The alarm woke me at 8.30am. Ugh, not gonna happen.

I got out of bed about 8.45am. I really didn't want to, it was freezing.

I had a shower, got ready, grabbed all my tools, chucked them in my bag.

Pulled about 60m of cable off the roll, and took that.

I grabbed the tivo serial cables as a last thought. I still don't have the addresses.. but I can get into my email when I do the network install, and get them, then I can mail them when I got for lunch.

I ended up leaving about 9.30am.

I rode down the freeway, went to the college, and parked in the carpark next door.

I got in there about 10.20am. I had a missed call on my phone, it was from the guy who owns the college, he wanted to know when I was getting there.

I got to work.

I started dragging the cables around. What I thought was that metal skirting stuff you can pull off and put cabling behind.. was just a black strip painted on the bottom of the walls. the interior walls, separating the offices has the skirting stuff, but now around the permeter of the area. Hmm.

I dragged the cables behind bookshelves and filing cabinets anyway, there's enough stuff that it doesn't really matter.

The woman there kept complaining that she thought she had a virus on her machine, and that her email didn't work. I kept saying I would get the network installed, then the ADSL first, in case I had to download a ton of stuff.

I finished dragging the cables around. I use my crappy plastic krone punchdown tool to terminate the cables into the sockets.

About the third wire I tried to punchdown (out of the 8 of a single piece of cat5) the tool became completely useless. Great.

I found that I could use the tiny flat screwdriver in the little leatherman tool my mate gave me, when he came back from Thailand, that I use as a keyring, that I had with me because it's got the colo keys on it.

I punched down the wires, hoped it would work, and that the screwdriver wasn't just stuffing the connectors.

I made up some patch cables, and setup the switch.

I asked them for the ADSL kit, and they showed me the box. I grabbed out all the bits, and went about working out how to integrate it.

It needs a phone socket, their filter is not a passthrough/double adapter like the Thompson routers include. Now I need a phone double adapter.

There's no power sockets left for the transformer for the router (and the transformer for the switch doesn't fit in the powerboard properly).

I wandered up to the shops. I found a phone double adapter. I wanted a modular double adapter, but they didn't have one, only a normal clunky old phone connector to 2 rj11 sockets (which was still ok, because on the wall was a clunky old socket). I got that, and a powerboard.

I went an got in the line. I was in the line waiting to pay, longer than I was trying to find the things I needed.

My mate I play snooker with called me. He's apparently wandering around the shopping centre (the same one I'm in), filling in time.

I'd said I would be there (at the college) all day putting the network in, and that if he was down there, and wanting something to do, he could help :-) At this point, most of the stuff was done, so I didn't need any help.

I eventually got through the checkout, wandered back to the college.

I went past the Starbucks where the cute chick was (like 2 years ago), She wasn't in there today. I think I'd be worried if she was still just working there, 2 years later.

It was now about 12.20pm. Hmm, 2 hours, and I've dragged a couple of network cables, crimped up a couple of patch cables, and plugged the switch in. I'm going to be here all day.

I went back into the college, and plugged the ADSL router in, to the phone, made up a crossover cable, and patched it into the switch.

I put the network card in the pc that required it, that was a pain in the bum. The stupid "found new hardware" wizard, when I told it to search the floppy disk for drivers (because it didn't have it's own drivers) decided it wanted to use the XP drivers, on 2000, and I couldn't override it. Oh well.. should work.

"The device is unable to start". Maybe I need a reboot. Same error. I tried changing the driver, it refused to use the correct ones (for 2000) off the floppy, because it "had a driver that is a closer match". I tried removing the device, detecting it again, and telling it to use the 2000 drivers, but it still wanted to use the xp drivers.

I ended up having to delete the xp driver inf files from the hard drive, then when I told it to use the 2000 drivers, it did, and the card started immediately.

Kerio firewall popped up, with a network connection request, that's a good sign.. the switch is working, the router is working, but more importantly, my cabling is working.

I then went about trying to setup the ADSL connection. This should have taken about 2 minutes..

I went in to the web interface (I didn't bother installing the drivers/rubbish, they would be for using usb (eww) to connect to the device anyway). Uh oh.. what are the username and password.

The woman called the guy who owns the place, since he has the dialup account that was changed to ADSL, and the details are the same.

While I waited for that, I went into the next office, to start working on putting the cable through for the socket for the laptop.

The woman came in, gave me the phone, she had him on the phone.

I confirmed the email address/username (I had that right), and asked him the password, and then confirmed it back to him. I didn't think to confirm the spelling.. There's that assuming making an ass out of you and me again.

I went back, put the settings in. "Auth Failed".

I thought maybe it should have been on PPPoE instead of PPPoA (but then it wouldn't have got as far as "Auth Failed") so I tried that, no good.

I looked in the book, while there was no reference to it, a screenshot showed it set as PPPoA, so that must be what it is.

I tried a few different varations of the password, but it was no good.

The woman tried to call the guy again, he didn't answer.

I called up the tech support line, and ended up on hold for a long long time. (TMBG reference: "She's an Angel").

While on hold for a long long time, while listening to their painful muzac, they came on with a message about virus problems several times.

I listened to it, but didn't pay much attention to it. Sasser virus it was about.

After about 25 minutes, "Nicole" answered the phone. I wanted to confirm the username/password.

I told her the telephone number the service was on, and the username I thought.. it was correct. I told her what the password was supposed to be, she tried it, it was not correct.

She then tried a variation I hadn't thought of, with ie instead of y. It appeared to work for her.

I put the password in the router, reset it, and it successfully connected. Argh.

She asked me to test browsing.. no DNS. She then starts "go in control panel, then networks" yeah love, I know where to put the settings, just tell me the primary and secondary (oh wait, according to M$ they are "preffered and alternate") dns servers.

I put them in, and it was all working.

I then connected the next machine. Immediately I'm getting "error in lsass.exe" and the machine is going to shutdown and restart in 60 seconds.

I assumed it was a worm, like blaster. I tried updating the virus scanner fast enough after it rebooted, but I just couldn't get it done in time. Once it was about 3 seconds short of finishing downloading the update.

I then found that if you put "shutdown -a" in run, or a cmd prompt, it aborts the forced shutdown, however "lsass" whatever it does, is not running, and then some really basic functions, like the ability to shut the machine down, are disabled.

The guy who owns the place rang, wanted to know how I was going. I said it was slow, I wasted 1/2 hour on the phone to tech support, because of the password, and that the machines were crawling with virii. He said he hadn't brought the laptop in, because he had to use it elsewhere, and that once I worked out how to get rid off the stuff, I could fix it. I arranged to fix it on Friday, along with the other woman's home pc who works there, who called me a few days ago (she'd been told to bring it in today, but she forget).

After doing that (aborting shutdown with shutdown -a), I was able to get Norton to finish it's update.

I did a full scan of the machine, it claimed it was clean. Great. {/sarcasm}

I downloaded Avast on the other machine (which I fixed for them a while ago, so it was clean, and had a firewall on it). I then was eventually able to install it (because even winblows name resolution wasn't working, and have the time connecting via IP didn't even work).

I updated it, ran a full scan, and it found about 300 files infected with Sasser. I cleaned that all up.

While I waited for that, I plugged the front desk machine into the network.

I thought I only had 1 rj45 left, and I was lucky to find a reasonable length of cable with one rj45 on it on the floor, so I crimped it up, and plugged machine in.

Immediately it started up with the lsass nonsense. Argh.

I aborted the shutdown on it. Removed Norton AntiVirus (waste of time program), and I installed Avast. It found Sasser, and NetSky.D all over the machine. I cleaned it all up, and installed all the windows Updates, XP SP2 or whatever, and then about 50 hotfixes.

I did the same on the other machine, and installed 2000 SP4 on the machine I had fixed, so they can install office on it.

It took me hours to get these virii cleaned up, and stop the machines from wanting to reboot all the time.

The same problem must be on the laptop that the guy called me about yesterday.

While I waited for updates to download and install, I went back to doing the cable run for the socket in the next room for the laptop.

I took the skirting off, fed the wire through a bit.

I pulled the skirting off the ohter side, then I dragged it out from under the desk, and drilled a hole in it for the cat5 to go through, and then realised the pieces are no where near the full length of the wall (like half) so I could have just slided it along a bit.

I pulled the cable through in the end, put the single rj45 socket wall mount things on (that I bought at the electrical place yesterday).

I put the other end on it, and I was pretty much done. The socket in the next room won't work, because it's not patched to the switch.

In hindsight, I probably could have got away with just getting a single rj45 socket, and mounting that for the laptop (or perhaps not even, just leave a bit of cat5 behind the desk with an rj45 on it that could go in the laptop), and just run normal patch leads from the switch into the pcs, but it wouldn't have looked very good.

I left the place about 5.30pm.

I got back to my bike, and noticed a piece of paper jammed between the seat and tank. Uh oh. Yep, great, a parking ticket. $68 for "standing my vehicle longer than allowed". At first the guy had filled out that I had NSW rego, and scribbled over it with QLD, and he'd also put the fine as $58 in one place, and changed it to $68. Too bad he worked out the state rego, or I would have got away with it.

Oh well, it's only like an hours work, not the end of the world.

I got on my bike, and I rode up the freeway (ran out of fuel about 2/3 of the way home, put it on reserve), I rode up to my mates place, thinking he would be home by now, but there was no one there.

I had a missed call on my phone, from my mate where my other bike is parked.

I called him back, we had a quick chat, he wanted to talk to me about our mate who's Mum died, and he also wanted me to look at his ADSL connection if I had a second. I said I would see him in a bit, after I went to dinner (lunch).

I called my mate, to find out where he was. Apparently he was just about to put his wife on the 6.50pm train back up the coast, and so he would probably be up here about 8.30pm. Hmm, don't think I'm hanging around waiting for him for an hour and a half.

He asked if I tried calling the woman from the club where I did the ADSL install (with the telco) the other day, which I keep forgetting to do.

Apparently her husband, they guy I work with there, had a heart attack a few days ago, and is in hospital. They are expecting to here from me to install network cable either tomorrow or Thursday. I tried calling her mobile, but there was no answer. Assumedly she's in the hospital with it turned off.

I went to dinner, I forgot I had my bag full of tools and stuff. Oh well, the woman at the counter should look after it for me, I don't trust locking it on to the bike, with a few hundred dollars worth of gear in it.

I dragged it in, she had no worries looking after it and my helmet.

She asked what it was worth, what she'd get for selling it, and I said it's worth a bit, but she'd have trouble selling it, then she asked if it was expensive photography stuff or something, and I said no, it was tools "boring" we both said together.

She gave me a dinner ticket, and I went in, had dinner. I came back out, to get my bag.

She asked me if "I wanted all that rubbish back", I said "yeah, but you can have the parking ticket" "hah, I don't want your parking ticket, I'll charge you parking before I take that".

I left, I went and got fuel.

I pulled out of the service station, got a bit down the road, and my stupid speedo backlight started flashing, and then went off. I punched it, and it came back on. Stayed on after that. Heh.

I rode to my mate's place, and I wandered in. He wasn't there, he just popped out for a bit to see one of our other mates (the guy that was in the US), so his wife let me in.

I sat and had a quick chat, but mainly just sat and watched tv waiting for my mate to come back.

He turned up about 45 minutes later.

We had a chat, talked about what had happened to my mate's Mum and stuff.

I was thinking about going down to see him tomorrow, but apparently there's a lot of people around there helping at the moment, so he probably doesn't want more people there.

I'll give him a call in the morning, and find out how he's going, and if he wants me to come down or whatever.

Otherwise I might line up to see him on Friday or the weekend sometime.

I had a look at my mate's ADSL connection, he had the same router as the install I did this morning.

He'd changed the username and password of the account, so I checked they were correct in the router, they were. The only thing I noticed was that it was set to PPPoE encapsulation. I changed it to PPPoA, and it went straight on.

I came back out, we sat and watched tv for a bit, and then I left.

I went to the supermarket, thinking that as usual I would end up starving a bit later, after eating all that MSG chinese food, (and having no lunch), but it's now nearly 1am (damn, I've been blogging for like 2 1/2 hours), and I'm fine.

I got some junk food, came home, shoved it in the fridge, and started blogging.

I'm pretty much taking tomorrow off now. I'll go into the colo, and fix the network, then I will post the serial cables I intended to mail yesterday, and today.

I think I might have some wine.