Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

All my laptop bits and pieces were untouched by yesterday's outages. Emails, Facebook, You Tube, news sites, even the CH Unofficial website. How can this have been?

The outages have merely confirmed my opinion (perhaps as a rather old person) that the internet and our reliance on it is not an entirely unmixed blessing. Some time ago I attempted to invest some money in an online bank product recommended by Martin Lewis. A two-year fixed rate cash ISA. It was an absolute nightmare. I don't have a printer so I had to get a friend to try and copy and print off my verification documents (which these days usually include a driving licence or passport which some older people may not have). Back they came as not being sufficiently clear. So we tried again. But then they got one digit of my email address wrong so that held up the process even further. By this time we were nearly two weeks in, so I finally snapped and cancelled the whole idea. I then decided to invest in a similar product with the Yorkshire Building Society which has a brick building in the next town and a human being inside it. Between me arriving with two original verification documents, answering a few questions, filling in a form, giving them a cheque and getting a passbook, it was 20 minutes start to finish. The Martin Lewis bank rate of return might have been about 3.70% and the Yorkshire 3.40% (I can't quite remember) but I considered that it was worth it to retain my sanity.
The more hackers and scammers try to break into online finances, the more the online banks will have to demand more lengthy and tedious verifications from their customers, and so on and so forth. In the old days our money was safe and indemnified. I don't think anyone is going to try and drill through the walls of the Yorkshire Building Society in Rottingdean in the small hours of the morning, shouting "Hi guys!" at any passing motorist. "Just trying to break in! Nothing to see. Move along. Have a safe journey home!"

First holiday this decade. Arrived Gatwick 3 hours early because there was the possibility of an early departure. *7.30 pm announced 1 hour delay, later extended to 2 hours and a bit after midnight the plane pulled away from the boarding station, And stopped. Eventually we returned and by 3am chucked off the plane. Tui had cancelled the flight . Stay and wait until the morning so there were the majority of passengers - kids, as well as parents sleeping on the floor of the terminal. Then they announced they had cancelled the holiday but left it to the junior plebs to be exposed to the customers.
Apparently they had not been able to get the previous set of passengers back so there were no beds available.

We were promised the earth - money back, 10% off new booking and no admin charge plus vouchers 2 weeks later. Waiting to see a sou or anything written. . Lost 30% on the currency I had bought for a start plus £249 other expenses. (Forget the petrol or meals) Try to make an alternative booking and they didn't answer the phone.

No, I don't think it was the airline specifically but it seems to be those many companies who are permanently linked to Microsoft (hence no problems with David's home setup). Seems Microsoft buys their anti this and that from a third party who made a mistake and Microsoft didn't check the code. I'll be dead by the time the merkins sort it out - maybe I'll get a nicer coffin?