Today is weird.

I woke up, I'm not sure what time, 10am something I think. I got up, but then I felt really tired, like I could barely stay awake.

All night, I had had stupid dreams, they weren't nightmares, but they were stressful, if that makes any sense.

I went back to bed, and I was watching tv, I kept drifting in and out of consciousness.

I had weird deja vu feelings, I get them everynow and then, but I've been getting them a lot lately.

I was watching a show, it was an episode of the simpsons, it had been on a few days ago, when it finished, an episode of Law & Order started, that same as had done when the episode was shown a few days ago, this time, there was more of the show on the end of the recording, than there was last time.. as the bit ran on the end of the recording, that I hadn't seen, I knew what the guy was going to say, it was just weird.

I went back into half sleep again.

I got up again about 12.30. I felt a bit sick, and I had a terrible headache. I had some breakfast (I think), and then I had a shower.

I tried to call my mate, to find out if the hard drive had been delivered yet, no answer on his home number, he must have left home. I called his mobile, he answered, he was just around the corner.

He turned up, gave me the hard drive, and invited me to go to the club with him, and some of his wife's relatives that are over on holidays with him. I said I would go.

He'd arranged with the woman that called me a couple of days ago to sort her computer out, he preferred that I do it, since he didn't know what time was involved, it was lined up someone could go around 4pm. I said I would go, and he gave me the details.

I got changed, got on my bike, and went to the club. Something felt wrong, I don't know what it was.

I got to the club just as my mate did, we went in. There was a bit of an issue getting the relatives in, because they didn't have any ID (like they are going to carry their passports around with them). The woman let them in anyway, eventually.

I went to the ATM, to withdraw some cash, to pay my mate for the disk, the others headed up to the snooker room.

I got the cash, headed up. I gave my mate the money, he owed me some money for fixing the busted computer (that got dropped) the other day, so I took that off.

I'm not sure what time it was, but while we were in their playing 3 games of snooker, both 2pm and 3pm passed.

I played with one of my mate's relatives against my mate. He won the first game, we won the second game, both were black ball games, that were pretty close, and in third game, we got thrashed.

My headache was really bad now, maybe I need to eat.

On the way out, I played the pokies, I put $1 in, one of my mate's relatives watched, I was playing 15c/spin all the way, until I had 9c left, then I bet 5c, and got 20 free spins. Argh. I spoke to the relative, but she told me she doesn't speak English (they are all Chinese, like my mate's wife).

A couple of spins into the free spins, I got another 20 free spins.

After the 40 free spins was over, I had won $5 something. I pulled out the $5, and played the rest away. A $4 profit, not too bad. As we went near the door, I had a single spin on a $1 machine, lost it, oh well, it could have been like the other night, when I won $23.

We all left the club, I headed to McDonalds, and got some lunch, I think it was about 3.40pm.

I was just sitting down to start eating, when my mobile rang. It was my mate, he had forgotten to pick up the busted computer I'd fixed, oh yeah.

I didn't want to rush home, so I called home, my parents were in, I told them what was going on, and to let my mate in to get the PC. I called my mate back, and told him that he could get the PC.

A couple of minutes later, my phone rang again. It was a woman who I fixed a pc for about a week ago (and still has a PC at my place that needs fixing). She wanted to know about an alternative to the Sat tv, now that the cards don't work anymore, heh, and also to know when I am available to do the networking down at the College that she asked about earlier, and I was putting off until I got all this gear configured.

I said I would come and do it on Thursday and Friday. They aren't going to wait forever, it's worth a bit of money, and I haven't had a paying job for ages, since the last work I did for her I think, over a week ago.

I still need to finished getting all this gear configured. There's not all that much to do, but my brain is just not letting me do it.

I finished my lunch, sat and read the paper for a few minutes. It was now after 4pm.

I headed to the woman's place to fix her internet connection (the one who called at 8am a couple of days ago, and said she thought the machine had a virus or needed reformatting).

The woman wasn't there, but her spunky daughter was. I went about checking the computer, nothing I could see wrong with the software configuration. Tried dialling, no good.

I setup a connection to a different phone number, still no good. Must be a problem with the line, or the modem.

I asked for a phone, and the chick went and got one, I plugged it in, instead of the modem, picked it up, crackle crackle crackle over the dialtone. No wonder it doesn't work.

Ok, so the line has issues. We tried tracing it (it's just an extension cable hanging out of the ceiling, I assume just plugged into a socket upstairs), but couldn't find where it came out upstairs. The chick called her dad, and he told her where it is.

I had a look, found it, just plugged into a double adapter, into a proper socket.

I tried it without the adapter, no good, still crackly. Must be one end or the other, or the cable. I undid the connector upstairs, looked fine.

When I checked downstairs.. aha.. all the screws were blue and green, all corroded.

I removed the live lines, they had little crimped on ends, which were all corroded. I tried cutting them off, stripping them, and screwing them back on, to temporarily test if that's all the problem was, or if the cable was stuffed and needed replacing.

When I eventually managed to strip the insulation off the wire, I found that one of them was all black, but the other was fine.

It must be something to do with the voltage, one is -48v or something (or is that the US?) and it's either attracting all the corrosion, or repelling it, which is why one side is stuffed, and the other fine.

I could hear talking going on upstairs, it was the chick, and someone else, I assumed her mother, who had arranged for me to fix the computer.

I swapped to using a different wire that was fine, screwed it in, then I went upstairs to swap it at the other end, and found that it was another daughter.

I pulled the connector apart, swapped the wire, put it back together, went back downstairs, tested it, clear as a bell.

I plugged the modem in, dialled up, on first go.

The chick came downstairs, I showed her, and told her I would have to come back to replace the phone socket, because it was all corroded, and that it would probably all come apart if they moved it.

I arranged to go back tomorrow.

I left there, around 5pm I think, I thought about going straight up to my mate's place, (while he was at my place dropping off the hard drive, one of his relatives asked me to dinner, for "Chinese pizza").

I had thought about trying to move his sat dish to point at pas8, and see if I could pickup some of the free to air Chinese channels, since the relatives are over for 3 months, and are getting bored, because they don't understand much English.

I came home, there were cars all over the place, some huge bus of a 4 wheel drive thing parked up across the driveway and the front lawn.

I came in, got my compass and protractor, mp3 player, quickly scribbled down the location of pas8, and took off again, it was about 5.35pm.

I got to my mate's place just after 6pm.

I went out, and started moving the dish, I had forgotten that the arm of the bracket was in an annoying place, that made it hard to make slight adjustments to the dish.

I marked where it was, and I moved it anyway.

I came inside, changed the sat channel frequency, and tried to get it to find the Chinese channels, it wouldn't lock on, the signal was jumping all over the place.

I went in and out moving the dish a tiny bit a truckload of times, tried different frequencies, even got on the internet and got more frequencies to try, but none worked.

The signal was still jumping up and down between 79% and 0%, weird. Even adjusting the rotation of the LNB made no difference.

I put all the settings back, and moved the dish back where it was, and the (Australian) free to air channels came back.

I think I will need to have another go, and move the arm of the bracket out of the way, so the dish can be moved more easily (and put on the bracket properly, perhaps the elevation is wrong).

We had dinner at this point, Chinese pizza. It's strange, it's like a pizza beurrito (sp?). You get a flat round bread, put on ham, egg, bean curd, lettuce, and other vegetables, and then you roll it up. It's mainly strange (to me anyway) because all the ingredients are on the table, and everyone uses chopsticks to get the ingredients, and then just eats the "pizza" with their hands.

I t was nice, I had 3 of them, and a glass of wine, and then I was full.

I sat and watched tv for a while, most of them went to bed about 10pm.

I sat up with my mate and watched some sat tv while we chatted, then a show "Bedtime" I've been meaning to watch came on, so we watched that, it was pretty funny. I must set tivo up to record it for me.

When it finished, about 10.40pm, I was feeling really tired, and my head is killing me. I said I would come back up on Friday or something, (Good Friday, so I don't think I'll be working/networking the college), and have a look at adjusting the sat dish.

I came home, it was a quiet boring ride home, my mind was wandering the whole time, probably not too good. It was cold, I think I'll avoid riding around on cold nights wearing silk boxer shorts in future.

I now have to go to bed, I've got about 6 things to do tomorrow.. Fix a PC, replace a phone socket, make some phone calls, then go and install the replacement hard drive, and some other things I'm forgetting.