OK, I as I get back to being way behind, almost a month behind, it's time to try to catch up. I've been putting off blogging the last few weeks, since I mainly don't want to recall some of the stuff, but anyway..

So to jog my own memory, this is the morning of Friday 4th, and I'm planning to get to Brisbane today, on the way to Bundaberg.

I woke up early, and got up 8.40am.

I had a shower and got ready, and finished packing my bag, with my toiletries etc.

As I was finishing packing up my stuff, and making sure I had everything I could need (phone charger, usb cable for ipod etc) Mum came in.

She asked if I wanted to go inside, to show my hair to her friend (who's a hairdresser), umm, not really. A couple of minutes later she came out anyway, and made some comments on it.

She was going in the charity event, "shave for a cure", where people can shave their heads or colour their hair etc, and get sponsors to raise money for cancer research.

I'd thought about going in this, but you had to actually have your hair shaved/coloured in a week or so, when we'll be away, so the timing wasn't going to work, so I just shaved/coloured my hair anyway.

Mum came in with her sponsor book, I said I'd sponsor $5, but then found I didn't have $5 on me, so Mum waid I could owe it to her (which I still haven't paid, oops).

After that, I finished making sure I had everything, and I left.

I rode around to my mate's place, to finish setting up the computer, I got there at 10.20am, went in.

His wife was up, she told me that my mate hadn't gone to bed until 6am this morning. Great, somehow I don't think we'll be leaving at midday like we planned then.

I finished speaking with her, and then I went in to finish on the computer. I'd left it downloading windows updates, which were taking forever for some reason, I wonder if they've finsihed..

I find that the computer is off. Hmm. I turn it back on, and the other pc, since the other one is acting as a gateway.

My mate's plugged the monitor keyboard/mouse back into the other pc, his new one, rather than the one I was working on, so I swapped them back.

Now I found that I couldn't get any video output.. ahh.. because I turned it on with no monitor plugged in, it's defaulted to tv out I'll bet.

I rebooted it, now that the monitor was plugged in, got the boot screens, windows starting, and then nothing. Uhh, wtf?

I rebooted again, and again, same thing each time. When windows should have been coming up, it was just going blank. Hmm, I wonder if this has anything to do with changing the refresh rate, which I did last night.

While downloading updates, I noticed that the monitor was making extremely annoying high pitched noises, and I adjusted the refresh rate, to see if it would fix it. I set it to 75Hz, and then the noises stopped.

I'm suspecting that it switched from 60Hz to 75Hz without problems last night, but since it's been shutdown, trying to start it into 75Hz isn't working.

I rebooted again, and started the machine up in safe mode, or vga mode, or whatever bloody thing they call it these days, and then I was able to use the machine, but it was hideous, 640x480, in 16 colours or something.

I tried adjusting the display settings, and then rebooting, but it came up stuffed again, back into safe mode again.

No matter what I tried, as soon as I tried changing the resolution, at which point I would have been able to change the refresh rate (since you can only change the refresh for the current resolution, stupid design), the display would blank, and I'd have to reboot for another go.

I googled around for answers, and found something about editing the refresh rate settings in the registry, that could work, I spent a while going through there, couldn't find anything much relating to refresh rates in there.

I found a utility that's supposed to reset the refresh rates for all resolutions back to default, so I tried that, didn't work, tried it again (after a reboot from a blank screen), still no good, even after mucking around with the installed monitor settings (removing it from device mangler etc).

I was getting a bit desperate now, I don't know if I'll be able to fix this, I either need a better monitor that can handle the refresh rate, and then I can set it back down, or I'll need to reinstall windows, which I don't have time to do, because we're supposed to be leaving in an hour or so.

I continued mucking around, and I decided to remove the video card drivers, and then I rebooted, reinstalled them, and it seemed to be working, back with default refresh rate.

Thank Jebus for that. I left the refresh rate along this time, and put up with the hideous noises the monitor was making.

I went about trying to install the six million windows updates again, let that go for a while, and then gave up.

I still couldn't fix the issue of the USB running slow I'd seen last night, because apparently that's a fix that requires SP1 or SP2, and I can't install either of these because I didn't use a proper key when I installed the crap (windows).

I mucked around for a bit, and then decided that there wasn't much more I could do.

My phone rang, it was my mate who I used to work with, for his Dad, doing the air conditioning stuff.

He asked me if I'd be able to have a look at one of their pieces of equipment.. he'd knocked it off a desk or something, and broken it. I tried to work out what piece of equipment, and he told me it was a new bit, they'd only had for a couple of weeks, typical.

Anyway, I told him that I couldn't look at it, because I was planning to leave in the next couple of hours, heading 1300km up the coast to Bundaberg, and I wouldn't be back until next Friday.

We chatted for a bit about that, and then I suggested that he take it to the electronics guy at West Gosford I know, who I used to do stuff for, when I was working in the internet cafe.

He said he'd probably take it around there then, and then I got off the phone.

I went back to mucking around on the computer, 12pm came and went, and I continued mucking around on the computer.

Hmm, so much for getting to Brisbane today. It's about 10 hours away, and I don't want to be riding too late tonight.

My mate finally got up about 12.30pm, ok, not too bad, but now he's got to get ready, and the car still needs to be loaded etc, we're not going to be leaving until at least 2pm.

I chatted to him for a bit, and then I said the computer was basically finished, shut it down, and boxed it up.

After that, I went and put it outside, ready to be loaded into the car.

He bummed around for a while, and not much went on, time just ticked away, and getting to Brisbane today was getting more unlikely.

I loaded up the car, with the computer, the stuff they wanted to take, and my bag, so I wouldn't have to drag it everywhere.

My mate's wife got a bit fed up, said she wanted to have left by now, and then my mate starting being unsure of whether he was going to take his bike or not, or get in the car, and that effected her, as to whether she could leave, and go first etc.

He sat around for a while, trying to decide what he wanted to do. He decided that he would take his bike in the end, so his wife could take off first.

I decided I'd rather have my bag with me in that case, in case we end up hours and hours behind, and don't make it to Brisbane, and stay in a motel or whatever, then I can have a shower, and get changed in the morning.

I grabbed my bag back out of the car. It was now about 2pm.

My mate decided that he wanted to ride, but not in silence.

Ok, so now what? I suggested that he just get one of those little digital tuning radios. I've had one before, and had some success with it, you can put the earbuds in, and run the cord down the arm of your jacket, and clip the radio on your right sleeve, then once you're riding, you can reach over with your left hand and adjust the tuning etc.

That wasn't good enough though, he wanted an mp3 player, an ipod.

I pointed out the fact that it was going to waste hours.. going to buy it, loading the music, and waiting for it to charge.

Didn't matter, that was what he wanted. Oh well.

We arranged that I'd pay for it, and he'd pay for fuel for me, and stuff like that, since his card is near the limit, and then we'll sort out the difference after the trip.

Since this was the plan, I told him that I'd go and buy it, and he could have a shower and start getting ready.

It was now a bit after 2pm. I went and jumped on my bike, and started to take off. I had to park and get off again, because someone had left the car door open, and I couldn't get past it. After that, I continued, and I rode to Dick Smith in Gosford, since they're probably the closest place, and it will mean the shortest time wasting.

I got there, no parking spots, bugger it, I parked on the footpath out the front. I should only be here for 10 minutes anyway.

I jumped off my bike, and some yobbo hanging around out the front starts crapping on to me, cool hair etc. He went on to tell me something about how he'd had to shave his off to go to a funeral or something, stuff I really wasn't interested in at this point in time.

I managed to get away from him, and into the shop. I went over to the case with the ipod stuff in it.

Hmm, there's no display model, just an empty display stand for it, that's not a really good sign.

I tried to attract the attention of the staff, several times, but they were busy with other people. I went and lined up at the counter, thinking I could just ask for one there.

I get stuck waiting in the line for 15 minutes before I finally get to speak to someone, I ask if they have any ipod minis in stock, "no" is the reply, so I told the guy "thanks for nothing", and I left.

It really wouldn't have been to hard for them to put a post-it note or something in the case on the display rack saying "out of stock" "sold out" etc, and saving people like me wasting 15 minutes waiting to speak to their ignorant ass.

Anyway, I took off from there, conveniently there was a gap in the garden, so I was able to ride from the footpath straight out down the gutter on to the main road, saving me exiting the carpark, chucking a uturn, and having to wait at the lights.

I went over to the Apple store, once I found it, because I've not been there before, I've only seen the sign for it. Anyway, once I found it I headed in, and as I went in the door I noticed it said that the Apple store had relocated out to Erina (since it was a side project of some computer company). Great.

Someone came out from an office, and I said I was after the Apple store, so thanks anyway, and I went back out the door.

As I was walking back to my bike, one of the guys came out, and was telling me where the new store was, I listened, but I really didn't want to have to go out to Erina, it will just waste more time, and I want to get going.

I started heading back, and I realised there was a Betta Electrical shop in the new shopping area, so I went there, I thought I was pushing my luck, they're more for selling tvs and washing machines I think, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

I parked, went in, asked the guy if they sold them, and he told me that they weren't allowed to.. because Domayne sell them, and they have some sort of an arrangement that stops other shops that are too close from selling them.

I thanked him, got back on my bike, and I went to Domayne. I went into the computer section, and I looked where the ipods had been, they weren't there anymore, hmm, I asked a guy, he said they're up the back, so I went up there, found them.

I looked at all the stuff, this didn't look too promising either.. I can see new 6gb ipod minis, but no 4gb models. I looked around for a bit, in case I couldn't see them for looking, but no.

I headed up to the counter, and I asked the woman if they had any, and she wasn't sure, some chick from another checkout said they only had the 6gb ones.

Great. I left, went back to my bike, and at this point I gave up. I've already wasted an hour on this now.

I started heading back to my mate's place, I decided to stop in at home on the way back, because I realised I'd forgotten to bring my sneakers, and I didn't have a power cord for the computer we were taking up, so I stopped in, and grabbed that stuff, and then went back to my mate's place.

The car was gone, so his wife had got fed up with waiting, and left.

I found my mate still sitting on the front verandah, drinking a coffee, still in his boxer shorts, so he hadn't bothered to do anything in the last hour. I was getting a bit annoyed now, but I just chilled out, because I don't want the trip to be crap before it's even started.

I told him the story of going to 4 places, and having no luck, and that I didn't think he was going to have any luck.

We went inside, and he started calling up shops all over the coast, Big W, Target, Myer, Dick Smith, everywhere was sold out.

I said that perhaps the Apple store would have some, so then we tried to contact them, but the directory assistance chick had no number for them.

We called up the computer business where I'd gone, and found out that they'd relocated, and they were able to give us the number of the new shop at Erina.

We called them up, and the guy said he had a stack of them, so we got him to put one on charge.

After my mate got off the phone, he realised a problem.. the monitor had been loaded in the car, and was now on it's way to Brisbane.

He had an old crappy monitor in the garage, so he went and got that out, and then showed me that the pins in the plug were all bent. Ugh.

It was now about 4pm, my mate finally got in the shower and started getting ready.

I started working on the plug, and I managed to straighten all the pins out, and carefully plug it in to the pc.

I booted it up, missed getting the boot menu up, because I'd have to start up in VGA mode, since this is only a crappy old 14" monitor, and it did have a 17" on it, so it'll be running at some resolution that this one won't be able to handle.

I let it boot anyway, figured I could just ctrl+alt+del ctrl+s it to shutdown, but to my surprise it actually managed to handle 1024x768 or whatever it was set at.

I quickly went in and changed it back to 800x600, because I don't trust it doing 1024x768 for very long.. I had a monitor before that smoke came out of after doing it for a while.

Once that was going, I bummed around for a bit, checked my email or something.

My mate got out of the shower, and got ready, and then we headed out to Erina. I had a rough idea of where the shop was, but we couldn't find it, even after riding around a little bit.

My mate called the shop again, and they told us exactly where they were, and then we went around there.

We parked, and went inside. When we got in there, there was an old woman in there collecting one of those stupid round macs with the screen attached to it on an arm. It had been in for repair.

She was asking what was wrong with it, and was told that the power supply had packed up, and then she asked again what was wrong with it, and the guy just told her again that the power supply was stuffed.

The whole situation was just so stereotypical, the only people who buy macs are grandmas, and the guy working in there had no idea what he was talking about.

Anyway, my mate went up to the chick at the counter, and told them that he'd called ahead, and there was supposed to be an ipod on charge, some guy came out, he explained the situation again to him, and he went and got the ipod off charge.

I paid for it, we had a bit of a chat, and told them about wanting to go up the coast, and about not being able to get one from anywhere else because they were all sold out, and I joked that they should put a surcharge on for being the only place with stock.

We left after that, and it was nice to get out of the Apple store, everything about it just felt wrong.

We rode back to my mates place, and installed the software, and then my mate went about loading some songs into his ipod.

It was now after 5pm, probably even 5.30pm now, so I doubted us getting to Brisbane tonight, more like Coffs Harbour, half the way to Brisbane.

I said we should probably stop off at Coffs, there's a Formule 1 motel/hotel thing there, $49/night I think, or that's what it was when I was up there a couple of years ago.

He decided to call and book ahead, I wouldn't have bothered, but it doesn't hurt.

He got on the phone, and organised all that, a twin room, paid with his credit card, and we got the after hours entry code.

Yep, it was $49/night, (good memory!).

We were getting a bit hungry, so we ordered some pizzas. My mate had complained about the pizzas from last night, so he had a credit for a couple of free pizzas, so we used that, and ordered 2 pizzas delivered, even though the ones from last night had been pickup.

We mucked around on the computer a bit more, and my mate loaded more music into his ipod.

The pizza guy turned up, and I went and collected the pizzas.

We sat and ate them, and then I decided that I would muck around with the ipod a bit, to fix the issues with the volume level etc.

I grabbed mp3gain, and installed it, and set it about normalising all the mp3s on the ipod to 98db. This was going to take a while, since the usb ports were running slow, in 1.1 mode, because you need SP1 or SP2 installed or something, and my mate hadn't done that (Crappy XP).

He'd only put a 100 songs or so in, so it wasn't that bad, I wouldn't have waited for it to do much more than that, when I did my ipod, hanging off my pc, running win2000, with the usb running in proper 2.0 mode, it still took a few hours to go through the full 4gb.

While I waited for that, I went back out and ate some more pizza.

I came back in, and while the mp3gain was still going (nearly finished) I googled around for the stuff to fix the cap in the firmware in the ipod, because of that stupid French law, that stops portable players that can exceed 100db being sold in Europe.

Since when is Australia part of Europe?.. let me guess, since it's not part of the US, it's classed as "Non US" along with the other 95% of the earth.

Anyway, I found gopod, downloaded it, waited for mp3gain to finish, and then I used gopod to undo the cap in the firmware.

My mate finished getting his stuff together, and we finally left, it was right on 7pm.

I put my ipod on, and the first song that came on was "The Long Run" by the Eagles, how true, it will be a long run, I think it's about 500km to Coffs harbour.

We got on the freeway, and headed north, towards Maitland. It started to get dark, and I noticed that my mate's stoplights (I was following him) were flashing a bit, and then they went off all together.

I thought perhaps a fuse had blown, but it didn's seem right, because they had been flickering, so it was more likely a loose connection or something. We kept going, it got darker, and then my mate's lights came back on again.

We got a bit further up the freeway, and they went off again. They ended up in a pattern where they'd be off for 10 minutes or so, and then would come on for about 2 minutes, and then flicker a bit, and go off again.

We got to the end of the freeway, and continued heading for Maitland, since a little way in from there you decide whether to go up the New England Highway (which I went up when I went to Brisbane last time), or up the Pacific Highway, which we were going up this time.

We got to the roundabout where you decide which way to go, and there was a huge articulated truck/road train whatever you call it, tipped over on it's side, fallen out of the roundabout.

It had only just happened a short while before, because there was only a few people there, and one fire truck, we kept going, and as we got a little bit further up the road, there was a stack of fire trucks racing the other way, assumedly on their way to get the truck out of the road.

We kept going for another 45 minutes or so (and my mate's lights continued going on and off, but now they were on more than off, which was good, because it was pitch black), when we got near having done 200km from home, and then we pulled in for fuel.

When we pulled into the bowser, and started filling, I told my mate about his lights flashing, and I said I figured it was a loose connection or something, we finished fuelling, moved our bikes, and then went in.

I went in first, and I paid for my fuel, forgetting that my mate was going to pay for my fuel, oh well.

We went back out to our bikes, and I started checking the wiring, I reached all around behind the lights, and did find that the plug/socket near the lights was a bit loose, and as I jiggled it around, the lights were going on and off.

I mucked around with that for a minute, and managed to get it to plug together properly, and the lights stayed on.

My mate went to relieve himself, and I just hung around the bikes.

A paddy wagon pulled into the service station, and they filled up, and then hung around a bit, I found that a bit suspect.

My mate came back from the loos, and we chatted for a minute, got our stuff together, and jumped on our bikes and took off again.

We rode another 200km, this next leg was really uneventful, all it was was us racing along, and then we'd get stuck behind someone for a couple of kilometres until we got an overtaking lane, and then we'd leave them behind.

After that 200km was up, and we needed more fuel, we pulled into another servo, it was now about 11.30pm.

We fuelled up, moved our bikes, went in, and my mate paid for both of our fuel. He ordered some hot chips, and then we bummed around outside for a minute, he had a smoke, while we waited for the chips to be ready.

We went back in, and ate our chips, and then we went and bummed around outside a bit more, just taking a rest between runs.

While we were standing around, a couple of holden commodes full of kids turned up, with doof doof music pumping out of them.

A chick got out of one of them, and came over to make some comments on my hair, saying that I'd done it for the charity thing, and I told her that I hadn't, I'd been thinking about it, but the timing didn't work etc.

We chatted to her for a minute, and then got our stuff together again, and kept going.

About a minute down the road, we passed the sign saying 109km to Coffs Harbour, sweet, only another hour or so to go.

About 20 seconds after this, we went past a side road to the left, with a bunch of kids standing there, hmm, I thought I saw one of them chuck something at me, and next thing, BANG!, I got hit with something on my left upper arm/shoulder.

I didn't know what it was to start with, I thought it might have been a rock, or a brick or something, because it really hurt, I was going probably 80km/hr when I was hit, and then I realised that I was wet, ah, it was a water bomb.

Now that I was past the initial shock of being hit with something, pain, and realising I was wet I was pissed off. My mate had taken off ahead, I slowed down, I started flashing my light and beeping my horn, trying to attract his attention, because I wanted to go back and run over the dickhead.

He was too far ahead though, and didn't notice me flashing my light, so I decided bugger it, I'm not going to just chuck a u turn and go back, and deal with these kids, and then have my mate notice I'm not behind him, and worry where I am (or not even notice I'm not there, and just leave me behind).

I sped back up again, and just tried to catch up to my mate, because he'd got close to a kilometre ahead in the time I'd slowed right down, while thinking about going back.

We kept going, the rest of the trip was uneventful, I was just fuming, and it took me the rest of the 100km to fully catch up to my mate, and then we got into Coffs Harbour, and then found the Formule 1 motel we were staying at.

We went to park in the bike parking at the front, but some inconsiderate driver had parked his car across all the bike spots diagonally.

We parked up near the entrance, jumped off, and I told my mate about the water bomb incident.

We unloaded our bikes, and went in, my mate entering the code on the front door.

We found our room, my mate put the code in again, opened the door, and we went in, to find we had been given a double room, ie a double bed, and there was no bunk or anything.

Uhh, not gonna happen.

I dumped my stuff (since it weighed about 50kg), and sat on the bed.

My mate tried calling them up, in case they had someone on after hours to answer the phone, but only got a message saying there was an intercom available for after hours contact.

He went out to find that, and I just stayed sitting in there. I checked my watch, it was 1.09am, so we probably got in about 1am.

I'm stuffed, I just want to go to bed, but I'm not sharing a double bed with my mate.

I sat there for a minute, and then my mate came back, he said he'd spoken to someone, and they'd given us a new room, so I picked all my stuff up again, and we dragged up to the new room.

My mate put in the new code, went in, and found what I'd expected to find the first time, 2 single beds and a bunk above them.

We dumped all our junk again, I grabbed my phone charger out, and my ipod charger, and plugged everything in.

Crappy room only had a double power point, with an alarm clock in there, so that was unplugged, the 2 ipods went in there, and my phone ended up on charge in the bathroom, in the single power point for shavers and stover, precariously balanced on the shelf above the toilet that I didn't like the idea of.

When I was plugging it in to charge, I noticed I'd got a message, I checked it, it was from Dad, something about wanting to know where my rj45 crimping tool was, and to let him know when I got there.

I replied, told him the crimping tool was in my toolbox, and that we were only at Coffs, because we hadn't let until 7pm.

I changed out of my bike trousers, and put on shorts, ready to go to bed.

The new room we were in, was at the back of the building, and my mate noticed more parking around the back, so he suggested that we move our bikes around there.

I grabbed my key, and we both went out to the carpark, and moved our bikes around the back, my mate lit a smoke, and then we wandered back around to the front of the building.

My mate said we should let the tyres down on the car parked across the bike spots, I said I'd been thinking about that too, since we easily could have snuck around to the side between the car and the garden, and no one would have been able to see us, and let both tyres down on that side.

I was thinking about it, but there were some people sitting outside, so I figured it wasn't worth it, in case the car is something to do with them, or they see us go over there. A minute or so later, a bunch of guys came out, and went to the car, so if we had decided to do it, we still would have been there, oops.

My mate finished his smoke, we went over near the people sitting outside, they ignored us, and we just went back inside, and back to the room.

I got in to bed, my mate put the tv on (Rage was on), and we had a chat, and then at about 3am, I was feeling pretty tired so I rolled over to sleep, and my mate read his book for a while.

Phew, that's the end of that day, it was a bloody long day.