I woke up at 5.50am, turned the alarm off, fell back asleep.

Was woken again at 6am, lay and listened to the news, then fell back asleep again.

I woke up again at 6.30am, realised I was probably going to be late getting ready. I dived out of bed, and into the shower.

I got ready, packed my laptop, and had a few minutes to have a piece of toast, and then the senior DBA turned up, about 7am.

I went down, chucked my stuff in the car, and we went.

We stopped off about 3/4 of the way to work, to get a coffee, because we were stuck behind some slow ass car on a one lane road.

I got my coffee, and drank it to quickly after getting it, and managed to burn my toungue. For a cheap and nasty coffee, it was better than the stuff I get from the cafe across the road, where you pay twice as much.

We got to work, and I went in, went to my desk. I setup my stuff, and did some work.

My phone rang about 10am, it was my drummer mate, I'd asked him to ring me, since I always forget to get organised.. he's been trying to get me to book some tickets to go and see "Southern Culture on the Skids" at the Gaelic Club for a few weeks now.

I couldn't hear him, because of the crap mobile reception in Maitland, so I called him back, and then went and booked 3 tickets, and a room in the Travelodge for the night. That was a stuff up, since only 2 adult rooms (ie 2 adults in a room) were available, not a 3 adult room, so the 3 of us will just have to pack in a room anyway.

I got off the phone, and printed out the receipts for the bookings, and went back to work.

I got called up about 11.45, the senior DBA was talking to the sysadmin, and they wanted to know about mail configuration, I told them that they needed to update the mailhost alias in DNS, and then I went back to work.

I went up at midday, to find out about going to lunch.

I spoke to the contract DBA, the annoying support guy was working on his laptop, and then it wouldn't reboot. We mucked around with it for a while, eventually getting it to reboot, after booting up in safe mode (disconnecting the usb hard drive he'd bought on the weekend), trying to defrag, having that crash.

We tried to run memtest86, but that just caused the laptop to reboot immediately. We gave up on that, managed to get windows to boot, ran a BIOS update, rebooted, and then it looked like it was working a bit better.

By then it was about 12.45pm. I'd gone up there 45 minutes before, to go out to lunch.

We went out, and walked down the street, and we went into the mall, to the bakery, and got pies.

I got a steak and kidney pie, I've had one of these before, we went and sat outside and ate them. The steak and kidney pie was gross, it had this huge chuck of something, with lots of fat on it, in the middle of the pie, I just ripped that out, and chucked back in the bag, and ate the rest of the pastry, and the few bits of meat left. I don't think I'll bother with those pies again.

We walked back to work after that, on the way we went into the pub, and checked into the pub for the week. When we got back to work, I was going back to my desk, the royalty manager was sitting under the stairs, talking to his wife (who also works there), they called me over, and we were invited around for dinner again this week, either on Tuesday or Thursday.

I said they'd have to sort it out with the senior DBA, since he drives me everywhere now, since I don't have a license. We chatted about the silly photos the senior DBA and little guy from royalty had done the other day, and then I went back to my desk.

I did another couple of hours work, until I got a call at about 4.20pm, the senior DBA wanted to leave. I'd had enough too, so I said I was just a few minutes behind. I finished up what I was working on, and then I went upstairs, and we left.

We drove down to the pub, grabbed our bags, and dropped them off in the pub. We sat in there for a while, and then went across to the pub. We found the support guy, and the old librarian in there. I had a couple of drinks.

I had a spare dollar, so I put it in the pokies, won nothing. I sat and chatted for ages. The social club guy turned up, and we chatted to him fo a while. He went back to work, because he had some stuff on eBay he was trying to win, and we arranged to go and get some noodles at about 8.30pm.

I sat around a bit more, had another drink, I wanted to play the pokies again, but at the same time I didn't.

I ended up putting another $5 through, I nearly won the feature. Then I found $10 in my wallet, and that went in. I didn't get anywhere there, but I could tell that the feature was going to activate.

I found another $10 in my wallet, and that went through, again, almost won. Now I had no cash left, after putting $26 through the pokies.

I went to the ATM, and pulled out more money, and then I went back, decided to go through another $20. I put it in a different one, wasted $10 of it. I took the other $10 out, went back to the pokie I'd been playing before, put $3 in it, bet 15 cents on one spin, and then $2 on the next spin.. the feature activated.

I won $41 something, I played a bit more, got it up to $44 something, I was going to take it at $45 or $40, it ended up going down to $40, then I went and got the bartender, and got a payout.

I sat and thought about it, and realised that I had to put $39 in, to win $40. Wow, I won a dollar, and risked losing $39. I don't think I'll play them much anymore.

The senior DBA had left a bit before, it had just been the support guy and I in there, playing the pokies, when I came back from getting my payout, the support guy was gone, so I went to find the senior DBA.

I went back to the pub, got my trench coat (it's getting cold in Maitland at night now), and then I hung around for a bit, waiting for the social club guy, since it's almost 8.30pm.

The senior DBA tried calling him, but he didn't answer his phone, so we started walking down to the noodle place, in case he was already down there. We got almost the whole way there, when the social club guy called back, said he was just coming out of the pub (where I'd been playing the pokies) now.

We went into the pub down there, near the noodle place, to wait for him. We were the only people in the pub. We got a couple of drinks, and sat down. I was about halfway through my drink, at about 8.45pm, when the social club guy got there. He got a drink, and then I realised the time, and I thought the noodle place closed at 9pm, so I finished my drink to make sure I could go and get some dinner.

We went to the noodle place, and I found the door locked. WTF? it's not even 9pm yet. I looked on the door, saw the opening hours, they are supposed to be open until 9.30pm. There were still people in there, but cleaning, they must have closed early.

The social club guy noticed a chick working in there attracting his attention, and pointing at the other door, which was open. Ah, they must have locked this one while cleaning or something. We went to the other door, in, and ordered our food.

We tried to work out what to do, I said we would probably be able to take it in the pub (where the senior DBA still was, because he hates noodles), since their kitchen was closed. The social club guy went back to ask, and I stood and waited.

I felt a bit like Dekkard (sp? Harrison Ford's character in Blade Runner), standing there in my trench coat, waiting for my noodles, especially since this place serves them in the little cardboard boxes with the wire handles.

The social club guy came back a couple of minutes later, and said it was fine for us to take our food in there, and it was served then, we grabbed it, and went back to the pub. We sat and ate, the social club guy had been in and got more of his chili corn.

If this is a medium, I'm glad I didn't get a hot, my mouth was on fire, and my nose was running. I finished eating, and got another drink.

The senior DBA took off, to go back to the room, and I sat and chatted to the social club guy for a while, until about 10pm, when the bartender had finished packing up every other table, and came and asked us to leave, because he was closing.

We left, and wandered back up the road, and then I went into the pub, to the room, and went to bed, a bit after 10pm.