As before, not much happened yesterday afternoon/night..

Dad came in with the phone bill, apparently it was a few hundred dollars over what it normally is. Looks like the telco has bugged up and been charging incorrectly, like used to happen to the customers of the business I was running every now and then.

I told him to ring up and complain.

I had a pie and chips for dinner while I watched some tv, and then I went to bed a few hours later after running tivo out of shows again.


I started working on getting freeside working this morning.

Some relatives were coming to leave their cat with us, since they are moving, and they don't want to or can't take him with them.

I haven't seen the relatives since 1989, when we went for a holiday to Queensland, I'm not exactly sure how I'm related to them.

My brother came in and told me that they were here, I had a shower, got dressed, and went inside.

We had lunch, they'd already put the cat "Buster" in the house, and he'd gone under my parents bed.

After lunch, someone went and got him out, he's the biggest cat I've ever seen.

None of our 5 cats would come anywhere near the house, but that was only because the dopey dog that wanders the streets was hanging around.

We chatted for a while, and then they decided to leave, since they had to drive a few hours back up the coast.

We were having a look at my bike just before they left, and noticed that a bracket that holds some part (maybe a regulator or something, I'm not sure) had rusted and snapped. Bugger, I'll have to fix that.

I came back inside, to get back to work.

My phone rang, it was my message service. A message about 10 seconds long, of just background noise.

I called my mate (who was in the US recently) back, (since he called me and left the noise message). I asked if he was trying to call me, or if he sat on his phone.

Apparently he was trying to call me, wanted to know about cheap computer places, to get a new monitor. He said he would come around in a bit.

I was planning to go out to get the parts to make another tivo serial cable that got ordered, I suppose I can go out there while we're out.

I got back to work, I almost had freeside working (or so I thought), I fiddled around a bit more with it, it was mainly just missing perl packages, and had wrong permissions, apache was running as the wrong user, stupid fiddling things like that.

My mate turned up about an hour later.

We chatted for a while, he had a look at the tivo, and I showed him the interfaces for the sat decoders.

We left, went into Gosford, had a look in the computer shop there, $310 for a 19" monitor, but they had none in stock, and it would take 2 days.

We then went out to Erina, we were looking for one computer place, I think is fairly cheap, but they must have moved. We ended up going to a bloody expensive place, and my mate paid $340 for the monitor, but because he wanted to use some interest free thing, he had to spend at least $500, so he looked around for some overpriced games to push the price up.

I wandered around for a bit, disgusted at the prices. $100 for GTA3 that came out 2 years ago??

I walked across the street, went to the electronics place, and bought the parts I needed for the tivo serial cable. The guy working there was on the phone, complaining to someone that he didn't vote on the weekend because he didn't know it was voting day.

He got off the phone just as I wanted to be served. I asked him if he forgot to vote, and he told me that he just didn't realise that it was a voting day, because he hadn't seen any advertising for it. He said that it wasn't that he was lazy, or didn't care, (at which point I said that I didn't, and hadn't even bothered to enroll), it was just that he didn't know, and apparently a few of his mates hadn't either.

He'd rung up the electoral commission to find out if he was going to get fined, and they said not if he didn't hear from them. Apparently they only pick a few people and fine them, as examples anyway.

I said that I never bothered to enroll, and didn't care about voting, because it makes no difference. Politicians are all just talk, don't actually do anything, and until they throw them all out, and start again, I won't be bothering to line up to vote, it's just a complete waste of time. I don't even care who won, it makes no difference.

I wandered back across the road, my mate had just finished being ripped off I mean paying for the monitor and the games. We loaded them in the van, and went to the pie shop around the corner.

I'd had lunch, so I had some apple custard pastry thing.

My mate complained he wanted an SVideo extension cable, so we went back to the electronics shop again, and bought 4m of 4 core cable, and an svideo plug and socket. $9 something worth.

We came back home, I grabbed all the parts, my mate gave me $5 to put it together, hmm, he probably could have bought a premade cabled and joiner at this rate, maybe. Oh well.

I went back to fiddling with freeside, and got it to the point where it doesn't just spew errors, but it's not working properly. I can't put any data in, and it keeps deleting all the settings.

I started making up the extension cable.

I managed to put it all together, finished, then realised I had the plug and socket slip covers on around the wrong way, and they are different sizes.

I undid one end, swapped the covers, and put it back together, getting frustrated by this point, I hate these svideo ends.

My brother came in to ask if I wanted dinner.

I wandered inside. The huge cat was wandering around.

We had dinner (Grandma hadn't gone home yet).

After dinner, I sat around chatting for a bit.

Dad showed me the phone bill again, apparently after arguing with the telco for a long time, they sorted it out today, and took a couple of hundred dollars off the bill, because they stuffed up.

The air in their house attacked me as usual, and after an hour and a bit I was sneezing and had watery eyes.

My phone rang, it was my mate I go to dinner with. (He's on holidays in Queensland at the moment) he asked me if I was going to the club for dinner tomorrow.. uh, what day? he's lost of track of the days, must be having a good time :-)

They flew up yesterday, and they'd been to SeaWorld today.

He asked me how I was going, I said I was slowly getting there, a few more days of work yet, that I had the switch for the seniors club, and I'll have to line up tomorrow going to put it in on Thursday or Friday.

We chatted for a bit, until he was worried about going over his 10 minutes, so I said I would speak to him later.

I came back inside, and the air attacked me again.

One of our cats turned up, and the huge one started growling at him out the door, we managed to get him inside, and they just sort of looked at each other for a bit, and the huge one growled.

The rabbit had been let out, and was mucking around, jumping around like crazy.

Eventually both of the cats moved in to the bedroom, we heard growling on and off for a bit, but it seems they are ok with each other now.

Dad took Grandma home, and I decided to retreat back to where I could breathe.

I've mucked around with freeside a bit more, didn't get anywhere.

I made up and tested te tivo serial cable, I'll mail it out tomorrow.

I think I might go to the bank, and get the rest of my statements, to find out if I got paid properly the whole time I was working to keep the business running, the last payment, a few days before they screwed me over, was only $30 something, what a joke.