Back to work..

I got up, and got ready for work, and went to take off.

I decided I'd have to find out about getting the front fender welded or something.

I rode around to the welding place at West Gosford, where the air conditioning guy I used to work for got stainless steel welding done. Halfway there, I realised I'd forgotten to bring a spanner to take it off again, I'll have to try to borrow one.

I went in, spoke to a guy, he sent me over to another guy, he came and had a look at it, said he might be able to do it, if I took it off the bike. He offered me some tools, I just grabbed a 12mm spanner, and went out and took it off.

I took the fender inside, and the guy had a look at it. He was worried that it was so thin, that it wouldn't weld, it would just melt.

I said it didn't matter, since it was already totally stuffed anyway, it can't get much worse.

He got a bit of scrap metal, stuck it inside, put a couple of clamps on it to hold it back together.

He did some TIG (I think it was TIG) welding on it, checked it, and said that it was actually welding, much to his surprise.

He spent the next 10 minutes or so welding up the big tear, and then he welded up the bits where the bolts go through to hold the fender on, since they had torn right off, and were acting like washers.

He also welded up a couple of tears starting on the other side, and then once it was all welded, he used the angle grinder to clean it all up, and it looked fine, except for the fact it was bare steel.

I asked what the guy wanted for doing it, he ummed and ahhed for a minute, and then told me to go and see they other guy, who I'd seen first.

I went over, he was on the phone, when he finished, he came out and spoke to me., I asked him what I had to pay for the work, and he said it had only been about 10 minutes, so $10 would do. I said I'd give hime $20, since it had been a bit more than 10 minutes, and he said that was fine.

I chatted to him for a minute, he asked what I was up to these days, since I don't work for the air conditioning guy any more etc.

I went back over, grabbed my fender and the spanner again, and went out and put it back on my bike, it looked fine.

I took the spanner back, and thanked the guy again for fixing it.

It was now about 11am, I went to the service station nearby, and got some fuel, since I didn't like my chances of getting to the on the freeway with the fuel that was left.

I put $10 of fuel in, about 2/3 of a tank, and then I took off, rode up the hill to get on the freeway. I haven't been up this way for months, now that I go north on the freeway instead of south, since work relocated.

I had to make a right turn at a set of lights to go north, I ended up waiting behind a taxi.

The lights to go both straight, and turn right were red, since it's a T intersection, and the rode to the right had the green lights.

When the light to go straight went green, but the right turn stayed red, I revved my engine, and the taxi went to turn right, but then stopped again.

Haha, I love doing that to people, this guy's been the best yet, most people just take their foot off the brake, and then put it back on again, this guy actually started to go.

When the light did go green, I think he was trying to be a smartass, and wait, but because he didn't go straight away, his passenger in the front seat pointed at the lights, and then he went.

I followed him around the corner, overtook him, and then turned right again, to get on the freeway.

I rode to the service station on the freeway, filled the tank up, could only get $5 of fuel in.

I took off again, and went to work.

I thought about stopping in at the place near work that sells motorbike clothing (I keep seeing a sign for it) and buying myself some new gloves, but the sign wasn't out, so I just went to work.

I got to work at midday, I found the fire door open again, that was good.

I got to my desk, and started looking at something (I don't remember what, this was a week ago, gimme a break).

I got a call from the guy upstairs, he asked what was going on, and said it was my birthday yesterday, hmm, how'd he know, I asked, he didn't tell me.

I went upstairs, hung around, waiting to go to lunch, and then the DBA told me that he'd been speaking to the woman at the temping agency (we're with the same one, along with the db guy), and she'd told him it was my birthday.

They'd decided we'd go and get lunch, we all left, about 6 of us, and walked to the Leagues Club.

On the way down there, I was chatting to the guy from work, who looks after email mainly, and he asked me if I'd been at Hungry Jacks yesterday. I said I had, he'd been in the pub near there, and seen me turn up with my mate, in his car.

We went into the all you can eat Chinese/seafood etc, and we were down there for about an hour.

We walked back to work after that, and I went back to my desk.

I sat and did some work for a while, and at about 3.30pm, I decided I should go down to Kmart, and get some paint and stuff, to fix up my fender, so it doesn't rust.

I walked down there, found their paint section. It was a bloody shambles. They were doing some renovations or something in a couple of aisles there, so there was stuff everywhere, it had been unloaded from the shelves, and was all stuck in a stock trolley, and the stuff that was on the shelf, was totally disorganised.

I went and looked at tools first, I bought a small wire brush attachment for a drill, I can use that to clean the rust of the front of the fender, where it's gone down before (I might as well fix that, while I'm painting it).

I went to look for sandpaper, couldn't find any. I went back to look for paints.

I went right through all the spray cans I could find on the shelf, and semi-gloss black was the best I could get. I couldn't find gloss black (if there's such a thing) only matt black, which I knew I didn't want.

Reading the can, it said that bare steel should be prepared with primer first, so I looked for a can of that, but didn't find one.

I was just looking for sandpaper again, when I spotted more cans of paint on a stock trolley.

They had more stuff piled on top of them, including sandpaper, so I couldn't really go through them, but I found a can of primer in the front, so I grabbed that.

I looked at the sandpaper, and then I saw sanding blocks, so I got one of them.

I went up to the register now, they only had one open, with about 6 people in the line.

Terrific.

I got on the end of the line, waited for a couple of minutes, more people got on the line behind me.

They opened another register, and some of the people from behind me went over to it. I thought about it, but whenever I do that, I end up on the end of the line, losing my place, and usually waiting longer, because some idiot will clog up the register.

I stayed and waited where I was, a couple of people went through the register, I was now third in line, there were 2 people being served, and a woman waiting in front of me with a trolley full of crap.

I waited and waited. The guy being served was arguing about something, he's buying a couple of DVDs, and perhaps the price is wrong ("the price is wrong bitch!" :-), or something else, so he's standing there squabbling, the checkout chick is looking all over the dvd cover, and shaking her head.

I couldn't hear any of what was being said, but I was getting really annoyed now, a couple of people have gone through the other register in this time.

Why do people argue? if the price is wrong, or something else, and they aren't sorting it out, then just don;'t buy whatever it is. Tell them you don't want it, and someone will go and put it back on the shelf for you, and you can go somewhere else.

Don't stand here clogging up the line, and pissing me off.

Eventually they sorted out whatever the problem was, and the guy left, I don't know if he took the DVD or what, I couldn't look at him any more, because it was making me too angry, so I just stared at the floor waiting.

The woman pushed her trolley up to the counter, and started uploading her crap, pairs of shoes, a backpack, and some other stuff.

The checkout chick started ringing it up, and then found that the backpack didn't have a barcode/tag on it anywhere. Oh great.

She started looking all over for it, didn't find it. She went to the PA, and asked someone from sporting goods to come down. We waited. No one came.

She asked the other checkout chick for the number of the sports section, and then she called them on the phone at the counter.

She spoke with someone for a couple of minutes, explaining what the bag looked like, the colours etc, and then had an argument with the person on the other end about the colour of the bag.

Who gives a shit, if it's the same bag, just put the damn code in.

Eventually she got off the phone, and typed a code in, rang it up, and the woman paid with a card, wasting more time.

Eventually she took all her crap, and left, and I got to the register. Bloody ridiculous, I've spent more time in the line, then wandering around through their abysmal mess of a shop looking for the stuff I need.

The woman asks me how I am. I was very tempted to tell her, but I just refrained from saying anything, I couldn't bring myself to say "fine", since it would have been a complete and utter lie.

She rang my items up, it came to about $30 or something, I got a $50 note out of my wallet, gave it to her, and got my change, and headed back to work.

It was now a bit after 4pm, on my way back to work, the guy from upstairs from work went past, with another guy from work, a support guy. He bipped the horn, but he'd gone past by the time I worked out who it was.

I went back to work, and back to my desk.

I did a bit more work, I'd got an email from the guy upstairs, asking if I'd gone to buy a cake (since they'd told me to, but I said I couldn't really be bothered, at least not today), I replied, even though he'd already left.

I did another couple of hours of coding. I had intended to leave work at 6pm, so I could get home, and still have some light, to work on my bike, but I didn't end up leaving work until 6.40pm.

I left, headed for home, I went to the supermarket on the way home, bought some pies, and then went home.

I dumped all my stuff inside, grabbed the long extension cord I'd been using to run the fridge out of the house, plugged it in, and went and chucked it over the balcony, so I could work down in front of the garage with the drill.

I found my drill, got the other tools I'd need, and went down to my bike.

I took the fender off, and then I started griding the rust off it with the wire brush in the drill, once that was done, I grabbed a newspaper to mask it off to paint, but it was getting too dark.

I decided to work in the garage, the car isn't in there, because my parents have bought a stack of wood to put down another floor, and it's in the garage instead of the car. (Some of it is too long to fit in there, and sticks out under the door, that's how I know what's in there).

I tried pulling the door up, figuring that the automatic opener had been disengaged, so the door could be pulled down, and left up a bit for the wood to stick out, but it hadn't been.

I went around to the side, to check if the door was unlocked, so I could open it, reach in, and press the garage door opener button on the wall (there's so much junk in front of the door, it only opens about 3 inches).

Nope, that was locked too. I went to the side window, it was open, and the cats have destroyed the flyscreen, and it was out of the window. I pushed it open all the way, and climbed in there.

I went over, pulled the cord to disengage the door opener, and then I pulled the door up.

I dragged all my junk inside, fender, drill, paper, tape, paint etc.

I finished off getting the rust off the fender.

Once that was done, I stuck newspaper all of the fender, to mask off where the paint is still fine.

I sprayed primer on the bare steel, but I hadn't done as thorough job masking as I should have, being lazy, and overspray had gone on the front where the paint was still fine.

Oh well, I'll just have to paint over it.

I started masking off the sides, where the welding had been done, to prime them.

While I was doing that, the cat came in. It took me about 2 seconds, and I some some horrible stench. Cat shit. The cat's arse and tail was covered with shit, and it stank.

I got up to shoo the cat out of the garage, when I went near him, I got a full whiff of it, and it nearly made me spew, I had to get out of the garage, to get some fresh air, and I was gagging.

The cat went away, I went back to masking, it still stank horribly in there.

I finished masking the sides, doing a lot more thorough job, and then I primed them.

My phone rang, it was my mate from Wyong, he said happy new (Chinese) year, and happy valentines day, and I said "one more", and he said "what?", and I said, "my birthday, yesterday", so he said happy birthday.

He wanted to know something about a computer he was working on. I spoke to him for a few minutes, and then I got off the phone.

I checked the priming on the front, it had been on there a while, but was still pretty wet.

I decided to leave it sit for a while, and I want inside. I pulled the garage door down, to make sure the stinky cat couldn't go in there.

I sat inside for a bit, watched a bit of tv, probably about 1/2 hour.

I went back down, opened the garage, and sprayed the black paint over the top of the primer, it doesn't look too bad at all.

I pulled the door down as I went out of the garage, and left it to dry overnight.

I came back inside, and went about making some dinner. I grabbed the pies, checked the instructions, and found I had to cook them for an hour. Gees, I should have put these on before going to paint the fender, oh well.

I put one in the oven, and then I sat and watched more tv, I ate my pie when it was ready, sat round a bit more, and went to bed about midnight.