Same as usual, got up, got ready.

The senior DBA's car was still at the mechanic, so the little guy from royalty gave us a lift to work, though we really could have walked, since it's only a couple of hundred metres to work from the pub.

As we went through the boom gate at work, the little guy pulled the wheel around really hard, screeching the tyres. The contract DBA, and a woman from the mail room were standing there, and were a bit worried.

We went past them, and around to the back car park.

One of the geophysicists was walking through the car park, and someone said "run over him", jokingly. The little guy accellerated towards him.

The geophysicist wasn't paying attention, and it wasn't until we were fairly close to him that he noticed he might get run over.

His evasive action was to raise the umbrella he was carrying up over his head, like he was going to be able to stop or divert the car speeding towards him, with an umbrella.

The little guy slowed down, and the geophysicist kept walking, and we parked, and went into work.

I got a phone call from the little guy, asking if the geophysicist was at his desk, so he could apologise, he was sitting there.

Apparently the little guy had already tried to call, but the geophysicist wouldn't answer his phone.

All the permanent staff have to go to some "Building DPI" exercise, to try to get all the departments working together.

A couple of weeks ago, someone came around to find out if I was signed up to do it, but I said that I didn't think I had to because I was a contractor. Their reply was "no, and you've probably got more important things to do anyway".

I didn't have to go on it as a result, but someone who did, the guy from royalty, was away. I joked that I'd say I was him, and go off for the day, and get him signed off, but I didn't.

I continued working, until going out to have some morning tea (usual Thursday), and then went back to work.

There was a huge storm, and it pissed down with rain for ages.

I kept working. I noticed that DNS seemed to be broken, and I was getting a bit hungry, so at about 1.30pm, I went upstairs to find out what was going on.

Hopefully, because of the rain, someone was going to drive somewhere to get some lunch, so I wouldn't have to drown, walking down the road.

The people had come back from the team building exercise, and they'd been given lunch, so they weren't going anywhere in a hurry.

I spoke to the comms guy, to try to find out what was going on with the DNS, apparently we were having some WAN issues.

Eventually the comms guy said that he was going for lunch, and was just going across the road. I went with him, we went and got some lunch, and then came back.

I hung around for a while, it didn't look like the network issues were going to get fixed any time soon.

The comms guy called SPTEL again, and was told that the Maitland exchange was having major issues.

I went back to my desk, and continued doing some coding. I got a call from an external customer, the guy at Woy Woy.

He told me he'd been in using TAS, and then his connection had dropped out. I told him about the exchange being stuffed, since the external production system relies on connectivity to a server in Maitland.

He then chatted for a while, about the functionality of MinView, of which there's nothing I can do about it, since it's a major project, and we know that it's really badly done, and needs to be redone.

I went back upstairs again, to find out what the current status of the network was, since it still wasn't fixed. I annoyed the comms guy for a while, jokingly asking why he was here, and not at the exchange fixing things.

He said that he was feeling a bit crook, and really didn't want to have to deal with this stuff today.

I gave up up there, went back to my desk, worked out some Oracle stuff. As soon as the internet access came back, I checked my mail, nothing exciting after all that.

Apparently the comms support guy went home as soon as the connection was sorted out.

I left work at 4.15pm, and went to the pub where I'm staying, I felt really tired.

I was worried about falling asleep, so I went across to the pub, and had a beer with the old librarian.

I played the pokies, with the little bit of money I had in my pocket. Wasted it all.

I went to the ATM, to get some more money, so I could have another drink, but found that it was out of order.

I went back to the pub I'm staying at, and got money out of the ATM in there, and then I went back up to the room for a bit, with the senior DBA, who'd come with me from the pub.

We sat in there for a while, trying to work out where to go for dinner.

While we were sitting in there, the 2 women from the mail room turned up. They came in, and told us that it was the guy from Orange's birthday, and they'd got pizzas, and they wanted us to come around to join in.

I wasn't really in the mood, since I was so tired, and we wouldn't all fit in the car, but we ended up going anyway.

The woman from the mail room's daughter sat on the lap of the other mail room woman, and her child seat was chucked in the back, so we could all fit.

We headed for the mail room woman's place, we stopped in at the bottle shop on the way, and found a bottle of wine to take, and then kept going.

We got to the mail room woman's place, unloaded the car, went in.

We sat and ate the pizza, and drank the wine, and then we all sat out the back chatting, while the others smoked.

Someone had got a cake, so we ate that, and then it was getting a bit late, so the 2 women from the mail room, the senior DBA and I jumped in the car, and headed back to town.

The guy from CCB stays with the mail room woman, and he was at the club, so they'd arranged to pick him up and give him a lift back, while dropping us off in town.

We decided to go around there too, before going back to the pub.

We parked the car, and the senior DBA and I got out of the car, and walked to the club. Both the mail room women had put on dressing gowns over their clothes, because it's cold, they got out of the car, and followed us.

We waited outside, to attract the attention of the CCB guy, the bartender (ex Knight), came over. He saw the mail room women in their gowns, and told them that "they looked lovely".

The CCB guy came out, and then we all piled back in the car, and the senior DBA and I got dropped back at the pub, and the others went back to the house we'd been at.

As I was going into the pub, there were a few more people from CCB (who were staying there for the night) on their way in. I chatted to them briefly, before heading up to the room.

I had a drink of water, I don't want a hangover in the morning after all that wine, and then I lay down, and went to sleep.

I woke up at 3.45am, I had the worst indigestion.

I got up, drank some more water, and then sat up in bed for a while.

While I was sitting there, it started pissing down with rain, I listened to that for a while, and then I managed to get back to sleep.