I got up, had a shower, got ready, had breakfast etc, and then went to work.

I worked, and realised that I'd left my ventolin in the room at the pub. D'oh.

I spent some time looking for a crack for the MP3 software at the pub, but I could only find one for an old version of the software.

I went back to work, working on some javascript for the TiVo tvguide web interface.

We went out to lunch, the senior DBA went into the pub we start drinking at, to do something, or look for someone.

While he was in there, I went back to the room, and I found my ventolin, it must have been in the bed, and that's why I didn't see it this morning.

I grabbed, and went back out, caught up with the senior DBA and the sysadmin.

We went into the cafe across the road. I only ordered a sandwich, ate it, and was still starving.

The senior DBA only ate half his sandwich, said he wasn't hungry, and went outside to have a smoke, so I ate the other half of his sandwich. I was still hungry.

We paid, and left the cafe, and started walking back to work. On the way, I went into the newsagent, and I bought a chocolate bar, and an instant scratchy.

We continued walking back to work, bumped into a guy who's responsible for the data in one of the production systems, he was whinging about a problem with the link between that system, and the one I'm writing. It doesn't work in all cases, because there is data in a format I wasn't expecting, so I have to rewrite part of one of the files, to deal with that, which I haven't done yet.

I got back to my desk, scratched the scratchy, didn't win.

I went back to work, continuing on the javascript I'd been working on before.

I remembered about the problem my mate's brother in law was having with the computer, so I went and found the details I needed, the url to lspfix.exe, but I had to find it on a webserver that I could access via IP address, because dns was broken on the machine.

I found that, wrote the details down, and then I went to see what the senior DBA was doing.

When I went up there, someone had a toy from KFC, a "Patrick" from Spongebob Squarepants, which was getting thrown around, because it had a circuit in it that went "boing boing boing", whenever it hit something.

There was nothing useful going on up there, so I went back to my desk, and kept working.

There was a problem with one of the production systems, so while it was down, they decided to take a couple more down, and while they were all down, we were able to move a sun box that lives on the sysadmin's desk, part of the production systems (they use it as their display).

I got called up, went up and helped the sysadmin move the machine around to his new desk, get it patched, booted, reconfigured ("xhost +" etc), and then we were able to start all the production systems back up again.

When I got back over in that area, I noticed it was a bit quiet. No more "boing boing boing". I asked the senior DBA what had happened, and he told me that the cranky old guy in royalty had got fed up, and stomped on "Patrick".

The little guy in royalty got it, and cut it open, and took the circuit out. The manager of royalty was there, he had a look at it, and then eventually I was able to look at it, and saw that a part of the pcb had been snapped.

It was a little part with a crude motion switch on it, a spring inside a metal cyclinder, so that when the ball hit something, the spring would wobble, and contact the cyclinder, shorting a pin on the chip on the pcb.

I traced the tracks, and found that was all that was on that bit of the pcb, so while I tried to straighten it back up, it snapped off. It didn't matter, because there were only 2 tracks it needed, so I found a paperclip, and used it to short the tracks, and the pcb continued with its "boing boing boing".

The cranky old guy had gone away though, along with most people, so there wasn't anyone there to know it was fixed.

I went back to work after that, did a bit more work, and then the senior DBA called me, and told me that he was leaving.
I said I had a bit more work to do.

I finished up the javascript, and emailed it to the guy who looks after the guide data, for testing.

I decided to leave, so I called the senior DBA to find out where he was, he said he was driving, and would come and pick me up.

I left the building, and waited out the front for the senior DBA to turn up. I jumped in the car, and then we just went for a drive around, out to Bolwarra Heights, and then back into Maitland.

We parked behind the pub we're staying at, and walked across the road, and went to the pub that we usually start drinking at. The old librarian was in here as usual.

We sat and chatted, had a drink etc, and then we all decided to go down to the pub we'd ended up in last night.

One the way, walking down there, the alarm on my phone went off, ah, 7pm, have to ring my mate's brother in law.

We got to the bar, and the librarian said he'd shout all the drinks, and put $10.40 on the bar, and then he went to the loo.

I put $1.50 in change I had in my pocket, because I wanted a spirit, and figured it would push the cost out a bit.

The bartender came over, and I ordered, and the total came to $11.90, the exact amount we'd put on the bar.

The old librarian came back, and got his beer, and then we all went and sat out on the verandah.

I tried to call my mate's brother in law, there was no answer.

We sat and chatted for a bit, I tried calling again, still no answer.

I then sat there, trying to call every few minutes, still no answer.

I gave up, and decided to order dinner while I waited. I went in and ordered, the senior DBA didn't know what he wanted, but I told the bartender that he did want something, so a few minutes later he came out to ask the senior DBA what he wanted.

I tried calling my mate's brother in law again, still no answer.

This is ridiculous.

We had our dinner served, so the old librarian left, to go home, and we ate our dinner.

After dinner, we continued sitting outside, I tried calling again.

Some weird looking lady wandered past on the footpath.

I went and got us some drinks.

A little while later, the weird lady came back again, asking us what we were doing there, and if we'd driven there, and to leave, and "not come here", and weird stuff like that.

Eventually we got rid of her, and then we decided to go back inside before she came back.

There were some of the staff in the bar tonight, just drinking, so they were behind the bar, making their own drinks. They were making Mohitos at one point, which looked pretty good.

I played pool against the senior DBA twice, he won the first game, and I the second.

After that, he asked what I wanted to drink. I said I wanted a mohito, but the bartender (the guy who used to be the Newcastle Knight) refused to make me one. D'oh.

I tried calling my mate's brother in law again, this time it was answered.

I went outside, spent a couple of minutes on the phone, but it dropped out. I called him again, and managed to get his mobile number, since he had to be dialled up while we were trying to fix the computer.

I called him back on his mobile, and spent over 20 minutes on the phone to him.

I was talking him through using wget (which I'd put on their machine to download itunes when I was there) to download the fix. It was very difficult, he was less computer literate than I thought, didn't know what a tilde was, and other basic stuff.

Eventually, just as we were getting somewhere, (I thought), the senior DBA brought me another drink (thank god, I need it), and then my phone's battery ran out.

I went back inside, and after waiting a couple of minutes, I was able to turn my phone back on, and there was enough charge to send an SMS, I told him to download the file on his laptop, and use a usb memory thing to copy it to the pc, and run it.

A couple of minutes after that, my phone rang, he was calling me back. I answered, was able to get out "my battery is dead!", and then it went "beep beep beep", and turned off again.

I sat around for a bit, drinking and chatting, and then I turned my phone back on again, with the tiny bit of charge left, and sent another SMS to him.

I had another drink after that, and then we left the pub at 9.20pm. The bartender couldn't understand it, us leaving so early.

We walked back to pub we were staying at, and sat down to watch the tv. It only gets three channels, so we ended up watching SBS.

A weird show called "Happy Tree Friends" came on, some sort of violent cartoon. It was quite funny.

They showed an episode of Harvey Birdman in the middle of that, and then another episode of "Happy Tree Friends". The start of this was particularly funny, because this episode had the characters "Petey", and "Toothy", nicknames we use for people at work.

After that finished, the senior DBA tried to annoy the sysadmin, who was in his room, but the light was still on.

He was whispering under the door, and shining his laser pointer in the window above the door etc, but the sysadmin didn't respond.

"Erotic Tales" came on SBS then, and I turned off the tv, and went to bed.

I couldn't sleep, so I put on my ipod, with a 60 hour sleep timer.