Re: [LUG] Storm chasing / Surge Protection

On 4 Aug 2013 20:03, "tom" <tompotts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 04/08/13 18:13, bad apple wrote:

On 04/08/13 17:50, Henry Bremridge wrote:

Been there, using a professional can cost a lot but sometimes a lot
less than someone who isn't.

I've got a neat system for this: over the years I've done work at
insanely cut-price levels in exchange for future services from
professionals at very favourable rates. For example, the VDJ I was doing
data recovery for the other day has a normal day job as a sparky, and
luckily he even lives a couple of doors up from me so he's nice and easy
to get hold of. I charged him nothing but beer and he in turn promised
his help when I need it - following a complete laptop rebuild for
another friend of a friend 6 months or so back, that makes two "tame"
electricians I have on tap. A few doors down, an old friend of the
family runs his own plumbing business - I fixed his wife's email issues,
rooted their cheap Android tablet for them to fix skype video calling
and voila: a "tame" plumber for my contacts list. I've also got a
newspaper editor, a 2nd line tech support guy at a certain Exeter-based
ISP (handy for calling him up and getting him to do line tests, etc, for
me), several graphic designers (did my business cards for free), a
landscape gardener (the decking out back), two motor mechanics (lucky,
considering what a piece of crap our car is) and an entire small army of
variously skilled-up professionals who all know they owe me a big favour.

I don't know if you can really call it a system, and it's certainly not
novel - I'm not claiming to have invented a revolutionary new
labour-exchange method or anything - but it's certainly proved very,
very handy over the years. The other advantage is that I frequently
recommend my contacts to other people I randomly bump into looking for
electricians, plumbers or whatever and in return, get a pretty steady
flow of computer work coming back from them.

So far it's worked extremely well for me, to the point I'm immediately
disconsolate if I actually have to pay list price for something (the
missus: "What do you mean you don't have a tame orthodontist on your
'owes me a favour' list?!")

Regards

Sounds like tax avoidance to me
Tom te tom te tom

I donât do emoticons...

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