Today's recipe: Crisps from Makro

No recipe today, my wife is madly baking Christmas cakes all day, and I cannot get near the kitchen.

What I have is a stock of various crisps we got from Makro.

Makro and Costco are odd places, and we have both in Reading, so quite close to us. Usually worth going to both.

They each have very different things. Costco have loads of stuff, but lack some basic things like a good selections of crisps or alcohol. They have some, but nothing like what Makro have. Makro also seem to have way more of the catering style supplies, like if you actually want to ever buy Schwartz Bacon Flavour Bits, or 1.5l bottles of Southern Comfort, they are in Makro.

On the other hand, if you want a stupidly big Nerf gun, or any sort of decent TV, go to Costco. Just oddly different places.

Note, there are Marmite crisps in there. In fact that selection includes Marmite crisps, Frazzles, Wheat Crunchies, Worcester[not shire] sauce french fries, and Salt'n'vinegar chipsticks. That will keep me going for a while, I am sure.

As for 1.5l bottles of Southern Comfort, I have found a design flaw in my shelving which means it does not quite fit on the shelf, and will not even fit on an optic. Oh well.

Fire place

We live in a house built in the '80s (1987 apparently).

It has gas central heating, and a fireplace (with, obviously, a chimney).

This seems odd, as why would you need both, but really, do they build any houses with a fireplace any more. Why did they do so even in the '80s?

Over the years there have been changes. We have had the boiler replaced, and the hot water system (mains pressure hot water is great), and we have installed air-con units in many rooms now. In my "man cave" which is formerly the garage, the only heating is the air-con, which is very efficient and effective.

However, a few rooms in the house are still only heated by the gas central heating, such as hallway, landing, utility room, dining room, living room, kitchen, and one bedroom. They all have radiators that are still used.

This year, for the first time in like a decade, we are actually considering lighting the fire. Some years ago we had the chimney checked out and cleaned out, so should be OK, well, we'll see.

This is purely for decorative reasons as a Christmassy sort of thing. I can imagine the "fond memory" of a "real log fire" is a long way from the reality, somehow.

I am, of course, wary that this will be a problem. We do have a good fire guard, and have had for all these years, mainly to try and stop the cat climbing the chimney to chase the sound of birds sitting at the top. Does not work. I also have a fire extinguisher on standby...

But then it occurred to me, the thermostat (which I replaced with a digital one some time ago) is positioned in the living room, where the fireplace is located. This seems to be a design flaw.

Once the living room is nice and toasty from a real log fire, the central heating is going to shutdown, making several rooms in the house damn cold.

Thankfully not my "man cave" nor my bedroom as I have air-con, but still, rather a daft design.

P.S. It is December, in what the news says is a really cold winter, and I have just had to switch my air-con to cool in the man-cave as it up to 23C in here (no, we have not lit a fire). What the hell?

Today's recipe: Chicken Korma Pot Noodle

Not actually a recipe, more of a review...

So, starts off looking like about the right colour for a Chicken Korma...

Now, I will mash it down a bit anyway...

Add water to the line...

Stir, and leave for a couple of minutes...

So that is the instructions properly followed, and no chilli flakes or marmite in sight.

The end result? Well, it tastes a bit chicken korma. It is a bit runny, so filling right to the line was probably not ideal. To be honest, a bit bland - I mean, I know a korma is often really mild as curries go but this has no spice to it at all. It is OK, but probably would not bother having again.

In fact, I did not finish it. Maybe it just lacks marmite.

My Christmas present

The iPhone X is not my Christmas present, honest. It is OK, but to be honest not that "special", and the hassle getting it set up was a nightmare.

First off I had to iCloud backup, which meant sorting extra storage. Then it restored, good, but every single damn app knows the login but not the password. So setting up banking on Lloyds, and Barclays, and Monzo. Then setting up Twitter and Facebook, FFS, why is this not simple?!?!

My authenticator app has lost the details so I have yet to sort that, and Barclays deny me "pin sentry" for "up to 10 days" for no fucking good reason.

The FaceID works seamlessly but to be honest so did fingerprints.

Then Signal app no longer loads - not available on app store, WTF? That is a pain as we use that internally for out of band support and ops. Arrrrrg!

OK, so iPhone X, and I pronounce it "ex" as I selected "English" not "Roman", not the Christmas present.

The Christmas present, if it happens, is the new Mac Pro. It looks awesome. I do video editing from time to time, and it looks perfect for that. I want! Looks very not cheap...  Seriously, Apple, saying "available December" is not good in bloody "December"!

I am here, contemplating spending a shitload with you on my new toy, where is it?!?

/me goes back to a corner to cry.

P.S. In case it is not obvious, this is a little tongue in cheek and my being the average Apple consumer for a change. Though I do rather fancy the new Mac Pro :-)

Payment Services Regulations 2017

Some interesting changes on 18th Jan 2018...

All those pesky charges for making card payments are finally going away. You will not be allowed to charge a customer any extra for paying by card.

This will have some interesting effects, many little shops that charge 50p or whatever, or charge 50p if paying below £10, will no longer be allowed to do so. This means, if they now have fees, they may decide simply to not take cards when below £10 or some such. In some ways that is a backwards step.

That said, merchant agreements (which are simply a contract between merchant and card handling company) may not allow that. That is not so easy for a third party (you wanting to buy something for £3 on a card) to effectively "enforce" on them, unlike the law covering the extra fee.

Anyway, how will A&A be affected by this...

Cheques

We accept cheques, and charge an admin fee. Cheques are outside these new rules, but for consumers we have very limited scope to charge for the extra time and hassle of staff taking a cheque to the bank. So the plan is no cheques from consumers. Businesses that insist on cheques (which is like half a dozen a month or something) will continue to be charged a £5 admin fee. Yes, we have people paying like £10 bill by cheque each month which means £5+VAT admin fee on top. I don't know what to say!

Given that no consumers actually pay by cheque, of have done for years, this will not be an issue, but does mean updating our terms.

Cards

We do take cards occasionally, as an emergency, and charge a fee.

The current plan is to stop taking cards at all.

This is not simply the cost of doing so. The fact we won't be able to charge those costs is just the last straw really. Card collections used to be really simple. We had it all automated. We rarely had any fraud. It worked well and we used for all our regular payments. Then PCI came along, and Barclays terminated our merchant account simply because I asked how "fines" for non compliance were valid in UK law. Not that we would not be compliant, but because I asked the question and they could not answer. Now we have a virtual card terminal (https) and merchant account via a different bank, and it is all manual, hence used rarely. There are costs, and the hassle of a stupid PCI compliance questionnaire that is technically impossible to complete honestly even if you wanted to. The advice from the bank is to just ignore the inconsistencies and stupidities in the questions! So yes, dropping cards is something I have been planning for a while.

But we need to replace that with something, and the plan is to find a way to get faster payments fed in to the accounts system in real time.

What I am trying to sort out is one of the newer banks, like Monzo (but they do not do business accounts) so we can get a live API for faster payments coming in. Yes, Starling is one we are looking at. Fingers crossed.

If we get that then we'll change the account to which people normally pay via BACS, and we'll record the exact date/time of payments on the accounts. At present we have terms avoiding the issue of people paying on a non banking day, but this will make the payment date/time clearer, and allow instant automatic clearing of account credit issues, even out of hours.

We may even be able to offer new services paid for on-line by faster payments and provided instantly.

Direct Debits

No change! We don't charge for paying us by DD. We do charge an admin fee for not paying us by DD (i.e. the payment bounces), which is allowed.

BACS

We accept BACS payments anyway, and do not charge extra for paying us. We charge an admin fee for incorrect payments (for us allocating payment if no reference), but that seems to be allowed, and wholly avoidable by using the right reference!


This could be interesting, and I'll keep you posted on developments.

Why? apple

A month ago we ordered an iPhone X with Apple business.

For the whole month, even yesterday, they were still saying they could not say when it would arrive.

Seriously!

But yesterday, if you try on-line on normal Apple Retail they offer to deliver in just over a week and have stores listed with stock you can collect?

So how can a month old order be behind that? What the hell is going on?

Well, Phil, at the office, gave the guy at apple some grief. It is ridiculous, and he went and found one from stock in the store. Thanks to Phil for popping to Reading to get it. Was the original order ever going to deliver? No idea, but this is a shambles Apple, a total shambles.

Today's recipe: Curry Pot Noodle

Well, I have done a cheese on toast that involves bread, a toaster and cheese. I have done chicken soup that involves "a can of chick soup" and a microwave. So today's main ingredient is, you guessed it, an original curry flavour pot noodle.

But pot noodles are not without some controversy I think. For a start there are those that consider them to be some sort of inedible concoction from the bowels of hell, or some such. Mostly I like them, not all of the flavours though.

Another controversy is when to have one. Well, any time, and now is breakfast! Well, I say breakfast, which I guess is technically true, I have been up for about 5 hours so far, so getting hungry.

But what else is controversial?

The issue here is whether you make it as above, adding water, and leaving the noodles whole as long noodles that need a fork or some such, much like spaghetti, or do you mash them down a bit so the noodles are broken up as below. I do the later.

Then, do you add anything? Well, a good start is a few bacon flavour bits...

And, especially for the curry flavour pot noodle, I like quite a few chilli flakes...

Of course, you guessed it, a small amount of marmite...

And the original sauce...

Then hot water, but this is where again things may be a bit controversial...

There is a "fill line" and that works quite well, but some people like way less water making the final result extremely thick - i.e. you could turn it upside down and nothing fall out. My grandson likes pot noodles like this, and not just because he can easily knock them over. Make them "properly" and he'll look at you like you have lost the plot and don't know how to "cook".

On the other hand some people like way more water and it ends up more like a soup.

I like it just below the line...

Stir, and leave for a minute.

Delicious...