Posts by DJV 2542 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Aug 2009
Although I've had no problem leaving companies before when I needed to, it was being made redundant four times during my working life that seemed to indicate to me that life was trying to tell me something!
After the 4th time at the age of 50, I went fully self-employed and I've had work thrown at me ever since. Although I am now in receipt of the (rather pitiful) UK state pension I am still working and have no intention of stopping while I am still enjoying it.
Sell it? But I'm still using my Psion 5MX! Mainly when I'm out at events selling my published books... when there's a lull in customer footfall then out comes the Psion and I can start tapping away at my latest story. Damn sight better than lugging a laptop around and the never-bettered keyboard makes it so easy to use.
We had an idiot in the company I worked at back in the late 1970s. He always had to have the "latest thing" which he would then either get bored with or break in some fashion. He bought radio controlled plane and crashed it quite quickly - this was then sold to another staff member for peanuts. When he bought a Commodore Pet in 1979 I said, in quiet tones to others, "That's mine." About two months later he sold it to me for about 2/3 the original cost after he decided that he was going to buy an Apple ][ instead.
I inherited a Sparc Ultra 10 around 2005 and given how it had been crippled by the latest version of Solaris and my own need for a server, I decided to try out Gentoo. It was certainly an experience (in a good way - it taught me lots about Linux) and it took several goes/builds before I had things exactly as I wanted them. A nice bare-bones system acting as a web server and SMB network share for my PCs. But, oh boy, you're definitely right about the "lot of time" on your hands comment! I think I had to leave some builds running overnight and hope I had something working by the next morning!
Yes, I had this a couple of years ago with my $PENSION_COMPANY. I'd had an arranged online meeting to discuss pension arrangements with $COMPANY_PERSON1 which all went ok. $COMPANY_PERSON1 didn't indicate that I would be getting a follow-up call regarding how the meeting went.
Then, a few days later, I had a call on my mobile phone with the number withheld (alarm bell 1 goes off) from someone (let's call her $COMPANY_PERSON2) who claimed to be from $PENSION_COMPANY. She wanted to talk to me about my "recent contact" (very vague - alarm bell 2 goes off) with the company. She then asked me to provide answers to security questions. I refused and asked her to prove that she really was from $PENSION_COMPANY and why was she calling from a withheld number when this is now extremely frowned upon if not actually illegal now. I thought it reasonable to ask her to provide me with either one of my policy numbers or some digits (and their positions) from one of those numbers. She refused saying it was personal information and, after getting in a bit of a strop about my refusal to do what SHE wanted, in the end hung up on me.
I immediately contacted $COMPANY_PERSON1 and told her about my experience. She agreed that it sounded very suspicious and asked if I wanted to officially report it, which I agreed to. She took the full details and said I would be hearing from someone in a few days.
A few days later I received a call from $COMPANY_PERSON3 from a number that was associated with $PENSION_COMPANY and, as he had details about the "rogue" call and other things that only someone from the $PENSION_COMPANY should have possessed, I was happy to talk to him. He apologised as it turned out that the "rogue" call HAD come from someone employed by $PENSION_COMPANY who was working from home but hadn't done as she should have and routed the call via $PENSION_COMPANY's normal phone network. We spent some time discussing ways in which $PENSION_COMPANY could improve their ability to prove their own identity when asked for it (mainly the same as I'd asked $COMPANY_PERSON2 to do, which he thought was a reasonable way of going about things).
Then he asked, "Is £75 compensation for all the hassle ok?" Having not expected anything of the sort, I readily agreed. This was duly paid into my bank account a few days later and, also around the same time, I received a package containing a written apology along with 2 bottles of wine and a box of chocolates!
So, I think the lesson there is, if you complain properly, you can actually get good results and a proper company will learn from its mistakes. I do wonder, though, what sort of reprimand $COMPANY_PERSON2 got - hopefully, it was some decent training!
Absolutely!
I've just had to chastise part of the local NHS about their use of withheld numbers when phoning. In an effort to reduce the number of spam/scam calls, I have blocked any number that doesn't reveal its CLI. Yet, the NHS still regularly does this.
"Paying a different price for the same potato depending on what dish you make and who is making it?"
Absolutely! The same stupidity happened in the UK in the 1970s when a dual rate of VAT came in. Luxury goods were taxed at 12.5% while everything else was 8% (yeah, it was that low back then!).
This meant that the electronic component carried a different rate of tax depending upon what it was going to be used in. Of course, the governmental idiots who'd first decided that it was a good idea to have two rates didn't have a proper solution as the potential problems hadn't ever troubled their tiny, imbecilic minds.
Is there no end to the number of total cock-ups that Microsoft will inflict upon their paying customers due to their infamous lack of QA testing?
As someone who was hit by the Defender icon and program mess a few weeks ago, I have decided that my next main PC will be Linux based and, if I need to run Windows at all, it will be done via a virtual machine. I haven't used MS Office for years, and refuse to have anything to do with their shonky cloud services.
There will come a point when I will be glad to be completely Microsoft- (and Google-) free.
Ah, so Reg authors are also restricted by the annoying 10-minute edit window!
Maybe there should be a longer moderated window - i.e. a form where you submit a requested change to one of our posts but someone on the staff has to moderate that it really is a valid spolling or trypo correction! (sic)
To save the staff from getting unduly hassled, maybe you could only submit one per day and never more than one for the same post.
That brings back memories of my stint as an apprentice TV engineer at Rediffusion in the 1970s. Some of the "experienced" engineers were completely unable to converge the guns on a colour TV and would bribe me to do it for them as I seemed to have the knack!
We did have the occasional Sony Trinitron for sale as well, though they were never used for rented sets. This was, of course, back in the days when Sony was a great company selling excellent TVs and Hi-Fi separates, long before they became the nasty rootkit installers of nearly 20 years ago.
Oh absolutely!
Back around 1996, I was tasked with updating the pile of Windows 3.1 PCs we had at the company to add TCP/IP and a web browser. Then, because back then, few of the staff had any idea of what the interwebs actually were, I would ask each staff member whose PC had just been upgraded what hobbies they had. This was so that I could show them how to use a search engine (AltaVista back then) to look for items of interest. The usual subjects chosen would be things like gardening, pets and cooking.
Then, one of the managers (who possessed a wicked sense of humour and, thank goodness, a private office of his own), when asked what subject he would like to search on replied, "Necrophilia."
Trying to keep a straight face, I typed it in, and we were both rather surprised by the huge number of hits returned. Yes, some of the results were duly investigated, mainly for the laughs, though!
In my 1966 Cortina automatic (purchased around 1973 for £80), it was the starter motor that kept rattling loose. When turning the ignition resulted in only a high-pitched whine and a lack of engine turning over noises, it was a case of up with the bonnet and out with the spanner yet again. Later on, something in the automatic gearing went screwy and it refused to go backwards ever again, making parking very "interesting". A lack of funds meant it stayed that way until it got scrapped.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
