I got up about 11am, and bummed around for a while. I watched some tv.

I wanted to get the disks I've got hanging around sorted out, so I put the SATA controller back in my AMD machine.

This wanted to be more hassle than it should have been, for some reason the disk attached to it didn't show up. I installed the drivers for it, in case it was something to do with the fact I might have reinstalled the SATA controller in a different slot than it used to be in.

This didn't help, even after a reboot, the drive still didn't show up. WTF's going on here?

I fiddled around a bit more, and rebooted again. I noticed that the machine was going straight from the BIOS post screen, to the windows boot screen. I wasn't seeing the SATA controller booting, and detecting the SATA disk attached.

I pulled the controller out, and put it in again, making sure it was seated properly, and tried booting the machine again, still no sign of the SATA controller boot screen.

I shut the machine down, pulled the controller out, and put it in a different slot. I booted the machine up, and saw the SATA controller boot. Hmm.

I shut the machine down, and put the controller back in the original slot, turned the machine on, and this time it came up. God knows what was going on there.

I copied some more recordings out of the tivo, on to the local disk.

I went and had a shower, and then I went and did the washing. I had some breakfast, now about 11am.

I heard my phone beep, a message, I checked it, it was a message from my drummer mate. Apparently we're not going to the lunchtime session of Star Wars now, we're going to the 7.30pm session, so my mate won't be around until later.

I bummed around on laptop, and while trying to configure something, I noticed the enter key sticking, which was really annoying, when I'd try to type something, and have the shell output scroll off the screen, because the enter was stuck down, pumping in newlines.

I pulled the key off, carefully, to see why it was sticking, in case the mechanism was stuck in some way. In the process off taking the key off, I broke the really flimsy plastic spring under the key.

Now the enter was stuffed, and wouldn't even go back on, it was just floating all around. I noticed that the left shift key was exactly the same size, so I carefully pulled that key off, and almost broke the plastic spring under it in the process.

I took the spring off the shift key, and fitted it to the enter key, and replaced the enter key on the keyboard, which held, but I wasn't really happy with, it's going to break again at some point.

I then tried putting the shift key back on, with the broken spring from the enter key, but this just wasn't going to happen.

I then decided to try to find a way to fix the spring, gluing something on, to repair the tiny bit of plastic that had come off. I found some model cement, and tried using it to glue some small bits of wire on to the spring, to fix the pivot, but this didn't work.

Model cement is no good for attaching metal to plastic. I remembered that I had some superglue, somewhere, looked for that, and found it.

I then glued the metal bits on again, and left the whole thing to sit for a few minutes. I was impressed, I managed to avoid gluing the whole thing to my fingers.

Once I thought it had dried, I tried putting the key back on. It almost worked, but the bits of wire I'd glued on were too long, and in making them fit, one of them came off the plastic.

I couldn't be bothered regluing the whole thing, so I just used the one bit that had stayed glued on. The key stayed in place, and was usable, but it was all wonky.

I decided to email Dell, and log a ticket, since the fault with the keyboard, the key sticking, had been there since it arrived. I mentioned that I broke the key, while trying to stop it sticking, rather than trying to make them believe that the key was already broken.

I don't care, even if I have to pay to get it fixed, though I'd be annoyed, I just want it right.

I bummed around more after that, my drummer mate called me, and told me that someone else was going to pick me up, his cousin, who's going out with my mate who works for ABC's sister.

The issue with this, is that he doesn't know where I live, and wants me to go to the school around the corner. I don't think I'll be doing that.

I bummed around more, and installed a few games on my laptop, and then I sat and played "Duke Nukem: Manhatten Project" for a little while.

At 6.40pm, I called the guy who was coming to pick me up, he asked me to go around to the school, but I told him how to get to my place.

He told me he'd be there about 7.20pm, to pick me up, and I got off the phone.

I went and got the washing in, off the line, it was damp. Bugger, should have got it in earlier.

I put up the clothesline, the 6 core wire I've got spare, and hung up the clothes.

I made dinner, and ate it (no idea what it was), and then went back to mucking around on the laptop. I installed Carmageddon (the original one), and tried to configure that, the sound support under XP is crud.

I managed to get it installed, and configured, the sound I did get working was a bit crap, and the video was really poor. For some really fast laptop, with a so called superduper video card in it, I wasn't really impressed, when trying to run a DOS game, that I think I used to run on a P166 quite nicely.

I'll blame windows.

A this my point my mate's cousin and his gf turned up, I went and got in the car, and we drove to Tuggerah. We went into the cinemas, and waited around.

We mate's cousin tried to call my mate, but he didn't answer his phone. He's probably left it in the car as usual, so maybe he's already here.

A minute later, I spotted him come in. He came over, and then we got our tickets of the guy, and paid him, he'd already been in this afternoon, and got the tickets then.

My mate's cousin's gf went to buy something at the snack bar, I went over too, and bought some chocolates, peanut M&Ms. Ridiculous amount I had to pay for them, $6 something.

We went in after that, found seats, and sat and watched the movie. It was alright, better than the first 2.

After that, we left, and went out the car park, I chatted with my mate for a little while, and then we all decided it was too cold to be standing around in the carpark at this time of night, so we got in our cars and left.

My mate went home, and his cousin and his gf dropped me at home.

I mucked around, and copied more stuff out of the tivo, and filled up the disk with recordings from the tivo.

I got a bit of stuff ready, started packing my bag, and then I went to bed.