(Kind-of off-topic in a pixel-orientated way, not to mention long-winded, rambling and - arguably - pointless ;o).

Checking my bank account today to see if a transfer I'd arranged between a couple of my A&L accounts had cleared, I was more than a little confused to spot no sign of the transfer, and a mysteriously overdrawn third account.

Looking further into this, it turned out that my transfer - which should have gone from account A to B, had in fact been set up to go from account C (which didn't have enough money in) to B. Naturally, the transfer failed and account C had a £34 charge applied for a failed payment.

Bugger!

By making another test payment, I figured out what had happened: the A&L "my accounts" homepage has a quick-pay form on the left of the page. By selecting an account to transfer money from, and then moving focus away from the select box, a bit of Ajax pulls in a list of the other accounts you can transfer money to into the select box, below. For some reason though, focus isn't then sent to the second box, so you have to tab about a bit to choose which account you want to send the money to.

Somehow, then, I'd managed to select the right account, move away from the "move money from" box, then instead of tabbing over to the "move money to" box, I'd gone back to the first box and changed the account number, which cocked the transfer up more than a little.

Worse still, when you confirm the amount you want to transfer, you're presented with a screen confirming your choice which displays the account names and numbers on top of each other (thanks to a DIV clearing problem) in Firefox, so it's only possible to work out where your money's going from and to by selecting and copying the text into a text document, for example. So, thanks to this, I didn't spot that I was trying to move money from an account without any in it, which at least explains the penalty charge.

Eventually finding a phone number for the A&L and, having spent ten minutes lost in a seemingly endless array of numerical options, finding out my balance, pin number hint, date of birth, and bra size, and divulging what felt like all of my personal details via. a telephone keypad, I made it through to Sheila*. Sheila was a particularly ratty-sounding Leeds woman who, I can only presume, took an immediate disliking to the way I pronounced my name (maybe it was the Southern accent?) and told me - flatly - that the fault was all my own and that she categorically wouldn't lift the penalty charge.

Uhhm, hang on a minute...

I then manage to get through to Gheeta** in Internet banking and, explaining the problem again, Gheeta told me she would lift the charges "only this once" - hooray! - and would I mind explaining the problem with the website to their technical team - no problem.

So I'm then transferred to the technical support team and spoke to Cletus** who admitted they knew about the problem, but that it had only been found in Firefox 1.5. My new best mate Cletus didn't seem to know if they were going to fix it, and wasn't even aware that it could be fixed ("it's a DIV float clearing problem - honestly, a quick Google will turn up a way of fixing it" quoth I, maybe unintentionally coming across as a bit condescending).

After all that, I'm still waiting (two hours later) for the refund to come back into my account, and Cletus, Gheeta and Sheila are probably off home to drink Ovaltine. I've learnt that I'm no better at remembering names than I ever was, and that there are - it seems - better-paid web designers who don't really seem to know or care about cross-browser continuity.

I think I might stick to high street banking in future... ;o)

* name changed to protect t...

Pete Hooley brought the latest addition to his household into work today. Not a new car, TV, computer game or barbecue, but his eight week-old Labrador puppy, "Max", who Pete collected yesterday.

Pete thinks Max should become the Union's new mascot. I agree - he's much more cuddly than the Union bods (since they only exist on paper, which isn't particularly cuddly at all...).

Max is also a doppelganger of the Andrex puppy, which does him no harm when it comes to getting the ladies to go "aww" and "isn't he sweet/lovely/gorgeous/etc".

So, as you do when there's a new face around, you grab the camera and try to get some pics. I say "try" since Max has developed, it seems, an innate ability - shared by many top models - to strike great photogenic poses for just long enough for the cameraman to set-up the shot and then, at the last minute - as you go to take the shot - he would move at the speed of fluffy lightning out of shot.

Hence this rather questionable collection of slightly-fuzzy pics.

Still, he is very cute...