zerosleeps

When I come to power, anyone found using a double-width stroller in public will be forced to watch reruns of Midsomer Murders for the rest of time.

I hate people that do the “ooh look at how much fun I’m having” thing but… I’m currently sipping orange juice at the top of the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere. Look how much fun I’m having!

My brother has just booked his flights to come out and visit me later on in the year, and I sent him this photo in a joking “the upcoming view from your bedroom” sort of way. Truth is though, this is the view looking West from our apartment almost every single night. And this is winter.

July has come around once again and as every Australian knows that means tax return time, and that means the annual zerosleeps whine about the ATO’s grip on technology.

The good news this year is that there’s a OS X version of E-Tax. Yay! But, oh, wait, what’s that I see on the ATO’s system requirements page for Mac?

Computer processor: Intel Pentium or equivalent

Hmm, not off to a great start since Apple have never put chips under the Pentium branding in their machines. And here’s another warning bell:

VoiceOver – Not recommended. Due to significant complexities identified, VoiceOver does not work correctly with e-tax.

That tells me the OS X version of E-Tax isn’t using standard OS X development tools.

What’s more worrying than any of this is that the ATO seem to be ploughing resources into developing desktop applications for private tax returns rather than building a web application for the same thing. I sure would love to learn more about the Office’s reasons behind this.

I had to see it to believe it, and here’s the proof. It does snow in Australia. The photo is me standing in a place called Thredo in New South Wales’ Snowy Mountains.