I went down and adjusted my handlebars last night, because they're a little bit off straight.

I went down, got the tools out, loosened the clamps, and then I was able to put them straight, I tightened it all up, and came back inside, and went to bed.

I got up this morning, got ready, went down, loaded up my bike, and went to take off.

It was now that I realised I had adjusted the handlebars to be a lot higher than they were supposed to be, it felt like I had apehanger handlebars.

I didn't have time to fix it, so I rode it to work. I'll come out at lunch and adjust them.

I got there about 9.15am, we had some consultants coming at 9.30, that charge $200 an hour.

I got in, and checked the export from last night I ran, it had broken the server about 2 hours after I started it. I think I need to adjust it back to be more friendly on the server.

The consultants turned up, and we sat and told them about the legacy system, and what we needed the replacement system to be able to do.

The whole time, it was a case of "yeah, it can do that, no worries".

We went up to the server, and we got that properly configured.

After fiddling around with that for a bit, and going over the details for confirmation, it was now that it became evident that "yeah, it can do what you want", however "but you need to write the scripts to make it do what you want".

Hmm, so now, we get to run their software at the front, which runs on IIS, and all the functionality, the linking, has to be done in scripts that we write.

I'd rather just build our own solution from the start, instead of just building half of one, and having some expensive proprietry software on the front of it. Oh well.

They left after an hour, and we'd come to the conclusion that in order to work properly, we'll have to have a database (oracle) holding the tables we need to be able to search.

I got to work trying to remember how to load stuff into oracle, working out control file formats, designing the tables, data types, field limits, date formats.

I don't remember it being this hard (yes, I do, it was harder I think, back when I was at CSC trying to load AMP's asset management database).

At least in this case the schema consists of two tables, no joins, and it's in English.

I worked all day, I got one table loaded in, and went to work on the other table.

I didn't go for lunch, and I forgot about adjusting my handlebars.

I gave up on trying to get the second table loaded, there's all junk delimiters through the file, and I'll have to reprocess it to get them out.

I left work about 5.30pm, I was a bit hungry at this point.

As I walked out to my bike, the manager of the department I'm supposed to be working in was leaving too, he had a look at my bike, and then I loaded it up and I left.

I decided to pull into KFC to get some lunch.

I pulled in, shoved everything in my bag, and went in, carrying my key and my wallet.

I realised I had no cash on me, and I couldn't see any eftpos machines.

I walked next door the service station, and I withdrew some cash.

I thought that I possibly needed fuel, I checked my bike on the way back to KFC, and found that I did need fuel.

I went into KFC, bought my food, and sat down and ate it.

Some guy came and sat at the table right next to mine, (even though there were stacks of empty ones) annoying me.

I finished my food, stood up, dumped the rubbish off the tray into the bin, put the tray back, and then realised I couldn't find my key.

I checked all my pockets, even ones I never would have put the key in, and I couldn't find it.

Uh oh, I think I put it on the tray, when I got my food, and I just dumped it in the bin.

I pushed the flap of the bin open, and looked in, I couldn't see it, but I must have dumped it in there.

I went over to the counter, and explained the guy, I thought it better than to just start rifling through the bin, like a bum.

He said to "go for it", in response to me going through the bin.

I went over, dragged the bin out of the cabinet, and started carefully looking for my key.

Perhaps it's just sitting on the top here, near my empty drink can, nope.

I was being careful not to move much stuff, so that it wouldn't end up down the bottom somewhere.

I couldn't find it, so I started going a bit deeper. I'm looking for a silver and black key, with a large red keyring attached. I had to come to KFC didn't I, where every wrapper, box, carton, etc, are all red.

I ended up going right down to the bottom of the bin, through half eaten pieces of chicken, and other gross things, and then I spotted my keyring, right at the bottom.

I grabbed my key out, put the bin back, and then turned around. The guy asked if I'd found it, I held it up and nodded.

I walked out, jumped on my bike, and I rode it across the footpath back and into the service station, I filled up, paid, came back, moved my bike away from the pump, put all my gear on, and got back on the road.

I headed up the freeway (once I eventually got to it), and it rained a few spots along, so I couldn't go too fast (and I still had my stupid handlebars).

I went to the supermarket near the end of the freeway, got some Coke and chocolate, and went home.

I got home about 7.30pm.

I bummed around on the computer for a while.

My mate I go to dinner with (when I remember :-) called me.

He'd signed up a few people today, but because my dns isn't working, my mail server is not available, and he'd put email addresses on the colo guy's domain setup. I'm really not happy with this.

I spoke to him for a few minutes, saying that I didn't really want this setup, and I'd rather the people went somewhere else all together, than have half an account, and the wrong email address.

I said I would call the colo guy to try to get my routing workaround (because I can't fix the domain settings) back up, which makes the website and the email server accessable.

I called the colo guy, briefly explained the issues, and he asked me to call him in the morning, that was fine, since I didn't expect him to do anything tonight, and it's not that urgent.

I started copying some CDs, and after going through a few, all of a sudden my machine (AMD2600 I built recently), started mucking up.

Windows blue screened, and said "unable to write files to drive c: data or files may be lost". Oh crap. the disk must have failed.

I rebooted the machine, and it started booting, ok, maybe windows just went dumb.

Windows started to boot, but it had a bunch of errors, about missing dlls, and stuff crashing.

I rebooted again, it did the same thing.

I booted with a floppy, and went to look at c:, to see if there was corruption or something.

When I looked at c:, there was no windows directory, or program files. it looked like it was another drive, my d: or something. The disk must have failed, and now d: has become c:

I rebooted again, and now the machine tried to boot off the network. great, the disk must be stuffed.

I boot off the floppy again, started up partition magic..

wtf.. my c: is now e:, and e: is now c:.

I thought perhaps the bios was scrambled, and had detected the disks in the wrong order or something, so I tried resetting it, but no matter what, it kept detecting them in the same order, 60gb, 120gb, 120gb. When it should have been the opposite order.

I pulled the disks out, and I connected the secondary master (which was c:, and became e:) alone, as the primary master, it was now back as c:, but windows was still not working, I think it's screwed.

It doesn't make sense. When I built the machine, I must have connected the disks in the wrong order, but it booted off the secondary master, and set it as c:, and now, even though I've had the machine for a few weeks, and rebooted umpteen times, it's only just worked it out, in the middle of running. Weird as.

I tried restoring an old backup of the registry, but that didn't fix it windows, it still complains dlls are missing, even though they are there, and in c:\windows\system. Stuffed if I know what's going on.

At least the disks are all ok, and the data is all still there. I don't really care if windows is stuffed, I'll just reinstall it, or put linux on, as I've been planning to do.

I booted up with knoppix, everything was there, and ok. I turned the machine off, and went to bed.