Photos

Ok, yes, photos from Lake District break are up on Flickr – enjoy.


Tatty Cat

Way back in April last year, you may recall that Psycho Cat went to the vets to get the matted bits of fur shaved. As I said then, he’s a mucky little bastard – as yet I’ve still never seen him actually clean himself. I think he reckons that the dirty fur falls out, and that’s what keeps him *ahem* “clean”.

Come springtime, his fur gets all matted up into the feline equivalent of dreadlocks. It’s utterly revolting – if he’s deigned to let you stroke him (invariably at night, in bed, on dark sheets, so the white fur left afterwards looks as bad as possible) then you suddenly find your fingers caught in this lump of claggy fur. Utterly vile. And of course it makes it look like we don’t care for the crufty little git – other people on the street must be on the verge of calling the RSPCA half the time. (Mind you, if the RSPCA tried catching him, they’d need chainmail gloves, and faceshields)

Anyway, springtime has come, his fur’s disgusting, so today it was off to the vets for his de-matting. AKA “shaving the little git”. This involves a full anaesthetic for the cat, who is such a thug that when we make appointments for him at the vets, a bright red flashing warning comes up on their system about “teeth and claws” – the first time they tried it, the woman doing it needed stitches and a tetanus jab. Since then, the warning’s been in place. Can’t think why…

Of course, because of the general anaesthetic, we can’t feed him for 12 hours beforehand. So from 4am this morning he’s been starving, making as much noise as possible to get attention and get us to feed him. Not great on my first day back to work post-holiday. I could’ve throttled the little sod once he started running around under the bed and scratching the carpet to wake us up. But no, I was good.

I’m looking forward to seeing what they’ve done to him this time – I’ve asked again for a full poodle-esque trim, in the vain hope that he might be ashamed of the state he’s in, and maybe tidy himself up a bit, the dirty little fucker. I doubt they’ll do it though…


Tap Tap Tappety

Is it only me that finds it quite ironic when there’s a furore about Commissioner Ian Blair recording a phone call about – um – the tapping of phone lines ?


Overheard

In the supermarket…

“Have you not got any Daily Expresses today?”
“No, sorry, they only sent seven copies today, we’ve sold out.”
“Oh, OK. I’ll have to get a Daily Mail then. It’s just it’s such a rubbishy newspaper”


Getting Old

Ye gods. Thanks to Razorhead, I’ve just been reminded of a computer I used to have – the Atari Portfolio. Apparently it was released in 1989, but I don’t think I had one ’til a couple of years after that – in fact, I was trying to figure it out by working out where I was working and what I was doing when I had it. I’m sure I’ll figure it out, but right now well, I reckon it must’ve been ’90/’91.

It’s amazing how much things have changed since then. My new phone, the XDA, has probably 10 times the memory, speed, and general ooomphiness that’s now necessary. (No, my techie side has not been activated today, hence a certain “can’t be arsed”ness to those figures).

And bloody hell, I feel old…


Back

Yes, we’re back. And a bloody good week it was, too. Definitely feeling far better for it, and with some semblance of sanity restored.

More later, but for now it’s time to get back ontrack, read some sites, all that kind of gubbins.

Oh, and delete 2,500+ spam comments, mostly caught by the anti-spam stuff, thankfully…


Credit-Card Processing

One thing I’ve been checking out recently as a business requirement (it won’t be for just yet, but within the next two or three months, I should think) is the ability to do online processing of credit- and debit-cards. And bloody hell, what a nightmare it is.

Looking at RBS’s WorldPay solution, the costs are as follows :

  • Set-up : £200
  • Monthly fee : £30 (although they want six months up front, so £180)
  • Transaction charges
    • Debit cards : 50p per transaction
    • Credit Cards : 4.5% of transaction value
  • Fraud Protection : £20 per month plus an extra percentage per transaction

And if I want to be able to do subscription-type stuff (which was under consideration) that’ll cost me another £100 to set up.

So when I look at sorting out that side of things, it’s going to cost me a minimum of £400 , plus the fee on every transaction. That means that I’d have to get – roughly – eight or nine subscriptions just to break even.

Talk about banks being a bunch of robbing cunts…