I woke up at 6.27am this morning. Why is my alarm going off?

Oh yeah, I have to work today.

I got out of bed, had a shower, got dressed, found something to eat.

Grabbed my CD player, and my street directory, and took off about 7.05am

I rode down there, fairly uneventful, where I had to go, was all stupid no right turns, so I ended up taking a left turn, turning around at a round about, coming back, and going straight across. It was about 8.20am

I went around looking for a parking spot, couldn't find one. I wasn't sure where the bike parking my mate was talking about was.

I found the building, I tried to call my mate, unavailable. hmm. I went around the block a second time, I thought I saw the path he said the bikes go up, but I didn't want to just start riding up some foot path. I went around a third time, halfway around I called my mate, he answered the phone, and came out to meet me. I went around to where I tried to call him from the first time, and he showed me where I could park, up on the footpath between the pillars of a nearby building.

He showed me where the bikes park, it's totally hidden, and it is up that footpath I thought. I'll remember that in future.

We went inside, went to see the guy at reception, to get a pass, he said don't worry about it, see someone else, and get an access card, they weren't at work yet.

We went in, and my mate gave me the stuff the woman from the temping agency had sent over, forms and stuff.

I met a guy that works there, the DBA, he showed me the databases he looks after, there's some pretty groovy stuff in there, 3d maps and other things, all done with values stored in a database.

The guy I was supposed to be working with wasn't in yet, so we wandered next door to get a coffee.

Went back inside, and my mate showed me some of the work he does there, a lot of it is migrating flat html into the new fancy markup language they're using for their intranet.

He needs to hire someone to do the tedious work. It only pays half what I'm being paid to be here today, but it's still good, and for a job that's so easy.

The guy I was there to work with turned up about 9.30. He got settled in, and then came over. I went over to his desk, he had a windows machine and a SunBlade 150 on it. I used the SunBlade.

He ssh'd me into the production server, downloaded php and apache for me. I started looking at compiling them.

My mate told me the woman from the temping agency had called, and she wanted the paper work, so I started doing that. Sign the contract, tax/banking details etc. Took me a few minutes, and then I photocopied them, and faxed them back to her.

I went back to work. I fiddled around trying to build php with Oracle support, I've not tried this before.

It didn't work, uh oh. I needed access to the internet so I could read what to do.

The Sun machine didn't work, because it didn't like the proxy authentication.

I tried setting up an ssh tunnel to an external proxy server, on my mate's machine (because he's not firewalled) but it didn't work. I've just checked it from home, doesn't work either.. my shell acount in California must have ssh tunnels disabled or something.

The guy I was working with found me a PC with internet on it, so I went back and forth, scribbling on bits of paper what to do.

I found how to do it, still didn't work, getting weird issues to do with "CLASS64", I was trying to build php 32 bit, against the 64bit Oracle client. doesn't work.

Back to the internet to read more. More scribbling.

I found how to force it to compile against the 32 bit libraries, then I built apache again, should work now, nope.

Read more, scribble more.

I was getting a bit worried, here it is, midday, and I've not really achieved anything. Nothing will compile properly, or when it does, it doesn't start or work. Have I got myself in over my head?

Turns out they needed me to build it with 64 bit Oracle support anyway, otherwise the data will get corrupted.

I found the compiler flags I needed, and rebuilt php in 64 bit. I then tried to restart apache that I'd managed to compile and install.. it now wouldn't start, because I was trying to run 32 bit apache with 64 php, don't work.. recompiled apache in 64 bit.

It should work. There was already an apache install on the staging server they didn't want to trash (yet), so I configured my new one to run on port 82.

Started it up, it should work, it should have php support, and it should have Oracle support.

I wrote the quick php test page "" basically, called it php.php, dumped it in htdocs. Viewed it with the browser, and it came up! no errors, nothing. Woohoo! Now we just need to know that it's properly working.

It was now just after 2pm. I went to lunch, came back just after 2.30.

My mate showed me that the default page on the staging server was wrong (it was being served by the apache already on the machine). I went to roll it out of the way, and put mine in, and move the content over, but the SunBlade had locked itself.

I went back and read more documentation. The guy I was working with came back about 3.30, and unlocked the machine for me (they wouldn't give me any passwords, I don't blame them, I'm only there for the day, and you can't have everyone knowing all your passwords).

I tried to kill off the existing apache, but it just kept respawning, no matter what I tried to kill it.

I put mine back on port 82, symlinked in the test content, and restarted it. It all worked. Groovy.

They said I might as well come back tomorrow and finish it all off. Even groovier.

I fiddled around for a bit more, my mate left about 4pm (to get the train) everyone else disappeared around that time too, so I left about 4.20pm.

I wandered back, jumped on my bike, and started ride back up the coast.

About halfway up the freeway, I saw a car that looked like my mate's work car. I went flying up alongside it, and one of my mates hung out the window. We had a bit of a race for a bit, and then I just hung back when he started weaving around like crazy.

He sat just a few cars ahead the rest of the way, and when we got back to our exit, I went flying past, because I was going further north.. it's Tuesday and I'm going to see my mate to go to dinner.

I got there, parked up. One of his other friends was there, it's his 50th birthday today.

We chatted for a while. I had a look at a computer he had there, with a busted keyboard port on it. The computer screams whenever you put a keyboard in, and it changes if you jiggle it around. Must have a stuffed port.

We went back and watched tv for a bit, and then his wife called, so we picked her up from the station, and went to dinner.

The people I was having dinner with were there too.

I tried to get some money out, but my stupid Visa card wouldn't scan in the ATM. It has a small mark on the magnetic strip.

I had to put it through about 50 times before it read it. I might have to get a new card.

We went and had dinner, and I chatted to the people I was having dinner with about all the things they wanted to talk about.

There ended up being 9 of us there at dinner tonight.

After that, 7 of us ended up back at my mate's place. He'd changed his fish tank again.

I hung around for a chat for a bit, and then I decided to leave just after 9pm, I'm knackered, and I've got to get up early again tomorrow.

Dialled up to the net, checked my email, blogged, and I'm starting to work out if I can get an ssh tunnel working so I can web browse on that SunBlade tomorrow.