I got up at 7am, had a shower and got ready etc.

I got to work at 7.45am again.

I spent a little while looking on the Dell site, at the laptops. Didn't do anthing again, too expensive.

I did some work, I finished recoding the file I started doing yesterday, to make it easier to work with, and it ended up about 40 lines bigger. D'oh.

I kept working, and around lunchtime, the sysadmin came down, and said he wanted to go and look at some houses available for rent.

I went out to the car with him, he showed me the bits of maps he'd printed out so we could find them, but no real idea of where they were.

I said I had a map of Maitland, so I went back inside, to my desk, and got the map, and then went back to the car again.

We drove around looking at the houses. A couple looked ok, but some were too far away, and some didn't look very good.

While we were looking at one of the last houses to check out, my phone rang, I answered it, it was a guy from the relocations project that left a few weeks ago.

I told him that I was out of the office, so I'd call him back later.

We finished looking at the houses, and then we went to get some lunch. We went to the place on the road to Morpeth, where we went with the senior DBA when he got his new car.

We went in, sat down, ordered our food. I sent a message to the senior DBA while we were waiting for our food, to find out where he was, if he was on his way back from Orange yet etc.

I didn't get a reply, he's probably asleep in the back of the car.

We got our lunch, and ate it. I realised I didn't have any cash, and they don't split bills at this place, so I paid for both the sysadmins and my lunch on my credit card, saying that I'd shout lunch, and he could shout me dinner.

We left, got back in the car, and drove back to work. I was back at my desk, doing some work later in the afternoon, when I got a message on my phone.

I read it, it was from my drummer mate, apparently he'd been in a prang.

I called him up, to find out what the story was, basically some silly woman hadn't been looking where she was going, and ran up the back of him, when he stopped at a roundabout.

He was ok, just pissed off, because his car was all stuffed up. He'd been to the bottle shop to get some grog, and was going home.

I got off the phone, and then remembered that I was supposed to call back the guy from the relocation's project, and I'd totally forgotten about it.

I called him back, and he was telling me that he was starting a new job next week, and he needed "Microsoft" on his laptop.

I eventually figured out that he needed Office, and Project. I told him that I didn't have either of them, I'd have to try and chase them up.

I said I'd call him back in a bit. I hung up, and I called up my mate, who's dad owns the aircon business, because he's probably got that crap. I don't use any of it. OpenOffice suits me.

Anyway, I called him, he said he didn't have it, but he'd try and download it or something.

I called back the relocations guy again, but he didn't answer his phone, so I left a message. A couple of minutes later, he called me back on my mobile, but neither of us could hear each other, because the mobile reception is useless in Maitland.

I called him back again, on my desk phone, and I told him the story, basically that I wouldn't be able to get it for a few days (well, not until I'm home on the weekend anyway), so then he arranged for coming up to see me on the weekend, to get me to fix up his bloody laptop.

That's the last thing I want. I'm going to that party on Saturday night, and I'll probably be hungover on Sunday, I don't want to be mucking around fixing someone's computer, I don't do that shit anymore.

I got a message back from the senior DBA, telling me he was on his way back, was sick to death of the dopes he'd been sent with, and they wouldn't let him drive, because he hasn't got a replacement license yet, after losing his wallet.

I sent back a message, and told him that I'd buy him a beer when he gets back later.

I just finished with that, and I got another message, this one from my mate's brother in law, in Bundaberg. He wanted to know "how much gig is computer supposed to have?".

WTF? Oh well, it gives me an excuse to call up, and ask if I can stay there when I have to go to court.

I called him up, and spoke to him for a while, eventually worked out that he was talking about hard drive space (because "gig" could have been cpu speed, or memory size, or hard drive space, or anything), and he didn't realise that the disk was partitioned.

Once I'd explained all that, I asked him if he could ask his mum if I could stay up there, and he said that she was home, so I could speak to her, and went and gave his phone to her.

I spoke to her for a few minutes, explained about getting busted on the way home (no one had told her about that), and getting charged with unlicensed driving, and summonsed to court up there. I asked if I could stay there for a couple of nights, and she said that was fine, and they'd even pick me up from the airport.

I got off the phone, and did a bit more work on recoding the files, until I got a call from the senior DBA, he was back, he was in his car, and leaving the car park, to go to the pub.

I said I'd see him in a bit, and spent some more time working.

I eventually left the building at 6pm, I got a couple of steps out of the door, and I decided to check if the sysadmin was still there. I went up to the IT department, he was still there, so I chatted to the sysadmin, and the email support guy for a while.

We left there, and then sysadmin gave me a lift down the road to the pub, we went in, and up to the rooms, the sysadmin told me he was going to lie down, and to let him know when we were going for dinner.

I went into the room, and found there was only 1 towel in there, that's pretty good, considering there are 2 of us staying in here tonight. I went and asked the sysadmin if he had 2 towels in his room, but he didn't.

I went down to the bar, and explained how they'd stuffed up, and I needed another towel in the room. I had to wait a few minutes while the chick behind the bar got someone else to come and serve for a few minutes, so she could go to get another towel.

Eventually someone else came to run the bar, and then we went up the stairs, and she got a towel, and gave it to me, I explained they probably got confused, because the last couple of days it's only been me in there, using one towel, there were 2 towels in there on Monday, and then only 1 towel last night, and now there's only 1 towel again, because only 1 towel has been getting used.

I dumped the towel in the room, and then went back downstairs. I had a beer, and sat with the others, the senior DBA, guy from CCB, and a couple of other people.

We decided to go and get some dinner, so I said I'd go and tell the sysadmin. I went up, dropped my jumped off in my room, and knocked on the sysadmin's door, told him we were going for dinner in a couple of minutes.

I went back downstairs again, and waited, and just as we were about to leave, the sysadmin came down.

We walked down to the club, where we'd been last night, had a few drinks, ordered dinner, ate it, chatted for a while, and then bought some takeaway drinks, and walked back to the pub we were staying at.

There was just three of us, the senior DBA, the social club guy, and myself. We all sat out on the balcony of the pub, and drank our takeaways (which we're not supposed to be doing, but anyway).

While we were out there, the guy from the bar came around, to check the breakfast stuff etc, and nearly locked us out on the balcony. We opened the door just as he was about to bolt it shut, and he told us to lock it when we were finished out there, ignoring the fact that we were drinking out there.

After we finished our drinks, I went to bed, was tired. The senior DBA and the social club guy wandered off somewhere, to go and smoke a joint.

I went to sleep, I don't know when the senior DBA came back.