Yearly Archives: 2002

Zoned out

Tuesday March 26th 2002

I spent a large part of last weekend working on WipeoutZone, redesigning the front end and customising the new release of phpBB.

The latter turned out to be quite a task, as it’s less customisable than the older version of the forum and with virtually every page being built with includes and from the database it made finding what I wanted to alter a bit of a chore. I got it done to a reasonable standard in the end, and although I really wanted to re-do the icons I just ran out of time. I knew if I rushed them they’d look like crap too, so maybe some day I’ll get back to them.

The re-design was a bit unnecessary, really, as I’d only just re-done the whole site in early January. However, there were some codey issues with NN6 and Mozzila due to the page stretching to fit the screen, so I had to scrap that. I also wanted to take a step back from Wipeout Fusion to concentrate a bit more on the previous versions of the game once more, which meant re-designing the banner of the site as well. I’m finding it hard to compete on a level playing field with the official sites in terms of material, and with WipeoutZone originally being a Wipeout 3 fan site it makes sense to cater for that audience until Wipeout Fusion no longer has an official site.

Criminal Waste

Tuesday March 19th 2002

Last night I checked out my bank statement online. On Friday of last week a ?399 transaction was made in payment to BT Cellnet/Internet.

My mobile is a vodafone one, and although my internet service is provided by BT it costs ?385 a month less than the amount withdrawn. So I called BT this morning, then BT internet – both of whom denied taking the money from my account. So I called my bank and asked them to investigate the transaction.

At just after four pm they called me back and explained that my details had been used to purchase a couple of mobile phones from a BT Cellnet shop in Leeds.

I have never been to Leeds and I was freaked at this point.

Turns out that something in my rubbish was used – like a bill or a statement that has accidentally been thrown out. The fraudster called the shop and arranged payment over the phone, then turned up with the bill on them to prove their identity when they collected the purchase.

Pick holes in this plot if you like, but that’s the way my bank pieced it together.

Aside from being quite a cool crime, it’s something that could have gone undetected for almost a month if I did not have internet banking set up.

So, just to let you know, this is obviously a new-ish type of crime… get shredding your paper rubbish.

R269-653

Monday March 18th 2002

I hate that.

I hate that I can remember that one letter, six digit combination almost eight years after it ceased to be relevant to me.

Let me explain. I used to be in the Ministry of Defense. Or rather, I used to be a civilian working for the ministry of defense, as an electrician. The number above was my reference number to the MoD, my code, my tag, my unique ID in the sea of bodies that work for the great lumbering organization that makes up the MoD. We needed it for everything you can think of; call in sick and you need your number, ask for leave and you need to quote it – miss a college class and your number gets taken down. Then it all goes in your file. File R269-653.

At the time it was pretty useful, I suppose – I don’t remember feeling any opinion either way on the fact I was just a number to the personnel people. There’s another funny thing – most companies have an HR department. The MoD has a personnel department – they deal in persons, or numbers, not humans which are not.

But in later years it irks me somewhat. Knowing that in some filing cabinet somewhere, under a tab marked R269-653, there’s a whole load of information documenting my every move for five years. Which days I was late, which days I was sick and the reasons for them. Every time I wanted to take holiday, except that it was called “leave” in the MoD, I filled in a form which is now in that filing cabinet, where ever it is.

I didn’t leave the MoD in the best of ways. I was stabbed in the back by men I respected – my boss and his boss, two people I really thought I could count on. When it came to the crunch they closed ranks and hung me out to dry – even lieing in front of a panel of people who were judging my future. And for what? To keep the “integrity” of the MoD? To save their own faces?

Hey, it didn’t matter anyway – I’ve moved on and made a success of my life, to a point far beyond I could ever have gone with the MoD. So I don’t really want to dwell on what went wrong, how I carried the blame, how my entire family used to talk about me at family gatherings, saying I’d screwed up my life because a job with the MoD was a job for life. I mean, why dwell on that? It would only make me bitter in a way that frightens me.

To forget completely, though, I would need to forget that number. And that’s the difficult part.