Bloody Banks
Despite having closed my account a month ago with my old bank, I still haven't received a refund on the amount owing to me, and today I discovered the bank is trying to alter the amount of the refund as well. They failed to inform me of this, and still can't tell me when I can expect the money.

An official complaint has been lodged and will be escalated to the Banking Ombudsman if it cannot be resolved. The Ombudsman not only has some superb powers, but also the requirement to report systemic issues and serious misconduct to ASIC.

Banks hate having matters escalated to the Ombudsman. ;)

SAGE-AU 2004 Tutorial Results
Just received results of the ratings from the SAGE-AU 2004 tutorial presentations, and out of fifteen tutorials held at the conference, yours truly scored the highest ranking of all. Woot!

$chickens--
Woke up this morning to discover that we had lost a chicken sometime during the night. Feathers were strewn across the yard, and while the main body of the chicken could not be found, we did find its dismembered head and wings. Not the nicest way to start the day.

The chicken was taken from the coop during the night, but we're unsure about the culprit. A cat is capable of getting over the fence, but it would have to be a very large cat to eat or carry away an entire chicken (sans head and wings). A dog or fox could eat or carry away an entire chicken, but neither is likely to be able to get over the fence of negotiate its way into the coop. A bird of prey isn't likely to leave bits of chicken behind, or could be expected to leave much more (legs, ribcage, and so on).

That leaves the possibility that the chicken could have been lost to a human. That's not a palateble thought, the idea of someone entering our yard and multilating chickens isn't something that leaves one feeling very safe.

If it is a human, then there's also a question of motivation. We've been keeping chickens for around three years. If one of our neighbours took exception to them (they can get a little noisy at times), then I would hoped for a more social discussion of the topic, or at the very least an incident in the morning (when they can be a little loud) -- not during the middle of the night when the chickens are asleep and quiet.

As a precaution, we're keeping the gate locked, and the chickens' coop closed up at night.

Happy Banking
Final arrangements with my old bank went surprisingly smoothly, with my departure providing me with 28 bottles of wine (26 red, 12 white), a wine rack, $75 worth of gift vouchers, and about $250 worth of refunds on banking services.

The bank has refunded one item twice; once because I asked for it to be refunded, and a second time because I tried to exchange credit-card rewards points for it. The bank doesn't seem to have a problem with this, and neither do I.

Busy busy busy
For some reason I came back from SAGE-AU and thought I had very little work to do. That appears to be completely wrong, I just have very little work that's been entered as jobs into our RT system.