Member Info for BradSmith

You were long gone Ron. I'm talking mid 80s and 90's.
I had a spell at Barclays International before the software house - got a better rate than BP in London to work in Dorset, live at home, and rent the flat! My student was forced to share a flat with her brother to reduce costs so I got the flat back at the perfect time. Happy days now I think back.

Thanks Tom. I did see they are low down the chain if the bank did get into trouble so a bit risky.

At my age I am probably better off buying shares instead because the dividends are good and the money is not tied up. Like you say, read the full story before signing up.

Anybody care to explain the margin of 3.7% please? i.e. is it quarterly distribution?

Commonwealth Bank of Australia has announced an Offer for Subscription, whereby holders can apply for
Commonwealth Bank of Australia PERLS XI Capital Notes. The record date is 25th October 2018.
Holders may elect to subscribe for Commonwealth Bank of Australia PERLS XI Capital Notes at a subscription price of AUD100 per share. The minimum subscription is for 50 Notes at a total of AUD5,000. Elections above 50 Notes must be in multiples of 10 (AUD1,000). Holders are required to specify the exact amount of Notes they wish to subscribe for under Option 2. Elections may be subject to scaling back.
Key features of Commonwealth Bank of Australia PERLS XI Capital Notes:
- The shares will pay a floating rate, quarterly distribution. These distributions are expected to be fully franked.
- The margin has been determined through the book build and will be 3.7% per annum.
- The shares have no fixed maturity date but the scheduled optional exchange date is 26th April 2024 and the
mandatory conversion date is 26th April 2026.

How ironic - just had an email notifying that CBA have an "Offer for subscription" in the offing - the timing is amazing.
A robin and a butterfly inexplicably finding their way to my upstairs bedroom with the windows closed, the dog ignoring the bird which flew around the room, even stranger, and now this coincidence. My cynicism is being tested.

Small world Ron, BP used an aged banking system and I left BP to work for the software house that wrote it.
We supported banks across European including our biggest customer in terms of sites, 17 of them!
Would you believe Banca de Roma?

I was freelance until they offered me the carrot called overnight support, £100 per night (5pm-9am) whether there was a call or not. Just had to carry the phone and be prepared to go back to the office or my flat in Kennington to service the call. £500 per week on top a London salary to play darts and quizzes was not a bad life! Had to stay reasonably sober of course (a 937cc,162mph motorbike made it sensible too) - understanding Russian English is not simple on technical problems at the best of time.
That said their English was very good if I was not in a noisy pub.

One of the left us to work for you and bragged he would be seeing the world. A keen angler, the next time I saw him he had changed job because the constant travelling got him down and he was not getting enough time with his young family and the fishing. Did you know Pete Byford?

1967-69 to be accurate.

Thank you Romaron, I am a first generation programmer and attended one of the first three Maths, Stats and Computing course in the country (1969). When I was 25 they advertised for people no more than 25, and at 40 it was 40.
The thought of reinstalling Office, Visual Studio etc etc puts me off and the fact this old Acer is fine when it is not locked up. It now recovers from Wifi not found which is a third of the reboots needed.

I have put off asking you in case you find it offensive or an idiot on here becomes offensive at your reply.
Are you a Roma named Ron? I met a girl years ago and she explained the difference a Roma and similar types which put Romas in a good light, basically they are very honest.

Personally, I have to make up my mind whether I am a Motogp rider or a footballer :O)

I have learned something since reading Soma's post.
When Windows checks your device drivers and reports you have the up to date drivers this is only true for the driver that is installed. I thought it was checking you had the right driver for the device and that it was the latest version.
So if you have an obsolete driver it will aay report is the up to date one! If you wanted the latest Rolls Royce and asked windows update which one whilst at Beaulieu you'd walk away with one that is over 100 years old.

Somas fix worked well - no lockups - but I got a few blue screen FAULTY_HARDWARE_CORRUPTED_PAGE crashes.
I am swapping my USB controller and Network adapter and their drivers and even removed devices with little problem. The software is quite resilient, I'd have been shot if I messed with the operating systems in my IT days.
Just run "Scan for hardware changes" under Device manager after removing a device.

Court has granted me Administrator status over my wife's affairs and now I have to decide whether I go with her lifetime conviction of not risking her money on stocks to get an interest rate below inflation OR not.
Looking at my performance in the UK she was proved right, my 3 LTH are all struggling against historical prices with 2 of the 3 losing money on paper but with all 3 at bargain prices today - what an opportunity!

She'd want a return each year so non-dividend bearing stocks rule out my UK holdings. That leaves Commonwealth bank of Australia, which risks adverse FX rates when I kick the bucket. Should ask the kids but they'd do my head in and bring bucket day forwards.....

Today's RNS describes us as "Tlou Energy Limited, the ASX, AIM and BSE listed company focused on developing gas-to-power projects" - I patted myself on the back - I thought they must have read my recent post on here :O)

Looking back, I , happily, see they changed this a while ago so we are on the same wavelength even if I had no influence on this.

In June, and earlier, the RNS used "Tlou Energy Limited, the AIM and ASX listed company focused on delivering power in Botswana"

Being pedantic I would rather they said "gas to electricity" because power is a generic term. Perhaps I am ignorant of an alternative use for the gas - unless we do supply gas as the power source - gas to gas or gas to electricity .... perhaps power is the right terminology after all. I bow to TLOU management!

++++++++
Operations Update
Thu, 28th Jun 2018 07:00 RNS Number : 8300S
Tlou Energy Ltd
28 June 2018

Tlou Energy Limited, the AIM and ASX listed company focused on delivering power in Botswana and southern Africa through the development of coal bed methane ("CBM"), is pleased to provide an update on the progress of its operations at its Lesedi CBM projects in Botswana.

++++++++

Operations Update
Mon, 22nd Oct 2018 07:00 RNS Number : 7230E
Tlou Energy Ltd
22 October 2018

Tlou Energy Limited, the ASX, AIM and BSE listed company focused on developing gas-to-power projects in southern Africa using coal bed methane ("CBM") natural gas from its gas field in Botswana, is pleased to provide an update on field operations at its Lesedi CBM project.

Just got the dog her dinner and found something in the freezer I can cook from frozen for myself.
Came back into the lounge to find my laptop showing me loads of family photos?
Thought one of my offspring must have sent me an email but it was curious. Clicked to investigate and they disappeared entirely!

One of my many cures for lockups involved screen saver and I must have set it to photo gallery or my pictures!
Thought it was from the spirit world for a minute or two :O)

Eddie Jordan had first refusal on Sunseeker boats when new models were released.
The staff I chatted to said it was madness buying the early ones because any design flaws were revealed on them.
Nothing major mechanically of course but just ill fitting furniture that had to be modified but these are loads of money.

He used to rent them out by the week I think so he probably did not care too much - the first one was probable in demand for show offs? They look beautiful to me but it used to be £3500 to fill the fuel tanks so not for me.

Sorry BTS, I think it might have been JTD who talked about selling gas. I hope I am right on this because you both seem to think we are trying to sell gas. TLOU don't help by saying they are aiming to supply power when they could say electricity or gas instead of power. And of course CBM is gas and they describe us a source of that.

CBM is a means to an end which is definitely electricity and the electricity grid, whether that be Botswana alone or the southern african region.

You are being discussed on TLOU and a few need reassurance from you there. Maybe all of us :O)

Bythesea, you consistently talk about selling gas and several times I have tried to tell you that our business is to use our own gas to power electricity generators. We will then sell the electricity!

There is a secondary market if they want to sell gas, but they are cracking on with the main mission.

Your posts help spread confusion and keep the price down - I hope you are not on the overcliff!

PS my computer has worked perfectly since the change of wi-fi driver. System even runs faster.
My Acer is very old and works perfectly well H. I think the wifi driver problems came with Window 10 this year and between lock ups was still working well. I would buy Acer again.

So NO new bets could be entered was a typo error - me not Acer!

H I worked with mainframes and minicomputers and was so biased about micros that when offered a PC to replace my dumb terminal I did not want one. Always saw them as games machines I guess.

In the 70's I wrote a betting shop system in my spare time and used CBM Pet because it was going to make me a millionaire or nothing. A 32k processor and screen cost me £895 as did a twin 5.25 inch floppy disk drive and a rubbish dot matrix printer cost £475!

The idea was that if my system was successful, my solicitor could argue that it was totally independent of my day job. In those days employers claimed anything you wrote whilst in their employment was theirs!
Not sure if this still applies.

Sod's law, the Amiga came out with multi-tasking soon after I packed it in and might have been more viable at a fraction of the cost. I was ahead of Ladbrokes who had a pressure pad system which was limited to the papersize. I'd bought a lightpen and written an assembler routine that I hid at the top of the 32k (a hundred and something bytes) and just had to design my screens so the 25 x 80 chars was enough.

It worked but whilst it was working out bets , the processor was tied up so new bets could be entered1
Buying more machines and setting up a network was impossible at over £2k a time when salaries, even in IT, was less than that per year!

I talked to one bookie with multiple shops who was very interested. He asked the price and I trembled when I said £5k split 50/50 between hardware and software. He replied at 28% corporation tax , over 10 years , that is peanuts! Shame I started so early and burned myself out on an all singing, all dancing system design with extremely limited hardware. That and then the Delphi waste of money came hard. 20 hour days for 18 months!

I am rambling .... btw the computer mouse did not exist in those days so pointing a lightpen was very impressive at the time. I sent my assembler routine to the manufacturer/supplier who gave me the pen for free in return.

I never give up .... there are so many red herrings to catch and I must have exceeded my quota by now.

If you have lock ups on an Acer Inspire it now appears to stem from your Wifi drivers.
My machine was locking (k/b,touch pad and mouse - forcing reboot) many times a day and often, but not exclusively , when I play Sudoku and I have relaxed on the sofa with the computer level with my hub but a coffee table sat between the two!

I nearly asked H if my laptop wifi receiver could have a blindspot and this was it?

tcalss I found this, and by jove this time I might be sorted. God bless soma!

Another good link cassius things are looking up.

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/385336/how-to-fix-your-wi-fi-signal-dropping

Cheers romaron, Paul Walsh's presence has always given me some sort of assurance, so I hope the FT jumped the gun!

My blooming computer is still playing up after I had thought I'd fixed it.
It now locks up on me as I play Sudoku - so annoying when I have nearly completed the puzzle.
Reboot kills it of course, and opens up my filtered posts until I log in (more annoying still).

Anyway, I just read up about a girl who reported a similar problem and she finally discovered it was her screen saver!!!!! Set to "none" with time out of 1 minute!

My settings exactly - the latest windows does far too much on our behalf - I'd almost forgotten screen savers - we close laptop lids most of the time so they are unimportant. On the tower with an external monitor they were more significant. Several tick ups show this is common problem so I hope this benefits someone on this board.

ROMARON, where have you heard PW is making way?
Alan is his new deputy and could remain so indefinitely.
Fingers crossed they are expecting a huge increase in business and it is envisaged they are both going to be busy.