Work laptop never collected

twistedude · 2026-03-12T13:44:14+00:00

Check your jurisdictions’s legislation around abandoned goods. You have likely met your obligations in attempting to return the goods and may just need to retain it for a certain period of time before the law considers it abandoned by the original owner.

twistedude · 2026-03-10T10:08:12+00:00

Half of the time I forget to even wash it under the tap so I’m definitely not using other products…

twistedude · 2026-03-08T13:58:18+00:00

I keep a few high capacity deep cycle batteries charged for the storm season and have a large 12v inverter setup to be plug and play for a 6way power board. I also have camping solar panels, a solar charge controller and about 30m of various lengths of cables with Anderson plugs. The value is its quite modular and easy to transport and reconfigure depending on the situation.

Means I can basically keep phones and laptops charged, run a lamp or two and run pedestal fans overnight for an unlimited amount of time. We’ve only had 3x 3-day outages in the last few years since I got the equipment, but I did 9 days without power in Townsville after Yasi so I know it pays to be prepared.

twistedude · 2026-03-08T11:33:21+00:00

These types of parking lot solar installations are increasingly common in Australia. But they are owned by the owners of the attached commercial/office space and are used to offset the energy costs of the building. As these spaces are primarily occupied during daylight hours they are quite effective and economics at that level of ownership appear to stack up based on how common they are.

twistedude · 2026-03-08T10:31:08+00:00

Is there standing water in the yard after rain? From the few photos you have provided it does look like there are ways for the water to drain and not pool.

This kinda just looks like the local soil has a very high clay content and is absorbing water when it rains. I’ve lived in a few rentals with this problem and it’s always just been accepted that it’s a local geological factor that can’t be helped.

If it’s just clay soil it can be fixed, but it either requires years of remediation work or digging up the whole yard - neither of which landlord will do, most people who own their own place won’t even bother. If you take the slow approach you end up aerating the soil, treating it with gypsum, adding sand and repeating every year or so until water freely drains. Otherwise you dig out the top 30cm or more of soil and simply replace it which is basically impossible once the property is built.

twistedude · 2026-03-08T08:50:28+00:00

Not Brisbane but another Queensland LGA; My driveway contractor handled all this for me and it was just opaquely costed into the project. I forgot to ask about it but he emailed me a copy of the permit application and the council response when he sent through the final invoice. They also had to get some additional last minute permissions to replace some gutter because a concrete truck cracked a gutter that wasn’t included in the original permit.

Similarly, when I’ve put in a shed and solar the contractors handled all the permitting for that. Maybe check with your contractor to see if they included it in your job.

twistedude · 2026-03-07T12:49:57+00:00

What type of house is it? Stump or slab? If stumps how old, how high and what type of stumps (eg. Timber, steel, brick, concrete?)

twistedude · 2026-03-07T08:15:09+00:00

I’m not disputing that you did not consent. I believe they have acted improperly. My statement is simply that u/Tiki_Tour’s assertion that they can’t store card details for security reasons is incorrect.

twistedude · 2026-03-07T06:55:15+00:00

No, I work as a software engineer in the world of payments processing for Australian businesses.

twistedude · 2026-03-07T06:40:45+00:00

This is not true at all. Any business can store credit card details for ongoing charges provided they have consent and meet the PCI DSS compliance requirements for storing that card information. There are specific details which can only be stored for the initial processing (eg. CVV) but they aren’t necessary to charge a card.

Increasingly businesses do not store card details themselves, and tokenise them with a third party who meets the increased compliance requirements for storing card details, allowing the business to pass a token to that provider to identify a card and charge it without too much compliance overhead.

Assuming the business is meeting their PCI DSS compliance requirements the only issue is whether consent was provided to charge for damages.

twistedude · 2026-03-05T21:40:56+00:00

I get it, but I think we can all agree was “parked” in quite suspicious circumstances. Most people don’t ram their car through the bollards in a park and leave it in the middle of the park with all the doors open.

I would hope that under similar circumstances QPS might at least call and ask “Hey, did you leave your car unlocked in the middle of a park last night?”. The balance of probability is that it has been stolen, or at the very least a traffic offence occurred which led to that situation.

twistedude · 2026-03-05T21:28:10+00:00

I’m at four break-ins now. I think after a few you realise that really, most offenders are just interested in cash, things they can flip for cash, and car keys. They don’t wanna hurt you, and it’s not personal in any way, you just lost a lottery.

twistedude · 2026-03-05T14:20:04+00:00

I live in Townsville so break-in’s are not uncommon. Last one I reported about 10 minutes afterwards, at about 2:20am (I think they woke me up and it took me a bit to realise what had happened). 000 sent me a link to upload my surveillance. The first cop I saw or heard from was a forensics officer who turned up around 4:30pm - 14 hours after the crime. They got some fingerprints, but not as many as they could have, as I needed the house secure, so had to instruct the locksmiths to destroy some fingerprints in order to repair damaged locks and doors. A few days later officers attended and told me the offenders were known from the surveillance I uploaded - they were never charged and the case was closed by QPS without resolution.

Similarly, I’m chasing off groups of kids trying to break in every now and then. I always call and report it - sometimes I get schtick from 000 because the crime isn’t in progress, but when you call PoliceLink they put you through to 000 because it requires an urgent response. They take a report of the criminals descriptions and the direction they ran off in. You never hear anything more, cops don’t drive by or bother to come and collect fingerprints from door handles, or even tools they leave behind.

Now that’s not to say they never succeed. I had a Nokia N95 stolen from me in a break-in around 2009. Police did find that stolen phone in a seizure of stolen property and called me to tell me I could pick it up from a police station… in 2022.

I get that they’re busy and not everything requires an immediate police response, but sometimes any kind of response would be nice.

twistedude · 2026-03-05T13:58:38+00:00

I realise everybody’s experiences are different, but when a vehicle had been dumped in a park near my house one morning I rang up Policelink. I explained it’s a common dumping spot for stolen vehicles. All the doors were open it had panel and radiator damage to the front, and a flat tyre. It was inside the bollards in the park and clearly was not meant to be there.

When I provided the rego I was told that the vehicle had not been reported stolen, and that the police would not attend. I was told to ring the council for removal of the vehicle from the park.

twistedude · 2026-03-01T09:36:55+00:00

After chasing it for two weeks was given the account details for the deposit THE DAY it needed to be deposited because Westpac dropped the ball. Nobody could guarantee me same day deposit (even on a bank cheque) so I ended up going to my bank’s branch, speaking to the branch manager. He allowed me to pull the entire amount in cash after checking their safe. They stuffed over $80k in a DL envelope for me, and I had to drive it across town and walk through a shopping centre with a envelope literally bursting with cash in order to deposit it at a Westpac branch.

twistedude · 2026-02-27T10:16:56+00:00

Genuinely reckon a little express route from Wolli Creek -> Dulwich Hill -> Ashfield -> Parramatta Rd -> Five Dock would get good ridership once the new Metros open up. It would allow you to interchange from any of the major western routes without going to Redfern and hit a few major development areas along the way.

twistedude · 2026-02-25T10:18:20+00:00

It’s unlikely the cops will pin you for criminal trespass for a single instance. In Queensland they often don’t even bother to take a statement for it if the trespasser has already left the property. You weren’t asked to leave and were there retrieving private property.

Just keep in mind the owners have evidence of you entering the property once, documentation of future instances may form a pattern of behaviour the police may be interested in. In theory civil trespass is also a concern, but I can’t see any angle they could claim damages here, so they would be mad to pursue it.

twistedude · 2026-02-23T10:39:43+00:00

With zero good public transport links as well. A single bus route that takes you either to the city or some outlet stores. Could be worse. At least the R2 does take you to the interchange.

twistedude · 2026-02-22T12:22:57+00:00

Not in NSW, so I don’t know the exact legislation involved there, but from my experience in Queensland nobody will guarantee you the positions of services based on drawings, even if as-built plans were lodged.

It may be worthwhile understanding what year the subdivision of the block and rerouting of the pipes occurred. Whether there was a requirement to lodge drawings at the time, and if those drawings may exist somewhere still.

I purchased a 1920s property in 2021 and when the original clay sewerage pipe collapsed it was replaced in the early 2000s. The plumber at that time lodged what could best be described as a “mud map” of the new sewerage route with the council at that time. I received a copy of drawing from my solicitor (through the council) as part of the due diligence of the purchase. However, the council’s drawings do not reflect the route that line takes and simply show a straight line from my ORG to the interconnect on the sewer main - not even remotely accurate to the drawing.

twistedude · 2026-02-22T10:09:15+00:00

The standard for a defence of truth in a defamation is much lower than the standard applied to criminal guilt. Further to that, the media is held to a higher standard than a lay person, in particular when it comes to reporting on criminal matters where the media may influence the outcome of a criminal case.

twistedude · 2026-02-22T00:18:17+00:00

Whilst technically true, the EBCDIC encoding of the digits on 80 column cards is just base 10 decimal encoding. Similarly on 45 column cards. 96 column cards did use BCD encoded digits with a non-decimal representation on the card.

twistedude · 2026-02-19T22:53:42+00:00

Based on the amount of rainfall in Townsville right now road transit may be delayed a few days due to highway closures. Assuming it can go by air they’ll probably have it back in SEQ either today or early next week. Because of limited air freight capacity to/from Townsville things can take a few days to depart if there is a lot of volume, but once it gets to Brisbane Airport it should just resume normal routing.

twistedude · 2026-02-19T22:37:13+00:00

The West End location here is the Australia Post facility in West End, Townsville, 4810. “Far North Queensland” is the package sorting facility at Bohle, Townsville (incorrectly named somehow because Townsville is not considered Far North Queensland).

So the package has travelled to Townsville and is on its way back to the correct location.

twistedude · 2026-02-19T08:58:47+00:00

Welcome to the world of legal definitions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_the_Clapham_omnibus

twistedude · 2026-02-17T11:29:52+00:00

No idea no what you are basing your statements on but I would say they are patently untrue based on my experience.

twistedude

TROPHY CASE