The alarm woke me up at 9.30am this morning. I lay in bed for a while, I watched some tv.

They got rid of the morning episodes of The Simpsons, now there is nothing to watch, and the tivo guide data has been wobbly all week, so it's not been recording anything.

Jerry Springer came on, I watched some of that, it's a hideous show, then I got up and started getting ready, at about 11am.

I started blogging yesterday, at about 11.15am, I realised I had to leave it, because I have to be out of here shortly, to get to the club.

I received an SMS on my phone, I didn't bother to check it.

I had a shower, got ready. I was going to leave about 11.28am, I decided to have some breakfast, and then I got my mp3 player stuff together, and I left about 11.35am. I shouldn't be too much later than midday.

I checked the SMS on my phone, it was from Dad, he'd arranged to go and see the accountant at 3pm tomorrow.

I rode up to the club, uneventfully. No police chases today.

I got to the club at 12.02pm. Good timing.

I wandered in, had a chat for a bit, they brought me lunch and a cup of tea.

I just started eating it when the guy from telco turned up to do the install.

The guy who asked me to come to the club spoke to the telco guy, and kept him busy for the first few minutes with details of a telephone line they wanted moved in here, and because the ADSL had been provisioned on a line that didn't come into this room.

He went away, came back, and found the line not working.

He connected some device to the line in here, where we were going to have the ADSL router connected. I had a look at it, it was some sort of oscillator.

I followed him, and had a look at the other end. He was using a probe to try to find the other end of the cable he had attached the oscillator to, that's pretty groovy.

We worked it out in the end.. when the little rack had been put in the computer room, and they had run the cables to the phone, they'd done a bit of a dodgy job. They'd separated the 4 pairs in a bit of cat5, terminated it as 4 different phone lines, and where they were kroned in to the lines from the street, instead of terminating them on their own krone block, and then jumpering the krone blocks together, they had just kroned the cat5 straight into the krone block with the lines from the street.

The asked me if I knoew anything about the work that had been done when the rack was put in, and I said it was done before I had anything to do with the club, and that they get me to do everything for them now, because he wanted me to complain to whoever had put the rack in, that the cable termination they had done was dodgy.

I mentioned that I was starting an ISP, and he told me that there are a lot of government grants available to organisations that make helping aged and disabled people a prioritym, and that I should look at putting a business plan together that expressed that, and see if I could get some grants to help. That's probably not a bad idea.

He also mentioned about VOIP stuff, and I told him that I had experience with VOIP gear, both software and hardware, like the VOIP system I went down to Melbourne to move.

My phone rang, it was the guy from the college wanting to know when I was going to fix his computer.

I wandered outside where I could here him, because there was bad reception inside the club, and they had music going because some of the oldies were dancing.

Oops, that's the computer I keep meaning to fix. I told him I hadn't done anything on it yet, I had intended to, but I didn't know that the problem was. Apparently it had a virus on it, and he wanted me to reinstall windows. ok, fine.

I told him that I had scheduled to come down there to install their ADSL/network on Monday, but last night realised I've already got something on on Monday, so I'll have to make it Tuesday, that was fine.

He told me that there was a stack of network cable up in the roof, because it was all hanging down when they moved in there, apparently a computer place was in there previously, and they had just cut the ends off when they left, and he just shoved it all up in the roof. He reckoned there was about 100 metres up there.

Bugger, wish I'd known that before organising the box of new cable. I might rip it out and take it anyway.

I said I would see them on Tuesday, and get everything sorted.

I went back inside.

We found the spare pair, and the guy kroned it in to move the fax line, with had the ADSL service on it.

Part of the phone cabling was this ancient wire wrap terminal, the guy ripped something off that, apparently the fax line was also wired on to it, and it was crackling.

We went back in the computer room.

The guy was just wanting to plug the router into a single pc, and configure it (which is all he's supposed to do), I managed to get him to install it in the rack, and patch it through the patch panel to a single pc.

He ran the setup software on the pc. It wanted the account details, username/password etc.

He rang up the exchange, to get them. Apparently the telephone number the service was on wasn't on record.

He went to his car to check something, and came back.

Apparently the service hadn't been provisioned (although I thought I saw the sync light come on on the router), so he went through getting that done.

Maybe it was like my mate's problem, just before he went to the US, where they patched his phone into the dslam, but didn't bother to create any accounts, so he couldn't "logon" as such.

The guy spoke to someone on the phone, and got the account created.

He put the details in the setup program. It complained it couldn't find the router, and then all of a sudden it just did. Apparently it's a bug in the setup program.

The guy tested it, it appeared to work.

I asked him if the PPPoE client was being used anymore, and I could immediately tell him from his expression that he was familiar with it, and knew exactly what I was getting at.

I mentioned how it was in use at a different site, and that it was a pain in the ass, because the dialup networking connections kept getting corrupt and stuff. I asked him if I could run the setup cd from this install on the other router, or if it would stuff things up.

He said it might stuff things up, based on the version of the firmware, but then I said that they had the same router, and he said that it should be fine then, and couldn't understand why there would be a setup using one of these routers, with the PPPoE client.

He left, and it was now up to me to get the connection working on the LAN.

I thought about it. The guy from the telco turned up, was there for about an hour (he was expecting less, like 20 minutes, to just put the router in), charges them $100. I turn up, and do hours of work, and I get lunch and cup of tea. Oh well, that's how it works, I'm a generous person, and they're an evil corporation.

I had a look at setting up the email for them first, they are using an ancient version of Eudorka that doesn't support multiple email accounts. I didn't want to screw up the settings.

I went about changing the ADSL username from the cryptic default one, that was fine, it said it would take an hour or so. I changed the settings in the router to match.

I then tried to change the password, but I was unable to get to the page to do it, because they use these stupid hostnames, rather than fully qualified domain names, so the machine couldn't resolve it properly.

It didn't work when I tried to access it via IP address either.

Maybe I should have put an entry in the hosts file, now I think about it.

Anyway, I said I would look at that next week, because I have to come back to run some cat5 into the next office, to connect their pc to the ADSL connection.

My phone rang again. It was the guy with the wireless ADSL connection I went and saw a week and a bit ago. Apparently he had changed some settings, and now his internet connection didn't work. I told him where I was (basically around the corner) and that I would come and see him when I finished here shortly.

I wanted to check the website of my ISP from here, to see what the speed was like. Hmm.. it's not working by domain name. When I access the webserver by it's IP address on the network range attached to the gateway machine, it was fine (and fast), hmm, maybe IP forwarding has fallen over on it or something.

I said I may be available next Wednesday or Thursday to put the cat5 in, and I would work it out closer to time.

I borrowed the setup cd, I'll take it with me when I go to the council place with the setup with the dodgy PPPoE client next.

I took off, it was starting to sprinkle with rain a bit now.

I rode to the guys place, got there about 2.30pm. Went in, had a look at the computer.

He showed me it was saying "working offline". I just went "file|work online" and it was fixed.

He had a few questions for me while I was here.

He wanted to know about copying DVDs. I told him to get DVDShrink, use it, and then burn the result.

I was thinking I wouldn't charge him for the visit, but I didn't want to be here for too long.

I figured he might have some difficulty, so I decided to give him a few more minutes. I downloaded DVDShrink for him, that only took a minute on his ADSL connection.

I installed it, and said I would show him how to run it. He went and got a DVD, and I showed him how to use it.

He then wanted to know about changing his username and password, apparently it's recommended as part of the ADSL setup that you change it once you are connected. (He's got ADSL from the same telco where the club just installed theirs).

I said there was no point changing the username, and to just change the password. Oh look, the password change screen with it's stupid hostname works on this connection. Weird.

We changed the password.

I changed the settings in the router.

The guy wanted to know if the wireless adapters could be installed directly in the pcs, instead of using the usb extension cables they were on. I said that the one right next to the router would be fine, because it will make no difference, but that the one downstairs would be something to play with.

I moved the wireless adapter, and it kept working.

We went downstairs, and had a look at the other pc.

I moved the wireless adapter, and it worked fine in the pc. The reception issues we had must have been caused by the stealthed SSID.

When he checked his email downstairs, it launched lookout, rather than lookout express, that they wanted to use, so I fixed that.

lookout express then complained that the email account was not working (prompting for username/password). We put the password in, but it didn't work. When I checked the error, it said user unknown. The account must not exist anymore.

I went into the account webinterface, to change the username, but you can only have between 4 and 8 characters for the username, so her email address username (this was the guy's wife's email account) was too long to fit. We picked a different one, and I changed it.

I changed the mail settings to match, but apparently the changes don't take effect for an hour or something.

I had a look at the Symantec tool he complained wasn't autoupdating, I couldn't see why. "LiveUpdate" crashed halfway through running, and then claimed it was already running when I tried to run it again. Useful Symantec rubbish.

We went back to the PC upstairs, DVDShrink was nearly finished, I showed him how to burn it once it was done (he had no blank DVDs anyway), and said he could call me if he wanted me to help him with that.

He asked me what he owed me, I said I had been there about 1/2 hour (a bit more, but who cares), and how much I wanted (about 1/3 of normal hourly rate).

He paid me, and I left.

It was raining a bit heaver now.

I rode over to see the colo guy, and see if he had worked anything out with the dialin.

As I pulled into the carpark, I noticed a cop car. There was a guy in blue overalls in the carpark, I assume he was the cop, I think he just came out of the colo guy's shop.

I went in, he wasn't there, he'd gone to the bank. His wife and daughter were there, so I chatted to them for a bit.

They had one of those puzzle IQ tests they were trying to do. There were a couple they couldn't work out, one was "LNIONELION" or something, I had no idea what that was. Another, the word blouse with a C written over it, I guessed was perhaps "see through blouse"? the third they were having problems with, was 4 capital Ds, with one of the letters WEST written inside each D. No idea on that one.

An old lady came in to speak to them, they saw her turning up, and said how she couldn't drive anymore, I had a look at the reflection in the window while she parked, and I could see what they were talking about, it looked like she had no idea.

She came in, and they spoke to her for a few minutes. Apparently she was trying to get drivers for some device from the manufacturer, and they had told her that it was illegal for them to send them to her or something. ie, we can;t be bothered helping this old lady, so we'll fob her off with nonsense, and she won't know any better.

She left, and the colo guy turned up a few minutes later.

He told me he looked at putting the settings into his RAS the other night, so that my customers could dialin, but the commands he had to enter into the cisco (aaa dnis something) were non existant on the equipment.

I stood there for a bit, and he showed me, there didn't seem to be any such command.

We looked form some doco, and I could see that that was how you do it, but there was just nothing in there.

Some woman came in with a modem she'd borrowed, apparently she couldn't get it working at all, and was trying to use it to work out if the problems she was having were being caused by her (possibly crappy) internal modem, or the phone line.

The colo guy told her to bring her pc in at some point, and they would look at it.

We went back to looking at the cisco, it's just not going to be easy.

My phone rang again. It was someone else who works at the college, they are having issues with their pc, and want to know if I can fix it for them. I said the earliest time I have available is next Friday, but I will let them know if I find time any earlier.

The woman started giving me her mobile number, I assumed it was the same as the number she had called me on, that came up on my phone, so I didn't need to write it down or anything, so I just pretended I was "yeah, yeah, yeah, ok, got that" as she told me the number.

I got off the phone, and looked in my call register. Oops, a totally different number, oh well, I doubt I am going to have time any earlier to do it anyway, and if I do, then I'll just call the college and get her number, and call her, tell her I lost it or something.

The guy asked me if I had noticed that all the gear went down last night. Nope, but I said I had noticed my static routes to get to my gear were missing (I was loading them in manually).

Apparently there were power issues in the building last night, about 11pm, and the UPS ran out. He went in there this morning, and found the power was on in the building, but not our room. He found that the telco termination cabnet has it's own power, and it was on, so he plugged the ups in there, and everything came back up.

Apparently the circuit breaker for our room had blown, or been pulled out, and that was why the power didn't come back, and recharge the UPS.

The guy asked me what I was doing tomorrow.

I said I was going to see the accountant in the afternoon, nothing in the morning (I was planning to get the rj45 wall sockets I need to install at the college next week, I guess I can get them on Monday afternoon).

He said to come in in the morning, and we would look at configuring the cisco, to get dialin working.

He said he had to leave before 4pm to post some mail. It was 4.08pm.

I got back on my bike, and decided to head for home.

It took me 20 minutes to get through a set of traffic lights.

I realised I was hungry, so I decided to go and get some food. I went to KFC.

The woman in front of me took about 20 minutes to order $3 worth of food. She wanted some combo meal, but wanted to swap part of it for something else, and it wasn't until the chick behind the counter told her everything she could possibly swap it for (but omitted to mention she could swap it for me taking her head off with my bare hands), that she decided what she wanted.

Just when I thought I was about to get served, the woman decided she liked the look of something on the rack, and wanted that "extra piece of chicken" it turns out it was ribs, which she didn't want, and wanted some thigh, which the chick served her, charged her, and she finally got the hell out of the way.

I ordered my food. It was served, I sat and ate it, and left, all in less time it took that stupid woman to order her food.

I took off, and I decided to go to the supermarket to get some dinner.

On the way, an ambulance and a paddy wagon went flying past in the opposite direction, with their lights on, but no sirens. Must be a good prang somewhere.

I pulled into the supermarket, wandered in, picked out some frozen crap dinner, and went to the checkouts.

The express lane had about 50 people in it, bugger that. I lined up at a normal register, where a guy had just finished unloading his trolley, but hadn't started being served yet.

I had one item, the guy looked at me, I thought perhaps he would allow me to go in front, since I had one damn thing, and I had the cash to pay for it (not exact, but close enough to make the change quick and easy), which would have taken me about 20 seconds to be served, but no, of course not.

So I just waited, while his 6 million things were run up, including something that didn't scan properly, and I had to wait for a price check.

He then proceeded to pay with a credit card or something, taking even more time. He finally left.

I put my one item through, paid, and left, in about 20 seconds.

As I was walking back to my bike, I realised that I have come to a conclusion over the last few days.

I REALLY FUCKING HATE PEOPLE.

I get pushed so far, that it takes all my energy to refrain from attacking and killing some people.

Like that stupid woman in KFC. She was about 3 seconds away from me picking up the charity coin box, bashing her on the head with it, and strangling her with the chain that holds it to the counter.

Someone will push me too far. This is your warning people.

I put my food in my bike, and I took off. I headed towards home.

As I came near the turnoff the main road, a guy on a big BMW bike waved at me. I think that was the highlight of my day today.

I came home.

I came inside.

Mum came in a few minutes later.

Apparently my cousin is back in the country, and wants help getting some parts for his computer. Great. More computer work.

Mum asked me if I knew about the eBay auction for a wedding dress. Nope. I googled around. Apparently some guy wanted to sell his ex wife's wedding dress, he has no female friends, and his sister was too big to fit in it, so he modelled it.

Apparently it received bids of over $99 million dollars, he received 5 wedding proposals,and nearly 7 million people have looked at the auction.

The auction ended, and he received nearly $4000 USD for the dress in the end, not too bad.

Dad got home, and came in. I told him that nothing had happened with the dialin stuff, and I was going to sort it out in the morning.

I started going through my email.

My mate I play snooker with called me, he wanted to know when I was available to come and fix his dish, apparently when we were fiddling with it recently, I didn't put it back in just the right place, and while most channels work, some (assumedly on a different transponder) drop out.

I told him I had no idea when I would be able to come and look, maybe sometime on the weekend.

I just spent the last 5 hours catching up on about 3 weeks emails, and I just finished.

My plan for the next week:

Tomorrow:
see the colo guy and get the dialin working,
see the accountant
go to the electronics place and get parts for tivo serial cable
maybe go to the hardware and get aerial/network parts.

Saturday:
start fixing the pc belonging to the guy at the college
adjust the satellite dish

Sunday:
finish fixing the pc
make up 3 tivo serial cables
make up aerial cable and drop it to my mate.

Monday:
got to the senior's annual general meeting and explain how the internet works
maybe go to the hardware for parts for the network install (+aerial)
post 3 tivo serial cables

Tuesday:
go to the college and install ADSL and network

Wednesday:
finish network install if needed
maybe go to seniors club and install network

Thursday:
install network at seniors if not done Wednesday

Friday:
fix computer.

I'm sick of next week, and it hasn't even started yet. I also have to find time to start and run an ISP in the above days.

Here we go, midnight again. Here comes 1am.