What a terrific day.

I got woken up at 10.20am by the guy who works for the place I went to on my birthday, to try and fix their computer. He wanted to pick up his other computer that I fixed.

Hmm, it's at my mates place that I go to dinner with, locked in his garage, and he's in Sydney. I told the guy I would find out what I could do, and call him back.

I got up, called my mate, told him the situation, he told me I could get into his house the same way we did when his keys went missing, ok, or I've got another idea. No worries.

I called the guy back, told him I could get it. He said his modem was stuffed, did I have a spare he could borrow, yeah, in the Cafe, come up, grab the PC, and then we'll go get a modem. He told me he would be leaving shortly, and get there about 11.15.

I worked out I would have to leave about 10.45 to get there for then, so I had aboiut 15 minutes.

I checked my email, a box had popped up asking for the password for my account on the mail server that runs as part of my friend's business. The mail server must have got hit with spam again, and it's just buggered up. I escaped the box, and checked my proper mail.

I ate some breakfast, got dressed, and I left. It was stinking hot already, so I left my jacket at home, too hot. I headed up to my mate's place. Got there about 11.20. I got in the way I thought I could, then I sat around and waited for the guy to turn up. I read a terribly interesting (postage) stamp bulletin that was on the table while I waited.

The guy rang me, told me the modem was ok, and that he was going to go to an ATM to get the money to pay me first. He turned up about 11.45, I gave him the pc, collected my pay. He had a quick chat, wants to make some changes down at the markets, and add a cd burner for backing up their records etc, I said I would sort that out when he wanted it done.

I locked up and left.

I didn't have anything to do, and I didn't want to go home, it was stinking hot. I went for a ride, out towards the beach, see if I can have a quick perve. I got out there, a ton of seaweed had washed up, and it stank. I rode around a lap, and then left. I went to McDonalds, had some lunch, and read the paper.

I came home, the power had been off. Hmm. I booted up everything, and tried to connect to the internet, my password kept getting rejected. This seems very strange. Perhaps there is a problem with radius, or the switch, or something in Gosford because everything has just powered back up.

I called the Cafe, to see if there was a problem. The useless guy that fixes the computers stalled me, and told me they would have to ring me back, and gave me some nonsense about not being able to log in either.

WTF? either there is a problem, or there isn't, not that you will have to get back to me.

I tried dialling in again, still no good. I reconfigured my router to use my backup dialup account with another ISP I never got rid of. Once I was connected throught that, I then tried to login to my accounts on the servers, then on any of the equipment, almost every password had been changed, locking me out of everything.

This is just charming. I basically volunteer over 2 months of my time to continue running my friend's business, which would have gone with him in the first week, if I hadn't helped, and this is how they thank me.

I want my email. I tried to login to an account I know that has root access, so I could gzip up my mail, and scp it out to my shell account elsewhere.

It seems that everyone's account I know details of has been locked out from root access.

My password must have been changed early this morning, and that's why my email client was asking for my password.

Well, that confirms it. I've been fucked over royally.

About a minute after I realised this, the guy I was in Gosford with on Monday called me. He's having problems. Well, I'm sorry, but I can't help you, because I've been locked out of everything.

He said he was going to find out what was going on, and let me know.

I've been fired, but they don't have the courtesy to tell me. Even when I'm on the phone to them.

I regret fixing that DNS issue yesterday, I should have left it, then when that client contacts me, and I tell them that the issue can't be fixed, they would leave. Oh well, they are going to anyway.

Hee hee, I just remembered a couple of things I never did fix, so everytime one of the servers is booted up there are changes that have to made manually so it will work, and never fixed it to do those things automatically.

I called my mate I go to dinner with, he'd just got back from Sydney, and I told him what was going on.

He went in to the Cafe to try to find out what was going on. I was going to wait a while, and then call him in there, to see what he found out.

I decided to have a shower while I waited that time.

I was just getting in the shower, and then the power went off again. Argh. I just got all this stuff back up and running.

I had a shower, got out, waited for a bit.

I decided to ring Mum and tell her what was happening, and that I had made a decision regarding the conversation we had last night.

Oops, the phone doesn't work without power, stupid ISDN crap.

I went inside, since the first phone circuit works without power. (I've only just realised I could have used my mobile).

Mum was inside. I sat and told her what was going on.

She then said she had to go and pick my brother up from school. Oops.. the garage door doesn't open without power, and the access door to the garage has about a ton of stuff piled against it. She rang someone she knew, to arrange them to pick up my brother, and drop him at Grandma's.

She came in a chatted for a while, after about 45 minutes, (since going off) the power came back. I started getting everything back up again.

I knew I would still not be able to logon.

I rang the Cafe, to speak to my mate. The tech support woman answered, and I told her the power was back, were there any issues with Gosford, she told me there were, and that the upstream provider were looking at it.

Oh yeah, since when did they have access to any of our equipment? I thought, ah, since I gave out all the passwords the other day, "because the solicitor asked for them". Somehow I doubt the solicitor knows anything about it in hindsight. I was hesitant to give them out. I should have followed UF's advice, the first thing you do as a sysadmin, ensure job security, change all the passwords.

I was a bit suspicious when I was asked for all the passwords the other day, but me not giving out the passwords wouldn't have achieved anything, they just would have asked any of the other people who knew them, got them anyway, and then it would have made me look dodgy.

I asked her to let me know when it was fixed, so I could logon. Of course she did not get back to me, because they are playing stupid games. Why not just tell me what is going on? Do they think I am completely stupid, and didn't immediately work out what's going on?

I continued getting my network working, and my mobile rang. It was the guy I was in Gosford with, he told me what was going on, and that he's now going to change to a different provider, did I know of any good ones. Heh.

I got everything back up again, still using my account with the other ISP. Because of the sorry state of the network, using dialup to another ISP is heaps better than ISDN into my friend's ISP. Hah.

I bummed around for a while, trying to log into and of my accounts to work out if I could somehow get my mail. There was a box in Sydney, I was briefly able to login with my account before, but after the power came back, my account had been disabled.

Someone must be watching the logs, and seeing where I'm trying to log in to/from, and then changing the passwords.

All I want is my damn email, and a few files out of my home directories.

I gave up mucking around with this nonsense for the time being, and left, I head up to my mate's place.

He found my hair slightly humerous, I was too annoyed to be in the mood for joking.

I explained exactly what was going on.

Oh well, the business will not last long before it runs out of funds, based on the figures I heard yesterday, and recently, and then the customers get taken away in lieu oy payment, and my friend's De Facto ends up with nothing, and goes bankrupt.

I checked my phone, a missed call, a guy I haven't spoken to for months, I'll have to call him back (oops, I'll do it tomorrow).

We hung around there for a while, and then we went to dinner. While eating dinner, some woman commented that she liked my green hair better, heh.

While I was eating, my phone rang, "Private Number", ah, here we go, it might be the De Facto to tell me what's going on. I answered it, nope, it was my mate that was in the US recently, he wanted to know why I didn't call him back on Saturday, I told him because it was wet and cold and crappy, so I just stayed home and got pissed, "oh, well as long as you got pissed" was his reply. I said I would pop in on the way home in a few hours.

After the meal, I played the pokies, lost $1, walked away.

I went back to my mate's place, we sat around for a while, and then I left.

i went and saw my mate, had a chat, told him what was going on.

I then helped him to fix his computer, graphics driver problems, and I played a game for a while testing it, seemed ok.

My other mate's housemate said he was going to bed, I realised it was 11.30, so I decided to leave.

I came home.

At about midnight, I decided to continue checking what equipment I still had a valid account on. Ah, one of the webservers. Too bad none of my files are on here. As soon as I logged in, I saw "Machine is going down for system halt now" come up. Oh, for god's sake.

Perhaps they are moving the equipment, getting all the illegally installed stuff out of the electrical cupboard, that the building manager threatened to rip out.

If I was a malicious person, I would just crack into all the stuff, and disable all their accounts, just for the laugh. Do unto others as they do unto you. Whoever's doing this is doing a reasonable job of it.

I'm sure if I tried I could still find stuff they've not thought of, but I'm not interested, I'm walking away. They can have all the shit.

I didn't want to be running all the servers in the first place.

Running everything and getting paid amost nothing is the reason I left this the first time, back in August last year. I only came back because my friend died, and no one else knew how to run most of the stuff.

All they had to do was tell me they didn't need me any more, and I would have left, it's not like this was even a job. It was me doing them a favour, temporarily, in the short term, so the business could keep running while they worked out what they wanted to do with it.

Why muck around and go out of their way to mistreat me like this?

Time to start my business, and be successful, and laugh.