Yet each one of your "solutions" has the obvious effect of stopping me from doing my job. My time is too valuable to the company to have me waiting for a sysadmin, authorization from higher-ups or jumping through bureaucratic hurdles every time a trivial task like installing or upgrading an application/library/whatever has to be performed.

Of course I have local admin rights on my workstation. It's trivial to re-image should I mess it up (hasn't happened yet, mind) and it lets me do my job as efficiently as possible. Of course, since I'm a professional, I don't abuse my admin rights to do anything that might be a nuisance to anybody else. Not that I could do much with just the admin rights to my own workstation. Saturate the network, perhaps - but then an admin would drop by to give me a slap on the wrist within minutes, as the network is properly monitored.

Did I mention, me and my co-developers also have admin rights on the testing, and production servers? Yes, production. Again this is about empowering professional developers to carry out their jobs as efficiently as possible. What if I should screw up and drop all the tables on the production db, you ask? Well, it's obvious I wouldn't do anything like that intentionally, but otherwise, that's what backups are for. Not that I'd expect to keep my job should I make such a mistake.

Perhaps if you work in a "shop" full of pimply-faced code monkeys who can't be trusted with admin rights to the testing environment, or even the computers on their desks, then lots of policies and nazi sysadmins are quite in order. But perhaps then the real problem is with the recruitment standards. I for one wouldn't want to work in a place were such restrictions were necessary.

Set up a reoccuring transfer at your bank's website. Since you are posting to Slashdot I don't believe using an on-line bank would be a problem for you. You only need your landlord's account number, and you'll save him the bother of cashing in the checks.

Disregarding how stupid it is to give someone a blank check, you could just give him your contact details and reimburse him later. Or make arrangements directly with the bicycle repair shop.

On-line transfer. Dunno what bank you're using but mine lets me transfer money from my account to anyone else's using my phone (either by calling their service desk or by going to the bank's website via 3G).

If your bank does not provide basic on-line services, switch banks. I wish we could just do away with cash altogether. The problem isn't techical, it's political. We have all the solutions we need to replace cash, we just need to make sure that switching to electronic money doesn't let the guv'mint (or anybody else) monitor all our transactions.