I wake up to hear this hideous noise, spend several unconscious minutes trying to stop it, and realise it's the alarm going off.

I put the radio on, and lay there semiconscious for the next 20 minutes, and got up at 6.15am before I fell asleep again.

It was cold, I rushed into the bathroom, put the heater on, and jumped in the hot shower.

I really don't want to go to work this week, I could do with another week off.

Just as I was getting ready in the bathroom, I heard the phone ringing. I'm not dashing to get that. It'll be the senior DBA who's picking me up. I'll just call him back in a minute.

I finished in the bathroom, came out, got dressed, found the phone, and call the senior DBA back. He was a smartass, and said "I'm waiting outside", I'd already looked, and knew he wasn't, and said so, and then he told me that he'd slept in, was just leaving now, and would be there in about 45 minutes, that makes about 7.30am.

I got ready, ate the last of the breakfast cereal (which ended up being more milk than cereal).

I'd been thinking about taking a laptop to work with me, while I put off spending some money and buying a new one.

All I want is to be able to enter text, for blogging, so I figured that my old 286 laptop would do, it was pretty small, and if I recall correctly, the battery could even hold a couple of hours charge (though the last time I ran it off battery was probably about 8 years ago).

I found the box with the 286 laptop parts in it (because I ended up with a second one very much like the first, one's a TI, and the other a Sharp something). I'd gutted the Sharp one to upgrade the TI one slightly, adding the VGA output adapter etc.

D'oh, the first thing I realised was that the floppy drive was external, this big clunky unit that hangs off the back, I'd forgotten that, and thought it was an internal drive. Bugger.

Next thing I realised that the one which I had thought was usable, was not completely assembled.. all the screws were out of, so the clips kept coming undone.

When I opened it, I discovered that the plastic that holds the screen to the unit was all broken, so the screen just flapped around. Hmm, maybe I intended to replace that..

I went through the rest of the box, found the screen on its own from the Sharp laptop, and then the rest of the case of the Sharp, more broken than the TI.

Oh well, I give up on that. I loaded all the junk back in the box, and closed it again. I don't know why I keep crud like this.

I've got a small 386 TI laptop here somewhere.. I found that, pulled it out of the case, found the power adapter conveniently in the accessories pouch, plugged it in.

I turned it on, some lights came on. The screen didn't. Hmm. Turned it off and on again, this time the screen came up, that's better.

It came up and whinged about the CMOS settings being wrong - what a surprise, considering it hasn't been turned on for several years.

Hmm, the hard drive didn't sound too happy, spinning up and stopping again, and then trying to spin up again.

I went into the CMOS settings screen, and just accepted the default settings, it rebooted, but wouldn't boot, because the disk won't spin up properly.

I tried booting it a few times, and tapping on the hard drive, but it was stuffed. Eventually it times out trying to boot, it went back into the CMOS screen, and said something about a fixed disk error.

Oh well, this laptop has a floppy drive built in to it, so I can just make up a dos boot disk, and stick a dos port of VI on it or something, and it's enough for me to use for typing on.

I packed it back away, and shoved it in my bag.

Oops, I realised I hadn't packed my toiletries, so I went and did that.

I was just sitting around waiting now, so I decided to update the documentation on the tivo site for the instructions relating to making your tivo internet accessible, and I updated the section about the authentication.

A couple of minutes later the senior DBA turned up, I grabbed my bag, went down and jumped in the car.

We started driving towards the freeway, we got near the couple of roundabouts to get on to the freeway, and there was some weirdness on the other side. As we went around, we worked out what had happened, there had been an accident, an E type Jag looked like it been T boned, but there was no other heavily damaged car near it, strange.

There were a couple of cop cars there, and people on the road. We kept going, onto the next roundabout. As we went around it, we saw another cop car in the driver rest area, with a couple of other vehicles, perhaps the car that caused the accident tried to take off, and went in there or something.

Anyway, we got on the freeway, and kept going.

A minute or so later, we saw a paddy wagon flying along down the other side of the freeway, must be rushing to the accident.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, I put Nova on to listen to Merrick and Rosso, but then it dropped out not long after that, so I changed it back to CDs, because the senior DBA said he'd changed the CDs in the stacker.

He skipped through a couple, and had a Lemonheads CD in there, so we listened to that most of the way to work, and then he put some Something for Kate song on (I can't stand that band, "I was hanging upside down by my underpants").

We got to work, parked, went in to the building, and I went to my desk. I sat and started doing some coding, continuing the stuff I'd been working on on Friday.

The woman who's taken over for the guy who left last week (that we used to annoy in the pub with our noise) came and told me about a couple of meetings going on tomorrow and Thursday I've been invited to.

I continued doing some work. One of the indexers came and told me that the internal interface to the system I'm developing is broken. Hmm. I checked, oh yep, it is.. It's from when I accidently overwrote the production file with the development version on Friday, and I forgot to fix the internal production version.

I fixed that, and he went away happy.

He came back a couple of minutes later, and said that he couldn't select any files. I had a look at that, and discovered that it was the case, there didn't seem to be any files there, strange.

I went in and had a look, and found the data storage directory empty.. this is an NFS mount off one of the other servers, and they were all rebooted over the weekend, because of the power upgrade, when it came back up, this mount must not have been configured as a boot time mount.

I went to see the sysadmin to get it mounted, because I couldn't remember the NFS mount syntax, but found him not there, and some other guy sitting at his desk.

I spoke to that guy for a second, but he couldn't help me, so I spoke to the senior DBA for a bit. The other DBA came along, and told me about some issue they were having with the proxy server, which I'd heard about while I was downstairs, they were trying to download some flex time sheet, and the proxy server was saying it had a virus in it.

Apparently it was saying everything had a virus in it, even trying to go to oracle.com

I spoke to the senior DBA again, and he found an email someone had sent him with details of NFS mounting, so we got that fixed.

I came back to my desk, and configured the NFS mount to come up at boot time, in case this happens again. I wanted to check that I'd put the line in the file correctly, so I figured I'd just unmount and remount the directory, I couldn't unmount it..

The senior DBA had left his shell in the directory, so I just kill -9'd his shell (hehe) and then I was able to unmount the directory, and remount it, so I had got the line right.

I went back to doing some coding, and then I got invited into a meeting.

I went in, and we spent a couple of hours going over the development stuff, and some other related matters, then I came back to my desk.

I got a call from the project manager, he wanted to know what was going on, what all the issues were, and if I was getting things sorted out. i spoke to him for a short while, he asked me into the meetings tomorrow, we might end up changing the scope of the project (again) to actually entail less work, and then completion will be nearer, because my manager wants to get me working on some other projects soon.

I kept working, and the woman who used to administrate the old system came to speak to me. Her job actually expired a couple of weeks ago, and it took a week to get the extension sorted out.

She didn't know anything about my court case, so I told her that story.

When we finished speaking, I tried calling my mate's ex girlfriend again, no answer again, left a message.

I went back to work after that.

At about 1.30pm I decided to go and get some lunch, I went up to see the senior DBA, he wasn't there, and the contract DBA was having a meeting with someone there, so I figured I'd just go and get some lunch.

When I left the building, I saw the senior DBA coming back from lunch, must've forgotten to invite me again, oh well.

I wandered down the street, and I went and bought a couple of pies and a drink, and then I walked back towards work.

On the way back, my phone rang, it was my mate's ex girlfriend, I spoke to her for a bit as I walked back to work, explaining the situation I was in, having to go to Bundaberg with an unlicensed driving charge etc, and how I would like her to write a letter explaining that I was unaware of the suspension because she didn't give me the mail (which is the truth, I didn't know anything about it because she had the mail, and didn't tell me it was there).

When I explained this, she got her back up, saying that she couldn't be expected to call me everytime a piece of mail arrived. I bit my tounge. I wanted to reply, asking if I should just be pyschic then, and call her when mail arrived, but that wasn't going to help the situation.

I said I would speak to her on the weekend when I was home, and try to get a letter sorted out.

I got off the phone, and continued walking back to work. I went back to my desk, and ate my lunch.

I went up to see the senior DBA, or whoever else was up in IT, to find out about getting a couple of floppy disks, so I could make up a boot disk for the laptop I'd brought.

There was about 7 people having a meeting with the DBAs, and I'd seen the guy who looks after the email systems wandering out for lunch when I was coming back, so he wasn't there.

I went around to where IT used to sit, in case there was some floppies or junk left around there, but someone's cleaned it all out.

Perhaps I'll go and look in the store room. I went in there, there was some guy working in there, I said hello to him, and then checked the shelves, and found a box of floppy disks, and pinched a couple of them.

I went back to my desk, and started looking for some sort of a floppy based linux installation.

I didn't manage to find what I was looking for, there doesn't seem to be anything as simple as a disk that will just boot a kernel, and dump you at a shell prompt with vi or something available, and gobs of disk space.

I gave up, found a dos boot disk image, used that, and then stripped everything I didn't need off it.

I managed to boot the laptop off it, good, the floppy drive at least works.

I went back, found a few dos ports of vi, a couple of them would actually fit on a floppy (why are some like 40k, and others like 600k?), and checked that that would work, so then I packed the laptop away again, and went back to work.

I continued working on code, and testing stuff.

I got an email from the guy who looks after the tivo images, wanting a couple of minutes spent on some changes to the install script, related to dialup connections on the tivo if I had time.

I figured it would only take me a couple of minutes (and to fix a bug related to using the "-f" test on files instead of "-s", in relation to empty files), so I made the changes.

I used that gmailfs thing to mount my gmail account as a drive, copied it in there, and then gave the guy my login details, and he was able to get the file out again.

I could have just emailed it, but this way is much cooler :-)

It was now after 5pm.

I was being asked if I was going to the farewell dinner of a big manager who's leaving, I said I didn't know.

I did a bit more work, and then I got a call from the senior DBA, he came down a few minutes later.

Apparently one of the guys from royalty who had planned to stay in the pub tonight had to go home to Sydney, because his wife and baby are sick with a virus.

I grabbed all my stuff, and went and jumped in the car, we drove down the road to the pub, and went in to check in.

The guy explained to them that he was going home, so the senior DBA would have his room for the night, so we could have separate rooms, making the other room a single instead of a double for tonight, and then a double for the rest of the week as normal, but this was all terribly confusing for the bar staff, and we had to explain it to them several times.

It's not that hard. The only change is that the room that has been booked as a double for 3 nights, is now a single for one night, and a double for 2 nights.

They eventually managed to work it out, and then we paid, and got our keys.

We went up to the rooms, on our way up, I mentioned that when I was in the bottleshop the other day, I'd seen JD and lemonade in a can, since that's the drink we've been having a lot lately. I got to my room, dumped all my stuff.

I got the laptop out, and checked the distance from the power point. Crud, I should have brought a longer power cord, I'm going to have to hang off the end of the bed, or sit on the floor to use the laptop (since the battery died years ago, and I ripped it out, maybe I should get it redone, since there's a battery place down the road, anyway..)

I went out of the room, and then just sat on the chair near the tv and relaxed.

I didn't turn the tv on, I've just stared at a screen all day, I don't want to do it now.

About 10 minutes later, the senior DBA came out of his room, and we walked down to the Clubhouse, the pub that we usually go to for dinner, and play pool there etc, and run the jukebox.

We got in there, the other bartender is still on holidays, the guy that used to be a Newcastle Knight, and the guy that's stsanding in for him is there, he's a pain.

We got our drinks, I started with a can of Bundy and Coke. Some weird looking guy, looking like a trucky wannabe, started going on at me about my green hair, and then he was telling me how he'd had gay tattoos done, but his excuse was that they were free, not mentioning the fact that it was going to cost him a lot to get them fixed.

Whatever, I really don't want to talk to you anymore, the senior DBA asked if I wanted to sit outside, so we escaped out there.

We sat down, drank, and chatted, talking about the guys from Orange that are here at the moment, and the meetings they were in all day.

Apparently I'm getting mentioned around the place, because people from the merger are finding out about the stuff that I can do, and trying to work out what I do here, and how long I'm here etc, to see if they can get me working on stuff for them.

Apparently someone questioned if I was a security risk, heh, only if you piss me off, hehe.

Damn, I'm hungry, I went in and got a packet of chips and sat outside and ate them.

We saw the guy who used to work in the library wandering along, we tried to attract his attention, but he either didn't see us, or more likely pretended not to.

I went in to get another drink a scotch and dry, and the ex librarian was in there buying a beer.

I chatted to him briefly. The bartender was trying to ask me if I was working at Minerals, and I told him that I was, but then the librarian started batting my ear, and before I could get back to speaking to the bartender again, a few people came in, so he had to serve them.

We went out the back again, I figured I would just come back in and speak to the bartender in a bit.

We sat out here for a while. The senior DBA went to get another drink, and asked me what I wanted, I told him that I was right, I was just taking my time with my scotch.

I spoke to the librarian for a few minutes, and then the senior DBA came back with a bottle of JD and coke. He told me that he couldn't remember what I'd asked for.. what, nothing?

He said he'd asked the bartender what the guy with green hair was drinking, and he'd said he didn't know, that I was always getting different drinks, and the last one had been a scotch and dry, so the senior DBA asked for a bottle of JD and lemonade, and then the bartender gave him a bottle of JD and coke instead. Whatever, so I drank it.

Around this time, a few more people from work turned up. It was the woman from the mail room, and the chick from around near where I sat (whose place we'd gone to a couple of weeks ago, and played playstation with her boyfriend), and the social club guy who posed for the photos in his boxers a few months ago.

We started chatting to them, they got drinks, and we were there for another while.

The social club guy went in and ordered more drinks, and when he came back, he asked if I drank beer, I said that it wasn't my preference, but he asked if I'd drink one, because the bartender had stuffed up, and poured an extra one, and he didn't want to complain, so he just paid for it anyway (what's a $2 beer, who cares).

So I said I'd go to the loo, and then have a go at it. When I came out of the loo, the bartender wasn't busy, so I went over to speak to him, and he'd been wanting to complain about some people from Minerals that had been in there last night.

On the bar they have a couple of newspapers, and to stop them blowing around, there's a couple of small rocks sitting on top of them.

The people from Minerals that had been in there were being real smartasses, and asking the bartender what sort the rocks were, and he just replied with something like "paper rocks", (since they hold the paper down, heh), and then the people from minerals in there had started going on about "no, it's a quartzite something or other with a twist of something" they were telling him.

I told him that they were the people we call "rockheads", the people I get to sit near everyday. Thank god they're only obnoxious like that when they're pissed, they're silent in the office.

Some more people came in the door at this point, so the bartender had to serve them, and I went back out the back and sat down.

I drank the beer, over the next few minutes, and then ex librarian left to go home, and a few minutes later the chick from work left (though she just disappeared), and then the rest of us decided to go up to the Grand Junction for dinner.

We walked up there, and when we got there, the guy from Orange who took over IT was there, he'd just got back from Orange. We went in, and started ordering our dinners.

I went in to get a drink, the senior DBA was in there, and the people who own the Grand Junction, and the house behind it (to avoid noise complaints) were there, and he was speaking to them.

He was trying to find out about renting the house next door again, he'd organised to see it on Thursday, but now they were changing their plans so it didn't suit them.

While he discussed it with them, I ordered a drink. Some weird guy started crapping on to me, because I was wearing my Atari shirt. God, can I get away from weirdos in this town.

Eventually the said they would show us it now, so the guy gave the woman the keys, and we wandered next door.

We went through the house, it's being renovated at the moment, all the electrical wiring is being replaced (that's nearly been finished, so there were lights in all the rooms etc).

It's a reasonably big place, a big room downstairs, and a kitchen and a bathroom, upstairs there were 2 more big rooms.

The window in one of the rooms looks into the beer garden, and we could see the people from work there, so we opened the window, attracted their attention, and then waved to them.

We went into the other big room, it has a balcony coming off it, we went out there, it seems nice.

All the rooms have fireplaces, and there's no carpet in there at the moment, we told them not to carpet it, because the floorboards are terrifically rustic, really wide planks, all joins all over the place, looks terrific, we told them to just polish the floorboards.

We stood around chatting for a bit, and the woman offered it to us for $220/week, bargain, that's what we're paying to stay in a tiny box in the pub for 4 nights week, now we could have a house for 7 nights a week, with 4 rooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom.

We closed up all the doors and windows again, turned off all the lights, and left.

The renovations haven't been finished yet, the woman said there's still about a month worth of work left.

We went back to the pub, and when we got their, our dinner had been served.

We ate dinner, and chatted for a while, then we all moved out to the beer garden, chatting.

A little while later, the weird guy from before came out, and started crapping on, he was really annoying me. I was trying to have a discussion with a guy, and this idiot just kept interjecting with crap, and swearing, and the guy I was trying to talk to was there with his wife and little kids, and he didn't want this guy swearing all the time.

Eventually I had enough of him, at about 9.50pm. I knew that Woolies would be open until at least 10pm, so I wanted to get in there to get an extension cord, so I could use the laptop.

I made my excuses, and left. I walked across to Woolies, bought a 5m extension cord, and then I walked back to the pub.

I plugged the laptop in, sat on the bed, booted the laptop up, and started using vi to do some blogging. I got a bit bored, so I found my ipod, and put that on.

I managed to blog 2 days in the next 2 hours, and turned it off and went to bed at midnight.