It was a long day.

I woke up at 6.27am, to make sure the tivo was going to record the right channel, yeah, but it's still got that annoying "video dropping out for a few seconds every few minutes" issue.

I left it and went back to sleep.

The phone woke me at 9.0am. "Is the mail down?" not this again. Why bother ringing me? I am just going to tell you "no, it is not down, it will be overloaded, and slow, what do you expect from a box built in 1996?". "Oh, and some guy needs DNS settings changed" "are we his primary or secondary dns?" "mumble something about mail exchangers" "yeah, that's the settings he wants changed, are we the primary or secondary dns?" "I don't know".

"Ok, I will be there about 10.30, and deal with all this crap".

I rolled over, lay in bed for 5 minutes. The phone rang again, some weird number, looked like Melbourne. I answered it, it was some IT guy contracted to IGA, he wanted to know details about the internet connection we have available to them, and if he could run some ftp application across the connection. He hadn't bothered to do any investigation into any networking stuff, I recommended he put in a vpn (to save me having to deal with nonsense about ftp over several NATs), he said he would.

I got out of bed, had a shower, some breakfast, bummed around doing email. I eventually left about 10.20am. I found the blinker had fallen off again, I came back, found some packaging tape, went down and strapped it up.

I took off, I got to the Cafe just after 11am.

I gave them the floppy drive I bought on Saturday, and got my money back.

On my birthday I went down and tried to fix a PC, had no luck, I had the guy bring it up, he dropped it at my mate's place yesterday, he brought the machine in this morning (along with the guy's home pc).

I started looking at it again, stupid flashing power LED and no starting. I tried a different PSU, no good. Ripped the drives and network card and everything not required out. Still no good.

I wanted to try a different video card, but it's got some dopey non standard slot. I tried a PCI card instead, no good.

I now had no idea, I've replaced everything but the memory (which I moved around etc) the CPU (which I checked was seated properly) and the motherboard.

I found the contact details for Octek (who provided/imported/manufactured all the parts the machine is constructed of) I spoke to a guy for a few minutes, he'd not seen the problem before. He checked the serial number, and it's still under warranty.. I arranged to send it back under warranty.

How it gets there all depends on if I can get this UEC910 decoder working. My mate rang them, and they told him to see the website for instructions. I checked the website, couldn't really find anything, except for some "trick" for when you have corrupted memory. If it works, then I don't know how to get the machine to Auburn, since it was going to go there on Friday, when my mate is going to Lidcombe to swap the decoder.

I shifted the machine out of the way, and started on the guy's home pc. I got it all cleaned up, so then I called him, and let him know what was going on. He was happy.

Some people who's machine I fixed recently (with the location settings of "dial 34545534 to make a local call") came back whinging, they couldn't get on. I played around with it, I could get it to connect, but only if you plugged the phone line in just as you dial. It seems like the hook on the modem is stuffed, and it gets stuck off hook. There were no spare modems, they're arriving tomorrow, so I'll put a new one in then.

I got a call from my mate, another mate (who moved up to Newcastle a few days ago), had stacked his bike, and broken his wrist, so he was going to go up to help, did I want to help. Of course I would help. He was going to be taking the van and the trailer up, so we could move the bike. He was at work at the moment, would be coming back up in a couple of hours, and then we would leave to go up to Newcastle.

I let them know I might not be in the shop for the meeting I had arranged, and I would let them know as it got closer to time.

I had some lunch.

I got another call, change of plans, we're just going to ride up, and work it out up there. No worries.

I had the meeting, between about 4.30pm and 6pm. I then called my mate to find out what was happening, left a message. As I moved my bike a bit, my phone rang. Argh. I pulled over, rang my mate back, he didn't answer. I rang again, managed to speak to him, there had been a stuffup, and he's leaving now.

I headed to the service station to wait for him, grabbed some junk food. He rang me again, he'd meet me at the servo a little bit up the freeway to save time.

I bought the junk food, shoved it in my bike, headed for the freeway. I went up to the servo he was talking about, pulled off. I went in the wrong place, ended up in the truck part of the servo. I rode around, couldn't find where to get into the car section, bugger it, I just rode across the foot path.

I got all setup, sitting in the carpark, music on, phone ready, drinking an energy drink, and eating a chocolate bar.

Very surprisingly, about halfway through, my mate turned up, he must have low flown the whole way.

There were a couple of chicks looking at us, my mate went in to relieve himself, came back, we jumped on the bikes, and took off . The chicks timed it so as to leave at the same time.

We got back on the freeway, they were looking at us the whole time. My mate rode up really close, and they starting writing notes and holding them up in the back window. Very celeverly, they decided to ask where we were going, yeah, it'll be pretty easy to tell them while travelling at 130km/h.

They were putting up signs asking stuff like am I his mate, and will I take them for a ride, ah, I'm all for a bit of mucking around, but not on the freeway at high speed.

I went past them at one point, they were waving and mucking around. I just left them behind.

After a few minutes, they came up and overtook again.

I hung back, my mate went around the sides of the car, mucking around, eventually, after about 10 minutes, the chick wrote her phone number on a card, passed it out the window to my mate, he grabbed it, and shoved it in his pants, and we kept going.

We got up to Newcastle, got off the freeway, headed into the Uni, parked at the Uni.

I'd missed a call from my mate I go to dinner with, he wanted me to give him a call when I got home, to find out how my mate was, and to chat about some other things.

We went to the Uni bar, we were looking for our mate, he turned up a couple of minutes later, with his hand all bandaged up.

We sat and had a drink, and he told us what happened. He'd been riding along, not really paying attention to the road, there was glass all over it, and it caused the back wheel of his bike to slip out, he tried to balance it, correct it, but it didn't work, and he got thrown off.

He went left hand first down on to the road, breaking his wrist, he then slid on his helmet on the road, and hit all the rest of his body on the road.

He jumped up, picked up the bike (not realising his wrist was broken), the engine was still running, and it was still in gear, so he just revved it up a bit, aimed it for the gutter, and dropped the clutch, it went flying at the gutter, hit it, bounced up, landed off the road, and stalled.

No one helped him at all.

He crashed right near the hospital, so he dragged his bike up there, he was having difficulty moving it, because his left wrist was broken, so he couldn't hold the clutch in (and the gear lever pivot was broken, so he couldn't get it out of gear), he asked some guy to help him, who told him that his back was stuffed, so he couldn't, but the woman he was with jumped out of the car and helped my mate push his bike.

He went into the hospital, had his armed checked, they put a cast on his wrist, and let him go.

He went to Uni after that.

We told him about the chicks on the freeway, had a laugh.

We then realised we had 2 bikes, 2 helmets, and 3 people. I took my mate with the broken wrist on the back of my bike, wearing my mate's helmet., over to his bike, parked at the hospital (where his helmet was), I then brought my mate's helmet back with me to the Uni (and took a wrong turn, and went for a scenic ride through the Uni, before deciding to go back, and find the right way).

I gave my mate back his helmet, and he followed me to the hospital. Now we had 3 bikes, 3 helmets, and 2 people that could ride.

We got the bike going, it was in 3rd gear, so we could move it on the road fairly easily. After a couple of minutes of getting used to it, we decided to go. My mate locked his bike, and left it at the hospital, I carried my mate with the broken wrist, and we went back to the place he's living.

It took a few minutes, and was a fairly interesting ride, but my mate managed to ride the bike about 60km/h the whole way, and didn't really need to change gears.

He showed us his place, and we bummed around there for a while. About 9.30, we decided to go and get my mate's bike from the hospital. He jumped on, and we headed back towards the hospital.

We both couldn't remember the way, and buggered it up, we ended up going a long way, but we got there. He grabbed his bike, and we headed back to my mate's place. We got fuel on the way (I had nearly run out), and then headed to KFC to get some dinner. It was a bit past 10pm, They had shut, but luckily our mate had gone in and bought food before they shut, and grabbed a six pack from somewhere.

We went back to his place, ate dinner, had a beer (which hit the spot) and a chat (and I found out why we didn't end up bring the van/trailer up). We sat and chatted until about 11.35, I said I wanted to get home, so we left just after that.

We came back home, I kept to about 115/120km/h on the freeway, so my mate slowly left me behind.

My mp3 cd player starting mucking up, so I slowed down so it could work (not great at high speed), it started working again, then I got stuck behind a truck going through roadworks where it was down to 1 lane.

Not long after that, I got off the freeway, rode the bit home, and pulled in. It was just after 1am.

I don't think my mate would have appreciated me returning his call, now that I'm home.

It's now after 2am. I am freezing cold, tired, I've ridden about 200km today. Bedtime.