»7th February 2010

Contractual Obligation

It's a month since the last blog update, Snow Day, and under my own self-imposed rules for this website I have to knock out at least one thing a month. The reason for this update then is merely to maintain activity levels on here. As of late blog updates have been increasingly about my reporting of significant events, usually over the course of several thousand words. Hopefully, this update won't spiral out of control like that.


Overdraft Overkill

Since clearing the overdraft on my Halifax account back in May, whilst I was still on Jobseeker's Allowance, I had ignored my account there. In the week before Christmas I had to take about £30 out of the account which put me about £25 into my £500 arranged overdraft. A few days later I put some money back in the account to put me back in the black.

This week I was delighted to discover that Halifax introduced new overdraft fees at the start of December 2009. You are no longer charged interest on your overdraft, but instead are charged a flat fee of £1 for every day that you're in your overdraft. The £1 fee applies all the way on overdrafts up to £2,500, as if you'd be mad enough to be that far into an overdraft with such fees. This is all arranged overdrafts mind, if you go into unarranged overdraft you're charged £5 a day.



The most I was ever charged in a month for my overdraft on that account was about £4.50 when I was very close to the bottom of my £500 overdraft. For being about £25 overdrawn for six days I was charged £6. If I'd left it another day, the charges the following month would have sent me back into my overdraft and I'd have been stung with yet more charges for every day I didn't check my otherwise inactive account.

During the time it took me to say 'this is complete bullshit' I decided that I would not be fucked over by the Halifax again for an account that was rendered useless to me thanks to the new overdraft fees and promptly closed the account the next day. Remember, these fair wildy exorbitant, profiteering fees are all brought to you by a bank that is 43% owned by the taxpayer.

In conclusion, Fuck The Halifax.


Alphabet Jungle

During one of my afternoon paperwork sessions during assembly, I spotted a suggestion on one of the IEPs to use 'games' to help my two year fours to learn the alphabet. This presented an opportunity to pass off messing around as legitimate work. With there being nothing else to record down on the IEPs, and as an alternative to pointlessly sorting through the special needs trolley for the umteenth time, I started drawing out a boardgame based on letters of the alphabet.



Upon realising that the school might already have something like that stashed away somewhere, I showed my idea to the deputy head and SENCO who would probably know where such a boardgame might be. There was of course nothing like that in and they thought making the boardgame was a good idea. After about a week I actually started to draw out a proper version of the game on MS Paint. When it came to doing a background and nice lettering, I had to resort to Photoshop at home. The name 'Alphabet Jungle' sprang to mind though this was all dependant on me finding an appropriate, cartoon-style jungle background in a reasonably high resolution. Eventually I found Henri Rousseau's 'Tiger In A Tropical Storm'.



After some fiddling around with the letters and tweaking in Photoshop, Alphabet Jungle was ready to print. I split the image into two to allow me to print it out on two A4 sheets at school. One of the other ETAs spotted my first copy of Alphabet Jungle prior to laminating and asked if she could have a copy too.



After the intitial run, and some strategic product placement I had four of the teachers in Key Stage One wanting copies of the game. Once the SENCO had been given a copy as well, the game was a (very) minor talking point in the staff room. Other positive comments from the deputy head followed and I declared Alphabet Jungle a complete success. 'You should get that published.'


Beneath The Surface



Decorating is a fun opportunity to indulge that juvenile passion of writing on walls. I've embraced this wholeheartedly and knocked up a crappy stencil to commemorate the decorating in my parents bedroom.



The last time the room was decorated was 1995, so it'll be fun to see when this particular stencil sees the light of day again. There's a good chance I'll recycle something more artistic from the garage stockpile of stencils to put up on the wall too.


Extar, over, out.

TCP/IP, it's fucking me off. Other protocols doing little more. Definitely got worse. Now making me curse. Removing IPX. Will it ever work? Never!