exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

It seems the UK government want us to start filing tax returns quarterly now :roll: I had just gotten a nice system in place dealing with all my expenses and now I'm going to have to change it all again now :roll: So I am having to go through all this tax crap again, which is taking up my time, just to report almost nothing. Its stupid. But here we are :roll:

I signed up with some software which is supposed to keep track of bank and credit card statements for you and do all the submissions basically automatically. Ultimately this system may actually be easier than what I'm doing now.. But just another project to get in the way of me doing Atari stuff for things which I should really be spending my time on :pullhair: :headbang:

Even with my AI powered scripts, it took my mother and I, 2 full days. Doesn't sound much, but that's basically 4 days gone if I did it all myself minimum. Mix in all the quarterly work on top now.. It used to take 1-2 weeks because each time we added stuff up, it came out way different ! :lol: :roll: So my AI scripts helped add like 80% of it all up for us. So wasn't much left after that really. But still took a long time. We just got a nice simple system in place, and now it all needs to change again! :roll:

Anyway, So things went as well as could be expected...


Guess which bank I am with... It has been like that since 4 August and nobody has even reported the issue :roll: so now I've reported it they replied pretty quick and said they will look into it and get back to me..

I was somewhat reluctant to link things to my bank account but the alternative is doing what I am doing now and just downloading PDF statements one at a time each month and loading them into my scripts to extract the data and add it all up. Having the software just downloaded statements itself saves me some work already. Ultimately I think were all going to be forced into using this software anyway so what choice do we really have....

Currently there are some problems because I have to manually review what are personal and business transactions on evilbay. So last night I opened up a new eBay account just for personal transactions (see how long before I get banned this time!! ). I just have to remember to switch accounts now :lol: so now all the expenses go on the business bank account and I don't have to manually filter out what is what anymore.

The long term it should ultimately work out a lot easier to keep track of everything which is the intention of this system I think anyway. It's just a pain that I spent all the time creating scripts to help with all this only to basically start again with new software now.
:sigh:

So lloyds seems online now but my figures still have not updated yet :(

In relating to MPG tests on my van. I will start MPG tests tomorrow. I've had some redex in the tank as the van been spluttering a bit lately. But I have a feeling BP fuel just went crap during covid and never went good again. So will try shell fuel in the tank for the next month.

Been going on iffy china parts finding sites, regret it. Had like 300 prices, all not really different than prices on aliexpress anyway. But it goes like this..

:sigh:

So after like 1,500 emails, mostly companies multiple emailing each day, I will have to just block them all now. The parts sites shouldn't have passed my mobile number over but seems they have :roll: Now I have China people ringing me up, no idea what companies they are from, or really no idea what they on about. Always go to my answer service. The best one was some young girl saying "hello can you hear me... ummm... ummmm. hello ? ummmm ummm " for almost 2 minutes :lol: :roll:

A lot of quotes come back with date codes of 22+ .. Yeah right.....

Last night my voice recognition program ( Dragon NaturallySpeaking ) decided to not load any more :roll:


I found the setup folder which seemed to be extracted on my C drive ,which just complained of a file missing , so that was no help.

Spent ages trying to find the setup program.. But eventually I did.. Did a repair install and it did not help :roll:

I navigated the new bad user interface of Paragon backup software which I use.. Eventually figured out how to restore the program folder for Dragon.. And that did not help either :roll:

So decided to do the last resort thing... and try and contact support..

First problem was they seem to have completely moved domain so all the old links did not work. Finally found a new page and login where it just kept saying this repeatedly..


I tried the usual forgot password link I never got the email.. I downloaded the server mail log to make sure that he wasn't being caught up in my spam rules.. And there was no entries.. So they never sent the email.. I presume their system is broken!

There was some other login page to get a nuance ID which said I already had an account so it wasn't like my information was not correct..

There was no way to contact support without logging in ( technically you could ring them but I really could not be bothered with that drama, plus it was late at night anyway.. I generally don't want to engage in telephone Muppets anyway )

I kept scrolling around the site looking for different ways to login and eventually found login page which actually let me login !!

So I contacted support...


So that was a completely unhelpful and totally pointless waste of my time as per usual :cussing:

I did manage to figure out if I deleted my profile and created a new one that it seemed to reset whatever the problem was.. I can't imagine later versions do not suffer from the same problem of seemingly corrupt profiles..

I get it that companies cannot support things forever but is not like they could not even try at least FFS! I never once contacted them for support either before yesterday. Companies just don't give a crap anymore. Sure put me right off wanting to update my version!

And the even more laughable thing is they say I hope I found this information useful!!! They have been the total and exact opposite of useful !!!

Whatever happened to companies striving to make the best software and give the best support so you continue to buy their products ?? I report bugs in other software and its like nobody has a clue about anything anymore. I mean I had to fix cleantalks antispam extension my self a few weeks ago.. I have better things to do than debug other people's crap all the time :pullhair:

Dare I even ask about the recently cancelled card? :hide:

mrbombermillzy wrote: 25 Sep 2025 14:13 Dare I even ask about the recently cancelled card? :hide:

viewtopic.php?p=134226#p134226

Still not sorted then. :(

mrbombermillzy wrote: 25 Sep 2025 14:19 Still not sorted then. :(

My new debit card came today, but I need the pin number yet..

Thats annoying.

It's time to say goodbye to my PCB equipment.. Not used it for a long time and with today's integrated technology and multilayer boards, it's just not usable for me any longer.. Many fond memories and sad to see it all go, but at least it's going to a good home now...

I feel the same everything I W.E.E. recycle our FPGA development boards that cost £15K+ only 3-4 years ago.

The last batch were HTG-840 with XCVU440 chips and were many many times bigger than the FPGAs on MiST/MiSTer but not exactly user friendly to use for retrogaming and not likely to gain a following.