It was my work Christmas party last weekend. “Christmas party, Gus?! But it’s September!” I hear you say – well, yes. It was officially known as a “summer barbecue”, but considering that it was the major social function of the nationwide office calendar for the year, and also that it was mostly pissing with rain and not barbecue weather at all, it was essentially the Christmas party.

During the day, we did laser clay pigeon shooting, a treasure hunt and my personal favourite activity, duck and goose herding with a sheepdog. Fantastically amusing to watch and more fun to do, I felt just like I was in a farm story or something. Shouting “away to me!” and watching a dog make an anti-clockwise circle around a flock of running geese while you usher them through some gateposts is definitely an amusing way to spend some time. Nobody knew that was coming and it was a great surprise.

The evening was the usual sort of affair which started out civilised and degenerated into a massive piss-up, as any good office party should. I danced like a total loon, as I always do at Christmas parties, and drank a decent amount of wine. Myself and a couple of others managed to sneak off with a bucket of booze at the end too and carried the party on back in the hotel bar which was a great laugh. I did feel the consequences in the morning, but had an absolutely fantastic time and wouldn’t change it at all. Even the drive home was a brilliant laugh, discussing all the drunken quotations and dancefloor moments from the night before. You can always tell a party’s been great if you feel completely ruined the next day but don’t regret a moment of it.

I bought “Rock Band” for the 360 on a bit of a whim as a payday present at the end of last month, and it’s properly awesome. There’s something that’s just brilliant about singing and playing the guitar at the same time – makes you feel like a rockstar even if you’re useless at it. Brilliant stuff!

One of the main aspects of my job is being a PHP developer for an online e-commerce platform which sells flights, hotels and holidays. As most online merchants will tell you, selling stuff online and allowing electronic payments can be a risky business, as there are lots of people out there who will try to put expensive transactions through on stolen credit cards, hoping that the goods will be dispatched and they’ll be able to do a runner before the card is reported stolen and blocked by the bank.

Selling flights is no different – there are a lot of people who will try and put expensive flights through your system and pay with a stolen credit card. You can usually spot these fraudsters a mile off – they try to make bookings to dodgy lawless places (Lagos, Accra, Addis Ababa, Johannesburg, Nairobi etc) that usually depart with the next few days, invariably with a card registered under the name of a third party. We’ve been selling flights online for a long time under various different platforms, and as such we have a fraud checking system that highlights bookings that might be fraudulent for review.

A little while ago we got what I think is probably the moodiest, dodgiest and most obviously fraudulent booking we’ve ever had on our system:
- The route is Dubai to Accra via Addis Ababa and Lagos
- It’s due to depart in three days’ time (20th April)
- The flight is with Ethopian Airlines
- The email address is registered in Ireland, despite the card being registered in England
- The name on the card is entirely different to the name of the person booking

I wonder who on earth thought they could get away with it?!