so we’ll just have to see what comes up.
Posted: Sun 3 February, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Getting Organised, Photography, Work-related |
One of the ongoing projects we’re working on at the moment is (as Gordon did a while back) ripping all our old CDs onto the PC.
It’s not a quick process – well, it’s not bad, but it’s not super-speedy either- but it’s something that needs to be done. Among other things, it’ll free up some space, mean we can store the CDs somewhere else, and still have access to the music.
However, it does also mean I need yet another new hard-drive. I never did get round to getting another internal hard-drive for the main PC, although I did get the big external one a while back which has been great for backups and the like.
As it is, I’m most likely going to end up getting something of around 750Gb in size. There’s a lot of music still to be ripped, but also it can be used for photography stuff, and all the other projects I invariably have on the go. Plus well, it makes sense to get something with more storage, rather than less.
Posted: Fri 1 February, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Getting Organised, Own Business, Work-related |
When I said a few weeks back that I’d submitted by tax return by post, recorded delivery so that I knew it’d got there, a ouple of people wondered why I didn’t use the online sstem for submitting it.
There’s a number of reasons for it, although this story on the BBC about it having crashed wasn’t in that list ’til today.
Mainly, I like cast-iron proof that it’s been received by HMCE. I’ve been bitten before by “Well, just because you submitted it online doesn’t mean we received it”, and also by “If we send something out to you, we assume you’ve received it – but that doesn’t work the same way when you send something to us”. In my experience, the cunts at HMCE will lose tax returns just for fun. I don’t know what systems they’ve got there, but it’s all too easy for them to lose information. I prefer to make sure they at least have to lose hard-copy, rather than something that can be killed by just the click of a mouse. Yeah, I’m cynical – but then, I’ve been on the receiving end of some seriously shit service at the hands of HMCE, so it’s understandable.
Secondly, I just don’t trust a system that’s a) been written by shyster motherfuckers like Capita and EDS (and that is renowned for being a sack of shit) and b) that’s not secure enough for royalty, MPs or celebrities. Oh, it’s secure enough for Joe Public of course – just not for special people. So no, I don’t trust the system at all.
Hell, the system isn’t even stable enough to handle the load when lots of people submit their forms just in time for the deadline.
So I’ll stick with submitting my forms by post, thanks. I might let the accountant do it online – so lng as I get a full hard-copy of it as well, for my records and verificatiion.
Posted: Thu 31 January, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Own Business, Work-related |
Having filled in my Tax Return a few weeks back, I got a letter from HMCE this morning. Happily, it’s initial proof that I was right in a couple of assumptions/beliefs.
I bloody knew that Parasol were costing me too much money, and that I wasn’t getting paid the correct amount. I’d asked them about it several times, but they insisted I didn’t know what I was talking about, and that of course they were correct in what they were doing.
The initial letter from the taxman confirms I was right – I’ve overpaid nearly £2,000 in the 2006/7 tax year. I don’t know yet how they’re going to plan on paying it back, but I’m looking forward to the day it happens.
Mind you, I’d rather have received that missing £150 per month, rather than paying it to the fucking Inland Revenue for them to pay it back to me without any interest accruing on it…
Posted: Wed 30 January, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Thoughts, Work-related |
So, despite a complete lack of further updates yesterday, the interviews went pretty well.
As yet there’s been no official feedback from either one – the first one won’t be finished interviewing people ’til Friday, and the second one is seeing another person today – but both seemed to go well.
The contract one is right up my street, with lots to do, and the people seemed pretty good as well. In fact, it seemed more like going in for a meeting, discussing requirements and so on, rather than an interview. I know that both scenarios end up with either getting work or not, but it was more a conversation about ideas and plans, rather than “So, what’ve you done previously?” and all the normal interview guff.
The first one was far more formal, questions about technical knowledge, expectations, preferred development process, versioning systems and so on. It went OK, and I’m fairly sure I came through it all in a good light, but it’s going to depend utterly on what they thought.
By the end of the day I was brain-dead, mind you, which is why I didn’t get round to writing anything else yesterday. Multiple interviews in one day is a good idea in that in one day off you get through them rather than all being on different days – but man, it’s a killer of brain-cells.
Posted: Tue 29 January, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Getting Organised, Own Business, Work-related |
As I said yesterday, I’m going to be busy today. Two interviews, and dealing with a bundle of bureaucracy guff in between (with luck – assuming I get the time) so that I can get back up to speed with a couple of things that I need to get sorted.
Oh, and I need to figure out some ideas for (another) site redesign for the business site. Yes, another one. Maybe one day I’ll come up with a plan for it that I’m actually satisfied with, and that goes the distance. We’ll see.
Anyway, that’s the plan. It does mean that I won’t be updating anything here ’til I get home – so time will tell.
