Arrangement Fees

Well... HSBC utterly refuse to back down on the arrangement fees fiasco, and refuse to accept any responsibility. The woman on the other phone had a serious attitude problem and I was in no mood for it so I told her I'd be closing my account next month, then hung up on her.

Once the Office of Fair Trading have put their test case through and proved that the banks are charging unlawfully for overdraft fees I plan to submit a claim to get my money back. They can't expect to get away with it.

I'm also making good on my threat and will be closing my HSBC account next month. They can sit and swivel the thieving fucks.

Darkness

No this isn't an emo entry. I'm just thinking, does anybody else find they feel exhausted all of the time when the clocks go back? You'd think the extra hour in bed would make you feel better if anything... I'm not claiming to have S.A.D. or anything like that, but I do feel shattered since the clocks went back. I blame it on living in almost perpetual darkness.

Arrangement Fees

Last month I hit my overdraft limit, which wasn't too surprising as it was, for one reason or another, the single most expensive month of the year for me so far. HSBC charged me a ridiculous £50 for hitting the overdraft limit, which can only be described as scandalous but I chose to let it slide. Today when I logged on I noticed another box stating more charges were due to be applied. "Debit Interest", thinks I, but decide to check anyway.

I had to read the message three times before I could bring myself to believe it: £159.80 of charges in total, £150 of which was an "arrangement fee" because I hit the overdraft limit last month -- which of course they'd already charged me an exorbitant amount for. So in total they want £209.80 for me hitting my overdraft limit and then immediately paying it off.

They can go fuck themselves, I've had enough of them.

Oops

Forgot to update my blog after my CBT. I passed and am now able to menace people with a bike. However, I'm utterly skint (and expect to remain that way for some time thanks to various financial commitments) so I shan't be able to buy a bike for a while.

Currently I'm at work trying to fix a massive cock-up. I wanted to import some data into our test knowledge base (to make sure everything went smoothly before importing into the live database) and so I asked a colleague to switch one of our EJB servers over to point at the test database. This he did, except he modified the wrong file on the server and so the machine still pointed at the live data. I went ahead with the import unaware of the issue. We then discovered that a change made to the import code meant that entries that already exist are not modified but re-inserted, and a small error in the code I was using to do the import from my machine (thankfully, not written by me) meant we had lots of duplicate entries in the database and some with the wrong name.

*sigh*

At least my code works the way it's supposed to.

Well, here I am: Sitting and waiting to take my CBT for a second time having failed the first time. It's only the on-road part which is a small mercy as the off road part takes hours and is exhausting.

I'm actually nervous thanks to failing it last week. It's been 7 days but it seems like months ago now. All I want to do is be able to practice on my own so I don't make daft mistakes, but It's a catch 22 situation: To practice on my own I have to show I'm capable of riding without making any daft mistakes!

All well. Cross your assorted appendages for me.

God it's boring drying the laundry. Someone needs to invent a launderette with some kind of amusements in it. I'm going to put that on my list of things to patent, along with caffeinated toast and MP3 players that are charged by their user's movement.

Work's proving interesting at the moment. My team lead is away on holiday for the next two weeks, and the other developer is away this week. That just leaves me to support all of their products, and I know nothing about them.

Another thing: Would it really be that hard for Nokia's predictive texting facility to automatically capitalise "I"?

Why the fuck didn't I bring a book with me?

Well I certainly didn't expect to spend friday night picking bits of someone else's car up off a road and directing traffic in the middle of nowhere in mid-wales. Nope. I really didn't expect that.

I have booked my CBT. Soon I shall be able to ride a little 125cc bike to and from work. Then, in the spring, I shall take my bike test and treat myself to a nice little Honda NSR125. It is also a 125cc, but with 28 bhp from the 2-stroke engine and on such a light bike, it shifts.

Of course I could go for an even more powerful bike once I've completed my test, but I don't trust myself with it. Best to start with a smaller bike I feel.

I saw the single most honest piece of graffiti I've ever seen last night as I was walking back home after giving blood. It was scrawled onto a road name sign and simply said,

which I personally thought was quite apt.

Last night we drove all the way to Basingstoke to go to the cinema with the intention of watching the Bourne Ultimatum. After the half hour long drive we were dismayed to find the queue for tickets snaked its way around the lobby and then out of a side door. We stood in the non-moving queue for about 5 minutes before deciding "fuck it" and then we drove back home. What a waste of an hour.

Work has been weird this week. Because of the visiting Americans and Germans, plus the unforeseen absence of our team-lead, there has been a bit of a party atmosphere in the office. In fact there have probably been more pints of beer consumed this week than lines of code written.

Wednesday was a particularly good laugh; We all went out to the Aangan restaurant in Reading. It's an excellent restaurant, and I think everyone had a good laugh. It's cool that even though they all take the piss out of my veganism they were still all up for visiting a vegetarian restaurant.

Today we're off to Oxford with the one American who hasn't yet gone home yet. One of my colleagues who grew up in Oxford is giving us all a guided tour, which will be cool as I've never really seen any of Oxford's attractions.

And we're also going to drink some beer.