So much for today being an easy day.

I didn't get to sleep until 2.30am. My mate rings me up at 9am. I don't remember the conversation.

I bummed around getting ready.

My mate who has been over in New York for the past few months called me. He did get married, and he's planning to move back over there in a few months and apply for citizenship.

It was raining outside. I had to be at the Seniors club at about midday. I waited for the rain to stop, it slowed off a lot around 11.35, so I took off. It stopped a few minutes later.

I got to the club, and had lunch. My mate I go to dinner with told me the network link to the Internet Cafe in Chatswood had failed again, and someone had to go fix it.

I installed the router machine I'd configured for them, finished doing the configuration and testing. Got paid for setting it up, groovy.

We left. I was going to leave my bike at a mates place, and jump in the car, but thenI realised we didn't have the keys.

I went to the Cafe, the get the keys, I then went and dropped off my bike, went back in the car, got the keys. While I was there, I configured a laptop that was hanging around so I could use it to diagnose the wireless link, including installing the config software for the SDSL routers I'd found last night.

We left, went down the freeway to the Cafe, went in to let them know we were there, before we climbed on the roof where the wireless equipment is. I checked the SDSL router.. the linnk was down. I power cycled the router, the link came up, I could see LAN and WAN traffic. I got the guy in there to test it, no "still not working".

I plugged in the laptop to check the config of the router, maybe it's got a sane IP address so we can try pinging it remotely to diagnose issues.. no such luck, they are in bridge mode, and just do MAC encompassing, so there's no way to interface with them except over ethernet directly. bugger.

No DHCP on this LAN either, so I can't even try pinging across the link. Useless.

I was sure it was working though, there wouldn't be WAN traffic otherwise. I saw the link fall down again, and then come back up, and the lights flashing away again. Try it again, oh yeah, it works now.

Great, we can go home again now, that was a waste of 2 hours getting keys, configuring a laptop, and driving down here.

While we're down here, might as well check the other end of the SDSL link, and the wireless equipment. It's on the roof of a building nearby. I wander over there, manage to find a mantainence guy so I can get on the roof. Go up, climb on the roof, inspect the equipment.

Nothing seems wrong. Messy install as I expected, but nothing wrong.

Got off the roof again, traced the Cat5 with ethernet/phone on it that runs to the link. It goes down through a hole in the floor to the level below.

We go down to the level below, there's a telco cupboard there. "Have you got the keys?" "no, they're in the car" my mate replies. "What was the point of getting them if you're going to leave them in the car???".

So we went all the way down, out, back to the car, got the keys. Now we had an issue, they would wonder why we were going back up. We're not supposed to have a key to that cupboard (I don't know if we even do). We tried to go up in the lifts that reception can't see. The door is locked, you need an access card.

We waited for a minute, a delivery guy turned up, dialled one of the apartments, and we followed in when he got buzzed in.

I tried to go back to the 28th floor where the telco cupboard is. Can't go to 28. Can't go to 27. Can go to 26. Fine.

Go to 26, open the fire stairs.. once the door shuts, you can't get out of the stairs again. I found this when I was in Melbourne, and almost got stuck in the stairs on the 48th floor. Buggered if I'm walking all the way down.

I propped the door open, went up to 28, can't get out. Great. Can't get back to the cupboard to try the keys.

Went all the way back down, out, down the lift, out of the building, and back to the car again. What a complete waste of time. I was really pissed off.

Why did we spend an hour getting the bloody keys, just so they could be left in the car, and not even try to trace the end of the cable. It's a bit hard to make documentation, or diagnose faults, when you can't see things.

I sat in the car fuming.

We came back, my mate picked up his wife from the shop she works in, and we came back up the coast again.

I tried looking for wireless networks, but I didn't have the aerial for the wireless adapter.

We got stuck on the freeway behind people that can't drive as usual.

I was so annoyed still.

I loaded up my bike, and came straight home. I stopped in and grabbed some grog on the way home.

Now I intend to have a few drinks. What a complete waste of a day. At least I'm getting paid, I would have rathered an easy day though.