If you have a large pile of change (I won’t say a large pile of cash as some people say… last time I checked coins are still cash!), and you’re adverse to being charged to deposit it in the bank… what can you do?

During the year I save up all the small coins from my spare change (usually anything smaller than 50p but any coin if I suddenly end up with a large amount in my wallet) in a money tin and open it at the end of the year. I did this the other night, and ended up with £81.01 (and 60 New Zealand cents). Not a bad haul for the year, although I was secretly hoping for over £100.

But then, once I’m left with this big pile of money… what do I do with it? Apparently banks or the Post Office don’t take big piles of coins anymore without charging for it… and the Coinstar coin sorting machines at the supermarket take 8% of your money as a fee. I don’t like paying a penny more than I have to so I had to use my imagination.

All my 50p coins went to buying a month’s worth of Lotto tickets in case my numbers come up while i’m in New Zealand in January.

All my 10p and 20p coins went into the London Underground Oyster ticket machines at Tower Hill and Monument. Luckily it was a quiet day and I didn’t hold anyone up standing there feeding 230-odd coins into the machine one at a time.

The thing with the Oyster ticket machines is that you’re only allowed to put in 17 or 18 coins at a time, any more than that and it spits them all back at you in such a way that you feel like you’ve just won the jackpot on a slot machine in Vegas. So I had to do it in 14 separate transactions. I’m surprised none of the staff came up to me and questioned me.

All my 5p coins went into the vending machines at work. The trick with these machines is that if I put in 20 coins to make £1, then press the coin reject button, it gives me back one pound coin rather than the 20 coins I originally put in.

All my 2p coins went into the Tesco self-checkout at Monument. Being a public holiday there was nobody in the queue and so I fed all 150 two-pence pieces into the self-checkout in one go (one at a time). I’m so glad it didn’t spit them all back out. I got some funny looks from the staff but nobody said anything.

I haven’t figured out what to do with 200 pennies. If I’m feeling brave I might go back to the Tesco self-checkout but I think I’ll probably go to the London Eye next week and give them to the street performers. I’m sure they’ll love me.

If the police ever check my travel record, it will look very dodgy… fourteen top-ups in a row and then I didn’t even travel anywhere:

Last month I posted that it was five degrees…

Well now it’s 0 degrees! It’s cold alright. We were supposed to get heavy snow overnight, a lot of the country got it, but central London didn’t… how very boring.

I haven’t seen a negative value on the sign yet… but I’ve got my camera ready for that exciting occasion. It will be truly thrilling.

The neighbours are constantly banging on the wall tonight… it’s so annoying

Do you like my new passport photo?

Muhahahahaaaaa. I look evil.

And I’m not even looking directly at the camera!

This is the electronic temperature display I pass every day on the way to work.

It’s hard to see in the picture since I took it with my mobile phone, but the electronic temperature shows 5 degrees…

It’s 5 degrees in the morning when I walk to work now… winter’s definitely on its way! I’m going to need to dig out my snowboarding jacket soon.

PS: it looks like the guy crossing the road has a really funny walk! LOL

Pure and simple. Hone Harawira should be sacked.

I wrote quite a rant on Facebook, and then after 10 minutes deleted part of it – originally I used the same langauge he used, but then I removed it, not because I didn’t want to stoop to his level, but more that I don’t believe in swearing. Especially not swearing when you’re in a position of power and a representative of our country.

Read this if you’re not sure what I’m talking about: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/3042921/Harawira-may-have-to-apologise

He’s entitled to think what he wants. But not to express it in his position. I’m not saying anything else in case I get angry.

So, I’m going to win £90,000,000 on the Euromillions tonight. Awesome. My odds of winning are apparently 1 in 19,068,840… but part of the fun is buying a ticket gives you the right to dream about what you would do with the money if you won. Even at the current exchange rate, where the British Pound is the weakest it has ever been against the New Zealand Dollar in the history of the Dollar, that’s over $200,000,000. Imagine that.

So what will I do with it?

I’d buy this (this would be my runaround):

and this (my summer car for long trips):

Then after buying a few houses in warm places (and also somewhere in Ohakune to be near the snow) I’ll probably spend all the rest of the money travelling round the world first class. Oh how great that will be.

When I win, I don’t want all you lot coming to me asking for money. You can each have £100 which I might double if I’m feeling generous. Aren’t I a nice guy! Nah I’m just kidding. You can each have £150 and I will let you be a passenger in my Audi.

Well, at work today we had a user who insisted he had an expired order show on his list, and we spent a while investigating and told him that we don’t filter expired orders from the view. So he said “well it wasn’t like that yesterday”, and to analyze that sort of thing you need to look at the audit logs, which the developers (including me) don’t have access to. The business don’t even let the developers have access to the systems that they themselves have created. Gah.

Then I had a disagreement with a workmate who wants to stick to the tried and tested methods of software developement, rather than using a new way that I wanted to use. I would have saved a lot of time by doing it my way, but of course he was able to argue his point because it’s the documented method and therefore approved by the management.

Then the project lead announced that he is leaving on Wednesday. That’s so soon! He’s the only one that can keep calm in our team when things go bad (and things go bad a lot – all the developers in our team have very different styles – not good).

Then, we had a system crash on us at 5.05pm, just as I was about to walk out the door. It took me and four other people 80 minutes to get it running again. Like the morning, it would have taken 10 minutes if the developers were allowed access to the production system, but the management won’t let us have it. Craziness.

And then, on the way home when I went to Costcutter, I was overcharged and had to go back and complain. I was overcharged £1.08, not a lot, but when you’re only spending £5 it’s quite a lot. I don’t like complaining in stores because you make the sales assistant feel bad and then you feel bad because they feel bad.

At least when I left work at 6.30pm in the pouring rain I had remembered to bring my umbrella. And it’s Friday! So it’s not all bad.

Hi Liz!!!!!!!!!!

Gee, it felt like just yesterday I wrote a similar post apologising for the lack of updating my blog! But actually it was 3 weeks ago! Perhaps I should set aside a whole category for apologising for the lack of updates.

In that way it seems time is going fast, but I’m looking forward to my trip back to NZ on Jan 7 that time generally seems to be going very slow. I think I need to get out more.