Happy Birthday to me.

I got up, got ready. I noticed the email server was incredibly slow. I restarted the daemons.

I left, I travelled down to Homebush to fix the guy's PC. On the way some inattentative driver ran up the back of an overcautious driver, I just laughed and kept going.

I got into the markets, I couldn't remember where the office was (Shed C), so I went through the sheds looking for it, couldn't find it. I pulled over to call the guy, immediately some clown comes over and tells me I can't leave my bike there. I had pulled over, and put the stand down.

I still had my helmet on, and the bike was still keyed on. Give me a break. "I'm not leaving it, I'm making a phone call". "oh". He then tried to make small talk with me, I'm not interested buddy, go and annoy someone else for scratching their arse or something. I noticed 4 missed calls on my phone. I called the guy, he told me where they were, that he was roaming around the markets, and which PC had the problem.

I found it, parked, and went into the office.

My phone rang, it was the message service, someone complaining about issues with the mail again.

I called them, told them the story, and that I would look at it when I could.

I fiddled around trying to fix the PC, first it wouldn't give video, so I cleaned and reinserted the card, that fixed that, then I got windows to boot, but it kept rebooting itself. I went through and checked for dodgy startup items (or virii infections), fixed all the software things I could think of that could cause it.

I noticed a lot of hardware was installed twice, removed it all, reinstalled it.

I thought I had it all fixed, then I right clicked on something, and the PC rebooted again.

I decided to check if the CPU was overheating or something, I checked it, seemed fine, checked the memory etc.

The machine wouldn't boot after that, the power light just flashed whenever I tried to boot it up. I mucked around for 45 minutes trying to sort that, but it just would not boot.

I could have checked on the internet for ideas, but his office with the other PC/internet was locked.

I gave up. I called him up, told him to send the PC up the coast with the other guy who works there, and to get it to me up here, where I can test/fix it properly.

I then headed for home again.

The markets has to be the scariest place I have ever ridden. It is the second largest amount of forklifts in one place in the world. The forklift drivers are crazy, they don't look, they fly along, and if they do see you, they come charging directly at you.

I was glad to get out of there.

I came some of the way back, pulled in for lunch. More missed calls on my mobile, the Cafe. I called back, "the mail's down", "No, it's not down, we're being heavily spammed, and the servers can't handle it. I'm at Carlingford, there's nothing I can do here. I will look at it when I get to Gosford".

I ate my lunch, and headed back. I went into Gosford to check the equipment. Apparently a lot of people were complaining about busy signals. I thought maybe with my fiddling in there on Tuesday when I removed the voice gear, that I bumped some dodgy Kroned connection out or something, and we were down 30 lines.

I climbed up, checked the Tigris, 4 WANs up. No probs there. I forgot to check how many modems were in the Tigris, I climbed up again. It has a 62 port card, and a 48 port card, 110 ports, with 4 E1s. I dunno what those extra 10 lines with no modems do. Maybe the 4th E1 only has 20 lines on it.

I went in, and restarted the mail daemons on a couple of servers.

I called into the Cafe, what's happening with the Solicitor, he's busy today, so we're having the meeting in the morning. I've got better things to do on a Saturday morning than go to more bloody meetings.

I came home after that, watched a bit of tv.

My mate was over in the US recently called me, I thought maybe to give me brithday wishes or something. Nope. He's not coming up this weekend, maybe next weekend. He had been mucking around on his brother's computer and mucked the sound up when he tried to play games or use media player. I suggested he reinstall DirectX. Didn't hear back from him, so that must have fixed it.

I found that WEP has been turned off on the WLAN I found the other day, so I attached, it's running DHCP too, bang, away we go.

It's got a 256k ADSL connection available, so I've been browsing on it all afternoon. Not great, 20k/sec, but not too shabby either, for free anyway.

Mum came in and gave me a card and some chocolates.

I've just been called in to have dinner with them, so I'm off.