I woke up about 6.30am with the alarm going off. It's 13 degrees, ugh.

I got out of bed, after about 10 minutes.

I had a shower, oops, the soap stuff ran out. Oops no deodorant left, I knew there was something else I had to buy at the supermarket.

Oh well, I'll probably just stink, not much I can do about that now.

I got dressed, had some breakfast, then I pulled my insulated trousers on, it looks pretty cold out there.

I took my bag with me, with a bunch of junk I probably wouldn't need.

I ended up leaving about 7.25am.

I came down the freeway, no issues there, at the end of the freeway, there was a bit of a wait to get off, ugh, that's never a good sign.

A couple of bikes went flying past me, up between the lanes. Stuff it, so I went up there too.

After that, the lanes are far too close to be able to do that much, if at all.

It was a pretty slow trip after that, my clutch hand got a bit sore from all the stops and starts.

I got to the Department of Minerals and Resources about 8.50am. Ugh, an hour and a half to get here.

I parked up off the street, where I did on the second day when I worked here about 6 weeks ago.

I headed straight in, I tried to call my mate a couple of times, but he didn't answer. I went into the reception, and told them who I was, and they called my mate on his desk phone.

He came out a couple of seconds later, and I went into the office area with him.

I took my insulated trousers off, it was hot enough with kevlar lined jeans on as it was.

I spoke to the guy I'd be working for, and he told me what he wants done, just basically working out what's all sitting within the intranet files on an old server, moving the stuff that needs to be kept, and dumping the rest of it.

That will probably take me a week or so, and then after that there are some different projects I can have, if I am interested, including finding some way to automate the conversion of 600 thousand TIF images, from a proprietry TIF format, to the standard TIF format. Hmm, that will be an interesting one.

I thought about it for a while, apparently they are all stored in a proprietry SQL database (perhaps a variant of M$SQL), and there's an ODBC driver that hooks into that database, to pull the TIF data out, and serve it to web browsers.

The ODBC driver is really buggy, and crashes the machine most of the time apparently, and isn't compatible with winblows XP, which they are running on almost all of their gear.

I said that there would probably be some way to do it, build a machine running 2000 (or whatever the buggy ODBC driver works somewhat reliably with), and get it hooked into apache (if that's possible), and then write a script of some description, that will request all the images, and then pipe them into a standard TIF generator.

But anyway, that's the next project, if I want it.

They found a desk for me, and I was able to get started.

I started working on this project, attempting to relocate everything of value from an old server.

Apparently the machine has a lot of issues, and if you do the wrong thing, then the whole thing will fall over. I decided I would just tar everything up I needed, and then move it to the dev machine, and go through it there.

Even that wasn't easy, since the tar on the old machine is ancient, and it doesn't strip the leading / from the paths, and then when you restore the tar, you end up walloping files.

I moved the tar file across to the other machine, and tried untarring it, but it didn't work.

I decided to ftp the files over (since to start with, I only had a few files to work with), but even that was a pain, it wanted to copy the files from one server, to the same location on the other server, which didn't exist, and I wouldn't have had write access if it did exist anyway.

I ended up having to ftp the files across, with no paths on them, switching to the directory the files where in, and then I was able to get them across. Ugh.

I went through the telephone "database" first, something I thought would be fairly difficult, dumping the contents of a couple of oracle tables perhaps, and then loading them back in to a different one (and different version), but as soon as I started poking around in the cgi-bin directory, to find the scripts that handled the telephone directory (searching, updating etc), I found that it wasn't a database at all.. the perl scripts in cgi-bin were just working with a text file.

I found the text files it used, and found they were just flat files containing all the details. This has to be one of the worst things I've ever seen. There is no error checking in it, or anything.

The file locations are bad too, the stuff lives in /etc, and then is served by apache, that's just asking for trouble.

I copied all the stuff over to the replacement server, and went about making it work with some more sane file locations.

I would have replaced the whole thing, loaded the data into oracle, and found or written something to pull it out, but I was told that the department is merging with a couple of other departments in a couple of months, and one of the other departments is going to be looking after the telephone directory, so that would have been a waste of time. (Over a year later, it's still in production, maybe I should have rewritten it).

At some point, when that happens, they'll probably get me in to convert their flat file of details into the format required for import to the system the other department uses.

I continued working on that, got the searching working, cool.

I had a look at the update procedure. There's a web form that calls a cgi script.

When I examined the cgi script.. it didn't even update the flat file of details, it sent an email to 3 people, containing all the data the user had entered into the form, one of them must then somehow manually add/change the entry in the flat file.

What a hideous thing.

My phone rang, it was the receptionist from the college I was at on Friday. Apparently they can't get their email, it keeps asking for the password.

Hmm, Thunderbird must be being dumb with passwords again. I noticed that one of the other times I installed it recently too, ah, I know, it was in the cafe, when I got rid of lookout, it refused to save one of the passwords for some reason, and asked for it everytime.

I never have an issue with passwords in my install of Thunderbird, and I have like 5 accounts set up in it.

I told her type the password in, and then it will get the mail, I thought that would sort it out.

She didn't know the password. I couldn't remember it. I told her to call the guy who owns the college, he told me the password the other day, when I installed Thunderbird.

She also complained of not being able to send email. Hmm, perhaps it's not a problem with Thunderbird then, but the mail server they were trying to use.

I told her to try sending the email from the other machine (that will test the mail server/internet connection), and if that fails, to try contacting the tech support to see if they are having problems with their mail server.

About an hour later, she called back again, still having issues. She had got through to the tech support after about 40 minutes, and they had gone through a few settings to check, including some settings on the ADSL router, I don't know what they would have been checking in there.

Anyway, it was still asking for the password all the time, and putting the password in didn't help.

It was now about lunch time, so I went out with my mate to lunch, we wandered out of the building, found it very cold and windy, and came back in and got our coats.

We wandered around the corner to a greasy food place, and I got some pasta. We sat and chatted for a while.

On the way back to the office, my phone rang again, it was the colo guy.

He asked me how I had gone changing the radius back over the weekend. I told him that I hadn't, because I didn't get home on Friday until like 1.30am, and then I left it over the weekend, in case it didn't work, because he doesn't like not having the phones manned when changes are made.

He said he would change it over for me now, and see how we go.

I got back to the office, I went and chatted with the guy I was doing the work for, my phone rang again. Ugh, I'll bet it's the college again. I sent it to message bank.

About 3 seconds later, it rang again, it was the colo guy. I spoke to him, and he told me that the radius was not working. The requests were coming through 4 times, and then failing.

Hmm,I said I would have to have a look at it later.

He asked me what time I was getting home, I said about 6pm, forgetting I was going over to see my mate, he told me to give him a call, and we'd go through it then.

I got back to talking to the guy again, he told me more about the other projects they will have available soon, that I can do if I want.

He also told me several times to make sure that I take my time doing things, not to rush, and make sure that everything is done properly.

My mobile phone rang constantly, my message service with the message whoever it was I sent to messagebank left.

I came back to the desk where I was working, and my phone rang again. I answered it this time, it was a different woman from the college, wanting me to call her.

I called her back, but only got a message service. I left a message for her to call me.

I got back to work, going through the cgi-bin directory, to find out what scripts were in there, and what they did.

My phone rang again, it was the receptionist from the college again.

I told her that the email should just work, and that if it wasn't I would have to come and have a look. I said that Friday night would be the earliest time I had available, and it would be about 5.30pm.

I told her how to open up lookout (because I removed all the shortcuts to stop them from opening, as one of them did about 3 seconds after I installed Thunderbird).

It seemed to work. Hmm. I told her to get the guy who owns the place to call me if he wanted to get me in there on Friday.

I got back to work, going through the cgi-bin directory.

I found a search engine of some description in there, didn't work. I fiddled around, almost got it working, but then came across a problem I didn't know how to fix, so I just left it and kept going with the other files.

I found references to cgi scripts in the web pages, that weren't even there. Hmm, including on the live webserver, oops, who did that? Obviously noone uses the search engine, or they would have complained, and something would have got done about it.

I found the cgi script of the missing search engine, on the old server I'm moving the files off.

I grabbed it off, and worked out how it worked, and I got it working.

It was now a bit after 4pm.

About 4.30pm, I called up my mate's place, to check he was in, he wasn't but would be back in about 1/2 hour. I said I was heading over, and would probably get over there about the same time.

I packed up, and I left, after checking the street directory.

As I was loading up my bike, I realised I would need some change (or money in general) to get across the motorway (toll), and I only had about $1.50 in cash on me.

I headed off, I need fuel anyway, so I can get some money then.

I headed across towards the entry of the motorway, I didn't see a service station except for one past the turnoff to the road that leads on to the motorway. Bugger.

I went over there, filled up, pulled some cash out, and got the guy to break the $5 note change so I had the exact money to get across the motorway. I put the exact money in my jacket pocket, so I can just rip off my glove, grab the cash, chuck it at the guy, put my glove back on, and take off.

I headed back to the road that lead to the motorway, it was all banked up, took a while to get through there, and there was a service station down there. D'oh.

After a little while I was able to race across this road, get on the motorway, and head towards my mate's place.

I got to the toll booths about halfway across. D'oh, the toll must have gone up, I thought it was either $3 or $3.30, the amount I put in my pocket, but it's actually $3.80.

I pulled up, gave the guy the $3.30, and then I had to fish out an extra 50c. I had to rip off my other glove, and stand up, because my bike jeans are so tight around the pockets (presumably to stop stuff falling out).

It took way longer than it should, but I got it out, gave it to the guy, and then I had to put my gloves back on, and take off. Sucked in to the guy waiting behind me.

I headed along the rest of the motorway. It's been ages since I've been across here. I was sure I had to head for the end of it, but I kept seeing turnoffs with signs that looked like where I wanted to go.

I hoped I did remember correctly, and I wasn't going to end up in Canberra or something.

I came to the end of the M2 eventually, longer than I thought, it was 5.15pm. So much for being 1/2 hour away.

I went over to my mate's place, he wasn't there, but his sister, her husband, and some woman I haven't met before were there.

I had a quick chat, and then just sat down to wait.

My mate turned up about 1/2 hour later.

I saw his wife, who I haven't seen for ages, she's been over in the US for about a year or something now.

I was there until just before 7pm, because my mate's brother had arranged to have a meeting with the estate advisor, and they had to leave.

He asked me if I was coming to the funeral, and I said I was, so we worked out the details of that. Apparently one of our other mates is coming, so I'll just jump in the car with him to come down on Wednesday morning.

I pulled my insulated trousers on again, it was pretty cold out now, I went out, loaded up my bike, and I took off, and rode towards home.

I thought about going back across the motorway, but at nearly $4, it's not worth it. At this time of day, I'm in no real rush, and the normal way is empty anyway.

I headed into McDonalds just before getting on the freeway. I sat and read the paper for a bit. I felt like about 11.30pm, but it was only about 7.30pm.

I left, got on the freeway, and came towards home. Whenever I cornered on the freeway, it felt like my bike was slipping a bit, not very good at 120km/h.

I found that if I sat back and a bit more upright, it didn't seem to do it, it could be a weight placement thing, or it could just be me imagining things.

I got off the freeway, and headed to the supermarket.

It now felt like it was after midnight, but it was only 8.30pm.

I bought deodorant and stuff, and then I came home.

As I took my insulated trousers off, my phone was somehow stuck to them, and it tore the clip off the cover that's slowly been getting more worn over the last year or so. Bugger, now I'll need to try to find another leather case for it, and they probably don't make them anymore, and most of the new phones are smaller than this one (nokia 8210 I think it is).

I went in and saw my parents, gave Mum her chocolates (I would have given them to her last night, after I came back, but it was too cold, and I couldn't be bothered going outside).

I sat in there for a bit, there was a letter there, from the tax department, my tax had been done, and I had received my refund. Ah, that will be the money I received I didn't know where it come from.

I watched tv for a bit, and then I came out.

I sat and watched the tv for a little bit, and then I went to bed about 11pm.

I watched some tv, and then I turned it off and went to sleep.