Tuesday, March 20, 2007

£612.95 and the Departure Lounge

No not the final amount for the Comic Relief shave-a-thon (that was around 400 quid if John A ever gets around to collecting it). Its the cost of 4 tickets to this years Leeds music festival.

By a lot of luck I managed to get four tickets (Russ,Vicki,Nick and Myself) after we had given up all hope. All the websites where saying they had all run out. Russ had been trying the night before but they were all overloaded. So we thought it was going to be like last year with the tickets going before you have any real chance to get them. But fortunately I tried again just before lunch time and one of the sites let me thru and buy some.

So far its an interesting line up and should be good

Carling Weekend: Leeds Festival line-up August 24 and 26

Friday, August 24

The Smashing Pumpkins
NIN
Lostprophets
Fall Out Boy
Funeral For A Friend
+44
Klaxons

Saturday, August 25

Razorlight
Kings Of Leon
Interpol
Maximo Park
Ash

Sunday, 26 August

Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Arcade Fire
Bloc Party
Panic! At The Disco
Angels And Airwaves
The View
We Are Scientists

In other news the Company Departure Lounge, what we call it when someone has resigned and is on their notice period, got two shock arrivals.

Reno, who you may remember as the one who bust his arm boarding and Craig the Lord of Dark things musical and Tech support.

Reno is off to a Mortgage company who look after their DBAs (his job) better than here.

Craig on the other hand is one of the handful of original company employees and as such did quite well out of the parent company buying the company and so has decided he can't be bothered working any more and is going off to travel and write scary music.

It's no understatement to say that this place won't be the same without them.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Rose Nose Day

Poor old Simon, one of our Tech guys, Simon has had long hair for four plus years got into a drunken conversation a couple of nights ago and was convinced to have his head shaved for Comic Relief. A major whip round has developed in the office and I think the total is about 905 pounds so far. I think the aim is for about 2500 but its still a good amount of money. I'm giving a half a ton, partly cos it's a good cause and partly cos he does need it cutting! We got the bar downstairs to host the event and even got the company to put something towards it. So it looks like it will be quite a messy night tonight probably all end up on YouTube at some point.

Cash in hand, cash in bank

Well I put the cheque for the amount I did have into the bank so I can at least pay off some of the loan.
Just had a call from Alan he's talked to the insurance company and they said they would compare my claim with Jasons and get back to him. I'm not in any rush but I would like it sorted at some point.

Also its the last day to put my uFlex benefits. I'm going for Private Medical, Personal Pension, Season Ticket loan and the Cycle to work scheme.

The Season ticket loan is after tax, and quite large (plus three grand) as I'm travelling in to London from my Parent's, but interest free.

The Personal Pension is pretty much a continuation of the 8% contribution the company was paying into my scheme before all this flexible stuff started. The two main differences are its paid monthly so if you quit you don't lose back to the last six month payment and two I'm putting extra 3% which will replace the additional payments I was making from my bank account. The advantage of this is that I save the National Insurance Contributions and don't have to do extra paper work to get the tax back.

The Cycle to work scheme lets you save the tax and NI but you have to buy a bike. I my case, with my knee, this isn't as mad an idea as it seems.The knee is fairly stable now and the motion of riding a bike is fairly straight and won't stress the knee too much. And I have to do some exercise because I'm doing zero at the moment. It seems actually to be a bit of a shock to the system, if you suddenly stop being very active (like stop ski every day) you're body can't work out its energy levels very well and it can play havoc with your sleep patterns.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Lunch with a Friend

Jason looks a lot better
he's had the surgery and so has been out of it on drugs for the last couple of days. we had lunch today at Noodle Noodle near Victoria station (good food, big portions). He got his insurance claim but it was for a larger amount that I got around 4500 so I've got to have a word with the Insurance company cos that can't be right, its more that I got and I came back first!

A uFlex update as we are part of a group scheme I can join the Health plan without having to be excluded because of my knee. So I will be able to claim for my treatments. WOW

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Welcome back to Customisation

Well its my baby

The Customisation part of uSwitch's system (the part of our website that decides which images and colours to put on our web pages) is has been running fairly trouble free while I've been away, now I'm back its been decided that there were some things that need fixing. So I've been given the tasks of making improvements, well I did help write it in the first place.

I think it was more of a case of them ignoring the issues and hoping I would come back and fix them. It's a bit complicated and I think it scares them.

Actually there is some talk about getting a proper content management system to help with the company's expansion into new countries, so like most things that I every seem to do in the IT business, the work I'm doing may well be binned in a couple of months.

Good News / Bad News (Again!!)

Monday I received some post from Canada and West Byfleet

The tax refund claim for about 60 dollars was successful and I got a cheque in pounds from the Canadian government. Nice!
This was the tax I paid on my skis, poles and helmet.

Also in the post I got a cheque from my Insurance company. However this wasn't as happily accepted.

The Insurance company decided to pay the medical costs in full, including the taxis that I submitted receipts for. They also paid pro-rata for the food, accommodation and flights that I didn't use.

However the Course Fees, Lift Pass, Exam Fees, Heliskiing Trip and Avalanche Course were all included in a section called Inability to Ski. This section has a maximum limit 150 pounds. So this is how much that they offered.

It's a good 2 grand short of what I was expecting.

So I connected Crystal, as it is actually the insurance which is sold with the course and suggested that it isn't right. It looks like they are treating the trip as a simple winter holiday rather than a expensive course.

Now I paid 460 pounds for this Insurance and I would expect it to course slightly more than a normal policy. So Alan at Crystal (Who was very helpful when I had the accident and was sorting out the claim) said if I send him a copy of the letter he would look into it.

so fingers crossed!

otherwise I may have to take Jason's advice and start talking to lawyers.

BTW Jason is in hospital now getting his arm fixed, so good luck to him.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

uFlex and the P45

Yeap sure sign I'm back at work the level of important bits of paper increase.

For some reason the HR department send me my P45 to the flat, so first job on Friday was to return part B (the bit you give to your new employer) to the person who had put it into the post in the first place!

Also now I'm back and I don't have to do a probation period I get to join the new flexible benefits package. It still doesn't look like they do sabbaticals, not that I have to do anything about that until this November/December. It's all run from a website call youatwork.co.uk, but it's not working for me so I've no idea what it includes. what I do know is it has a good range of discounts as I'm registered on that site through the University of Leeds. Hopefully I can register twice! or something.

Back to school

It's a slightly strange feeling to be back at work. Just the same as when I went away, well it's only been two months, but some things are completely different.

Some new faces and a few missing friends.

I made quite an entry to the office with a bit of a cheer, a lot of hand shaking and people meerkatting up from behind their monitors all the way down the office.

There are changes to the teams including a new one dedicated to improving the number of customers who complete the energy switching process (I've started calling this project Panic). This is in response to the price cuts in the domestic fuel market which have caused the number of people switching suppliers, and hence our profit, to drop.

I wasn't the only person to be injured apart from Reno who I knew about, he showed me a very impressive Xray pic. There was also Barry (the Marketing director) who has done a similar thing to me but also the other ligaments around the outside and the protective cartilage between the bones. He's going private so should be back on his feet (sorry) in a couple of months.

I must have answered the questions 'What did you do', 'Where you skiing' and 'How long will you be like that, over 30 times. It's nice to get the attention and that everyone cares but...

Also the ever inventive members of the department came up with a huge range of jokes along the lines of; hop-a-long, old man with walking stick, pipes and slippers and the dangers of skiing.