I got up at 6am. The sat box had stuffed up, was saying "INF" as usual. I tried to fix it, but the remote control batteries were flat, and there's nothing you can do on the box to fix that, stupid design.

I mucked around, trying to find some more AAA batteries, but they were all flat, and no other remotes I have use them.

I ended up digging the proper remote for one of the UEC 910s out of the box, along with the batteries, put them in, and used that to fix up the sat box.

I went and had a shower, and got dressed, and finished packing my bag, with the clothes I'd hung up last night.

I watched a bit of tv, and waited for the senior DBA to turn up, then went and jumped in his car, and we drove to work.

We went the way I used to go this morning, to the end of the freeway, and through East Maitland. I haven't been this way for ages, not since the Wednesday before we went on holidays, the 2nd of March, over 2 months ago, the last time I rode to work.

We stopped at the service station, and the senior DBA booked his car in for a service. He didn't leave it, we drove to work.

We went to the cafe across the road, got a crappy coffee, and I spoke to the contract DBA, then we went across to the building.

I was cold, and I'd left my jumper in the car, so I went up to see the senior DBA, to get his keys, so I could get my jumper out of the car.

When I got to the top of the stairs, I heard some alarm going off in the computer room, I went in, and found that the airconditioner was stuffing up again. I muted the alarm, and went out again.

The senior DBA was on the phone, so while I waited to get the keys, I spoke to the manager of the royalty group, and the annoying support guy for a minute, about the case, and how screwed up it was.

The senior DBA got off the phone, and I got his car keys, and then I went down, and got my jumper out of the car. I came back in, and gave him back his keys.

I went to my desk, and went to work. I'd intended to call the building manager, and let him know about the airconditioning, but I forgot.

I got a call from the guy in webservices, about upgrading the website software this afternoon, and confirmed that I would be there. The guy asked me to sort out with the vendor (who were actually doing the update) for a time, which I wasn't really interested in doing, but I said I'd send an email. I got off the phone, sent the email to the vendor, and then I went back to work.

The sysadmin came down to see me and we had a chat about the website upgrade. They'd called him about it too apparently, but he didn't know much about it, because I look after it, I said I'd come up in a bot, because we were scheduling between 2pm and 3pm for the upgrade.

I took the chance now, to go to lunch, I went with the sysadmin, and the senior DBA, we went to the Thai place. On the way, I said I'd pop in and pay my Amex bill at the post office. They asked what I wanted to order, I said I'd order it in a minute, since it won't take me long in the post office.

I went across the road, and in to the post office, walked straight up to the counter, paid my bill, and then left again, and was back over at the Thai place, in about a minute, like I'd said.

We ordered, and then sat and chatted. The senior DBA mentioned a guy he used to know, who had a Cook Island's driver's license, hmm, maybe that's an idea, I could fly over there, get one of them, and then use it as an international license.

We got our lunch, and ate, and then wandered back to the office. On the way, the sysadmin asked me about TiVo, so I explained the whole thing to him.

When we got back to the office, I went upstairs, to sit there while the website upgrade went on. I waited for 2pm, and then I shut all the stuff down, apache, mysql etc.

The guy at the vendor called me on my mobile, and complained that he wasn't able to login through the VPN. I asked the comms support guy, who looks after the VPN, he said it was fine. I asked the guy at the vendor to call the comms support guy, which he did.

While they got that sorted out, I started the website back up again.

Eventually they sorted it out, the guy at the vendor had to reboot his machine. Since we were now going to get somewhere, I shut all the webstuff down again, and started backing it up, so there was an easy way to roll back, in case the upgrade stuffed up.

A few minutes through backing it up, I called the guy at the vendor, and he said he was running the upgrade now. Terrific, it means my backups are useless, because he's already making changes, while it's being backed up.

I left him on speaker for a couple of minutes, and then I asked him to call when he was finished.

I was terribly unimpressed. This guy has just started making changes to a production system, without informing us.

The VPN stuff wasted a bit of time, and it ended up being 3pm before it was finished. This time the senior DBA called the guy at the vendor, and was rudely told that the upgrade scripts were still running.

At about 3.20pm, we called him again, and he said that it was all finished, so much for him calling to tell us when it was done.

Luckily the upgrade worked, and the fact that the backups were totally useless didn't matter, but if there'd been a problem, it wouldn't have been me responsible for it.

I sat around for a bit after that, making sure that everything was working. The annoying support guy came over, and asked if I could do him a favour.

I wondered what it was, and then he explained that he'd left his lights on all day, and his battery had run flat, so he wanted a push start.

He also asked the "Spatial Expert" to help him, so the three of us went down to the carpark. We went to his car, and he rolled it out of the spot, and then we tried to push start it. The "Spatial Expert" told him to put it in 3rd or 4th gear.

WTF? you need to use 1st, or maybe 2nd gear to do a clutch start, I used to do it on my bike all the time, out of the driveway. There's no way you could do a clutch start in 4th gear. This guy must know as much about cars as he does about spatial data.

We tried clutch starting it twice, I didn't bother to push the issue of what gear it was in, I assumed it was in 3rd or 4th, and this wasn't going to work.

It didn't work, we didn't start it. After that I jumped in, and the two of them pushed the car into a spot, out of the way.

The annoying support guy said he'd go and speak to the building manager, since one of the government cars would have a pair of jumper cables in it, and he could just jump start his car.

Pushing the car up and down the car park was a bit too strenuous for me, and I ended up having an asthma attack. My chest was killing me.

I walked back into the building, and went and sat at my desk for a while, trying to calm down. I felt sick.

A few minutes later, I got a call from the senior DBA, he said he was leaving for the day, going to check in at the pub. I said I'd be down there a bit later.

I did some more work, and then spent a little bit of time looking up Cook Islands licenses. Hmm, I can just go into the Police station on Rarotonga, the capital island, pay a couple of bucks to do a riding test, and then pay $15 New Zealand dollars for a license.

I did a bit more research, Vicroads maintain the list of international licenses accepted in Australia, and it looks like that because the Cook Islands are a province of New Zealand, that the Cook Islands license is recognised as a New Zealand license.

I then went looking for trips to go over there, for about $1200 I can get a flight over there, a weeks accomodation, and a flight back. Maybe I'll have to go on another holiday.

The project manager came over, and I chatted to him for a few minutes, and then I left the office, at about 6pm.

I walked down to the pub we start drinking at, found the senior DBA in there. I chatted for a minute, and then we both went to the other pub, and I got the other room key from the bar, and then we went up to the room, and I dropped off my stuff.

He sat around in there for a little while, and then we left, and walked down to the pub near the railway station, we had a few drinks in there, and then went and ordered dinner.

We sat at the bar and ate dinner, while watching "MythBusters" on the tv in the pub. About halfway through this, the sysadmin came into the pub.

We played a couple of games of pool, the first I played against the senior DBA, and stuffed it up, I hit the black ball in, there was a few balls left on the table, so we managed to convince the sysadmin to have a couple of practice shots, since he's never played.

He wasn't too bad, and we convinced him to play the next game, against me. He was pretty good, for a first game, or else I was playing crap, because it was a fairly close game, but I ended up winning.

After that we put some money in the jukebox, queued up a load of songs, sat and drank more. We ended up leaving the pub about 11pm, and since the sysadmin doesn't drink, he gave us a lift back to the pub we were staying at, and then he drove home.

I went up to the room, and went to bed.