Screw it. I decided to fix someone elses computer I've got sitting around here, "it's got a virus on it". I shoved in a network card, installed a newer virus scanner, and sat down to watch tv while I waited for the update to download, kicked off a full scan, and went back to watching tv.

I was just getting towards the end of an episode of One Foot in the Grave when my phone rang, thank god for TiVo. Pause. It's a guy from the motorbike place, the replacement brake part I ordered is in.

By this time the virus scan finished, no viruses found, whatever. Now I don't know what to do, I suppose I'll just charge $20 for updating the scanner and checking the machine.

I'm sick of bloody computers.

I loaded my bike up with the tools I needed, took off, picked up the part, went to my precision driving mate's place (where my other bike lives, the one the part was for), and went about fitting it.

I decided I would go for a test ride, since I couldn't get in his garage to get the brake cable I took off. Oops.. I forgot about the fact that I broke the terminals from the key switch, and that the the fuse blew, and that I have to hotwire the bike by taking the seat off.

I rode my good bike home again, picked up the fuse holder and wirestrippers, went down to the auto place, bought a couple of new fuses and a fuse holder, and some new terminals to replace the crusty broken ones. Went back to the bike, replaced the fuse and the crusty terminals, rode the bike around a little bit. Seems to be ok.

I rode down to get some fuel, I've no idea how much is in here, it's probably got almost none.. wrong.. almost full. I managed to fit $3 worth of fuel in, maybe the new fuel will mix with the old fuel, since the thing has been sitting around so long.

I decided to clean the bike, it's filthy and covered with spider webs. I ride to the car wash. Bloody hell, people just taking their time here, I had to wait about 20 minutes to get into one of the booths, I went an changed my last $5 while I waited. Spent $3 cleaning the bike, looked pretty spiffy after that, rode it back again.

By this time my mate was back, so I got in the garage, got the brake cable, oiled it, put it back on the bike (burning myself several times on the exhaust), and what do you know.. it does absolutely nothing. d'oh. adjusted it, oops, now I think it works too well, really easy to lock up the back wheel, oh well, it'll pass rego so I don't care.

Ok, now it really should pass, back brake works, it's clean, the guards are all back on, all the electrical is fixed.

I popped around to the bike place, on the way over I noticed my rear right blinker bulb had gone. Rode past some cops, lucky they didn't notice the blown bulb or the fact my rego has expired.

Got to the bike place, had a quick chat to find out when they are open over the next few days to inspect it, and they offer to do it then, cool. I grabbed a replacement blinker bulb, $2, lucky, I've only got $3.20 left. Oops.. no rego papers.. so I pop home, grab them, and go back again.

The bike passes rego. good, "What's that oil leak there?" d'oh, thought I would get away with that, "a little bit of oil leaks out the screw that holds the clutch rod in" "oh, ok", phew. Bought some chain lube while I was there. Don't know why, I'll never get around to putting it on, and my other bike is shaft drive.

Rode it back again, parked it up, all done. Now I just need to pay for the insurance, and renew the rego. And then decide if I want to sell the bloody thing.

My mate complained that he was having issues with the sound in the machine I built for him recently, I'm not surprised, crappy onboard sound. I stuck in the sound card from the old machine, no issues whatsoever. Fixed, good.

On my way out the door, he mentioned he was thinking about going to see Lord of the Rings around 7pm, and would give me a call or send me a message, this was just after 6pm.

I popped into McDonalds on the way home, that was uneventful, just basically trying to avoid coming home to have to deal with computers again.

OK, I can't handle it anymore, I need to see if I can fix this machine. Find my Windows 2000 CD, fiddle around with the install trying to repair my old install, what a surprise, none of the repair tools work. why do they even bother putting them on the CD?

So I installed all over again, on the same drive, in a different directory. Let's see what happens if I add myself as a user, login to that user to create the profile, log out again, rename my old profile directory, and log in again.. what do you know! it works! wow!

So now I'm back with my old profile all working again. This machine broke on about the 4th of October, I work that out because Opera opened with a webpage of the Rage playlist from October 4th. So this machine stayed broken and running off a bootable CD for nearly 3 months because I couldn't be bothered to fix Windows. I'd still not have, but the CDrom drive is on its way out, and my Linux bootable CD keeps crashing.

OK, well now I have a working machine again. I'm off to check when the next computer fair is, and how much money I've got, to see if I can afford to replace the busted motherboard, or just buy a new one with cpu/mem and build a new machine.

My TiVo network card will be on it's way soon, I wanted to spend my money on a DVDR drive, bugger. I think I need to get a job.