No it wasn't. TSB's original de-merger system was a fork from Lloyd's. That was bad enough, but the outage was caused by a bungled switch to an entirely different system used by Sabadell.
Posts by dak
168 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Oct 2010
Indian bank’s IT is so shabby it’s been banned from opening new accounts
How Sinclair's QL computer outshined Apple's Macintosh against all odds
Making the problem go away is not the same thing as fixing it
Douglas Adams was right: Telephone sanitizers are terrible human beings
When we asked how you crashed the system we wanted an explanation not a demonstration
Twitter dismantles its Trust and Safety Council moments before meeting
Former Microsoft UX boss doesn't like the Windows 11 Start menu either
'I wonder what this cable does': How to tell thicknet from a thickhead
Whatever you do, don't show initiative if you value your job
That time a techie accidentally improved an airline's productivity
When management went nuclear on an innocent software engineer
UK government having hard time complying with its own IR35 tax rules
An early crack at network management with an unfortunate logfile
Buying a USB adapter: Pennies. Knowing where to stick it: Priceless
COVID-19 was a generational opportunity for change at work – and corporate blew it
Wednesday 19th January 2022 23:33 GMT
Back to the future
In a couple of weeks' time I will be starting back at the office I was in when Boris the Power-Crazed shut the country down. As it happens I was in their departure lounge anyway because they had blanket-banned all ex-IR35 contracts. I will be returning still ex-IR35 and on a considerably higher rate.
The point of this comment is that the office is 350 miles from my home and my work cycle will be what I was doing then - 8 days there, six days at home every fortnight. The site itself is a very attractive one, full of interesting and inspirational people, and I have always worked better when stimulated by good competition.
I simply don't see how any company can inculcate its corporate ethos into new hires when they are kept away from existing staff, and in time many companies will lose their corporate identities entirely.
Of course, for many of my former clients this will be a Good Thing.
Software guy smashes through the Somebody Else's Problem field to save the day
HMRC tool for measuring IR35 status is so great, employers are ditching it in their droves
Thursday 13th January 2022 11:46 GMT 
CEST? A lamentably shoddy piece of work.
I wrote a series of articles on just why CEST is a lamentably shoddy piece of work.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/critique-hmrcs-foia-response-1-david-kirkwood-msc-miet?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_pulse_read%3BEFOl1yohSrWKtsjHZcs%2B6A%3D%3D
In the next couple of weeks I will be returning to a client I left because of their IR35 blanket assessment. I will still be outside IR35, and earning more than I had been. The client will be paying a new intermediary about 50% more than in 2020 just to get me back.
EasyJet flight loadsheet snafu caused by software 'code errors' says UK safety agency
Missouri governor demands prosecution of reporter for 'decoding HTML source code' and reporting a data breach
Config cockup leaves Reg reader reaching for the phone
Microsoft's problem child, Windows 11, is here. Will you run it? Can you run it? Do you even WANT to run it?
Want to feel old? Aussie cyclist draws Nirvana baby in Strava on streets of Adelaide because Nevermind is 30
Think you can solve the UK's electric vehicle charging point puzzle? The Ordnance Survey wants to hear about it
BOFH: Here in my car I feel safest of all. I can listen to you ... It keeps me stable for days
Go to L: A man of the cloth faces keyboard conundrum
Airline software super-bug: Flight loads miscalculated because women using 'Miss' were treated as children
Why yes, I'll take that commendation for fixing the thing I broke
Pizza and beer night out the window, hours trying to sort issue, then a fresh pair of eyes says 'See, the problem is...'
$900bn coronavirus stimulus bill includes $600 for most Americans, $50 in monthly internet subsidies, $1.9bn to help rid the US of Huawei kit
Adiós Arecibo Observatory: America's largest radio telescope faces explosive end after over 50 years of service
Panic in the mailroom: The perils of an operating system too smart for its own good
HP: That print-free-for-life deal we promised you? Well, now it's pay-per-month to continue using your printer ink
NSA: We've learned our lesson after foreign spies used one of our crypto backdoors – but we can't say how exactly
Excel is for amateurs. To properly screw things up, those same amateurs need a copy of Access
Monday 12th October 2020 14:56 GMT 
Not Just Acces
Way back last century, the toolroom in the factory where I worked had a god-awful scheduling system and a very enthusiastic tooling engineer, who brought in a copy of Superbase and built his own system. It worked quite well for them and kept entirely under our radar.
We (DP) found out about it 55 weeks after it went live, and about 30 weeks after the engineer went on long-term sick. He had, of course, omitted a full date specification and the previous year's jobs were popping back up again. Could we please, fix it for them, please, please?
Of course, we couldn't, at least not quickly.
Part of the reason that it took a couple of weeks to alert us is that for a while the toolroom was legitimately quoting delivery dates into the factory in week numbers up to 66.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
