Last night, just as I was about to go to bed, I realised I didn't have my phone. uh oh. I hope I left it at my mates place, and it didn't fall off me on the road somewhere.

I tried calling it, it rang, but I couldn't hear it ringing, it's not here.

Oh well, I went to bed anyway, about 2am.

I got called up just before 8am this morning, it was my mate I go to dinner with, who I was going to Sydney with today. I don't remember the conversation, I think he asked me to check the post office box, which I forgot immediately.

I tried calling my phone again, no answer. Bugger.

I had to find my mate's phone number, so I could ring the house line.. I hope it's backed up in Nokia Data Suite. Uhh.. it doesn't work since I didn't reinstall it after I fixed windows.

Ok, I found the installer, installed it. it runs, here's the number, I called it, woke his wife up (oops), yeah, my phone is there. Cool.

I ate some breakfast, got dressed, and left the house, about 8.30am

I got to my mates place, his wife came out and gave me my phone, I had a chat with her for a couple of minutes, while I was there, the next door neighbour came reversing out of her driveway, and reversed straight into the sandstone wall around their garden, I hung around, I wanted to see the damage, not too bad, just a nasty scratch on the rim around the wheel hub.

Anyway, I took off from there, and went to my mate's place. He wasn't there.

Just as I called him, he turned up. I unloaded everything from my bike, put my bike in the garage, and we took off.

As we headed to the service station to fuel up, he asked "Did you get the mail?", "Oops" was my reply. I'll get it in the morning. Really.

We got fuel, got on the freeway, we went down to Wahroonga where we have equipment. Met the solicitor, had a look at what we have there, I thought it was just a cable modem and a pc providing internet to the bookshop and the chemist, then I find bits of cat5 running across the road, I dunno what's going on here.

The chemist turned up, he knows some about it, it's a joke. I thought we could just shut this pop down, but now I don't know.

I don't even know where the cable modem is, it's not here anymore.

We were here for an hour, and I achieved not much, so I have to go back tomorrow to fix the pc, and try to document what is there.

We went from there to Chatswood, to the Internet Cafe, introduced ourselves, met the owner. I collected the key to the Sydney pop from our tech guy's wife, who met us there.

We were here for about 40 minutes, we then travelled into the city.

We went to the building containing the dialin equipment, I made some documentation, and worked out what's in here. Spent about half an hour in here. The setup could be nicer, but it's not too bad.

We left here, went over to Central Railway station, had lunch at Hungry Jacks.

We left Central, and headed over to Newtown, to collect the laptops my friend bought before he had his accident.. Uhh, the place has moved. Some people in the same building were nice enough to help us, giving us the phone number, and letting us call them to find out where they were.

We went over to Marickville, where they had moved to, collected the laptops, had a chat with the guy for a few minutes, and then we left again.

I had a quick look at both laptops in the car, silly little portege things with external everything (pcmcia cdrom, usb floppy etc), they are a pretty tiny unit, I might see if I can have one at cost, the compact size would be handy for moving it around in my bike.

We headed over to Lidcombe, to get a satellite decoder, and to go visit the pc supplier my friend used before his accident, we were supposed to be picking up a pc, but the order got cancelled early this morning, so now we were just going to sort a couple of other things out.

We bought the sat decoder first, no worries, in and out, then we went over to the pc supplier (they both have units in the same commercial complex).

We chatted with him, worked out to get a couple of stuffed modems replaced, I priced some stuff, I bought a new cpu for my mate (who bought the new hard drive, his computer blew up), and priced an adsl router for my adsl mate. Far too expensive on the router $195.

We left here, and headed back towards home a little bit, to Pennant Hills, my mate picked up his wife, then we headed up the freeway to home.

On the freeway, I got a call, it was a tech guy I was talking to a few days ago, he wanted to know what time I would be at the real estate agent tomorrow. D'oh, I forgot about that. I said I would be there at 9am. So now tomorrow I need to get the mail, go to the real estate, and then go down the freeway to fix the pc/inventory the crap. It's going to be another long day.

I stayed and had dinner, then I decided to leave, because I had to drop off the cpu, and then I wanted to get home and try playing with mpeg2 software again. I was going to bring the sat decoder home with me to test, but I couldn't fit in my bike, so I left it. I might take my bag up tomorrow and bring it back tomorrow night.

I dropped in at my mate's place with the cpu, installed it, still no good. Either the mobo is stuffed, or it doesn't support the cpu. I brought the old cpu home with me to check.

I got home, and noticed the error led lit on my sat decoder again, argh, that stupid "service is not currently running" issue again I'll bet, changed the channel up/down to fix it.

Next thing I know, the light is on again, wtf. I looked more closely, it must be some other issue.

I turned on the telly, and I see it's actually a "service is currently scrambled error", uh oh, my card must have missed an update or something.

I pulled the card out. WTF? this is not my card. This is the card out of my parents box. Great. Their card has died, so they've come and taken mine, and put a dead one back in. What was the point of putting it in there? far out, do they think I won't notice. Argh, now tivo has recorded hours of "Channel is scrambled". There will be words about this.

I reprogrammed the dead card, still getting scrambled error. Argh. There must have been a public key update in the last 2 days since I last backed up my card.

I started getting dressed to go inside and get my card back, so I could get the current keys off it, just as I pulled my shorts on, the picture came back, it must have copped the update, groovy.

I then found that the Radiohead special I wanted to watch was on (damn, missed 40 minutes of it). I sat and watched that for ages, then I got some dumb message on the screen about calling Austar about a pending interruption to my service or some rubbish, and I had to find my remote to press exit. Dumb. I hope that does not happen again, or tivo will be recording more nonsense.

If I was paying for this crap, they would have me on the line complaining every single day, I honestly cannot understand how they can expect people to pay for something that's always got issues.

Anyway, I got around to testing the cpu, it doesn't boot my pc, it must be stuffed, put my original back, works fine.

I icq'd my mate and told him, so I'll arrange for a new mobo and some RAM to get ordered tomorrow.

I went back to watching Radiohead, until it finished.

I checked my Amex statement again, finally, the paypal registration is on there. It took 4 days, that's poor. I completed my paypal registration, and paid for a couple of eBay auctions I won recently.

It's now nearly midnight, I'm going to bed, I'll have to get up at like 8am tomorrow, to get the mail and be at the real estate at 9am. I need to charge the batteries for my mp3 player.

I got nothing done with mpeg2 stuff whatsoever. Argh. Tivo will be full again soon (although, not at the rate of "Service is not currently running" recordings it's been making recently).