I got up, pulled on a shirt, went down, outside (brr, cold), and got the washing in from the drier. I should have done this last night, to avoid having to go out in the cold.

I went and had a shower, and got dressed, then I had breakfast. The senior DBA had just finished getting ready, so I got in the car with him, and we drove to work.

I went to my desk, and started working. A little while later, I decided to go and see if I could find a USB -> serial adapter, Ive seen a stack of them at work.

I went to the build room, saw quite a few hanging around, so I just grabbed one to borrow for a couple of weeks, to use with the tivo, until I get an ethernet adapter for it.

I went back to my desk, now I had to work out how to get it going. I plugged it in, and nothing happened, as I expected.

I checked the kernel modules, and I hadn't build any of the modules for serial adapters. I ran up the kernel configuration, went in to the section for the serial adapters.

There's quite a few different drivers, I had to work out which one I needed. I looked at the device, there's bugger all information on it, but maybe "UC-232A" will help (I hope).

I googled, and unfortunately, I didn't find this page, but I did find a site with a driver cd for the adapter available.

I browsed through the directories, found the linux driver directory. I downloaded the C source of the kernel module, had a quick look through it, and saw a reference to "Prolific". I checked the kernel configuration menu, and saw an option for a Prolific USB/serial adapter.

Groovy, I selected that option, and then I exited the configuration. I really didn't want to have to rebuild the whole kernel, just for one lousy kernel module, so I did a "make modules". This seemed to work.

Now, I had to get it in the right directory. I thought about doing a "make modules-install", but I didn't want to do this, because I've got custom DRI kernel modules in there, and the wireless drivers, which might get effected.

I decided to just grab the module manually, I did find for the pl2303.ko file (or whatever it was), and then manually copied it into the kernel modules directory, did a "depmod -a", plugged the adapter in. I loaded the module manually, and it seemed to work.

Now I had to test it. I found that it had created /dev/ttyUSB0, so I symlinked that to /dev/ttyS1, since my laptop has no serial ports, and then I started up minicom.

I configured it, found a paperclip, and used it to short pins 2/3 in the db9, but I couldn't see the loopback. Hmm. I could see the led on the adapter flashing, when I shorted pins 2 and 7 or something, and I would get a bit of crud printed on the screen, but I couldn't get the loopback to work.

Oh well, since I'm doing something (shorting the pins), and seeing a result (the crud), it's at least half working, I can receive, if not send.

After this, I got an email, it was from someone at Orange, about the ecommerce stuff, which had been forwarded to me by a guy in titles upstairs. I went up to see him, to see if I could answer the questions he had.

While I was chatting to him about it, one of the spatial guys came over, because he'd been roped into it as well.

Basically, the woman at Orange wanted us to modify the details of the merchant ID being used for the credit card transactions, or disable the credit card payment stuff.

I'm not doing that, because I've not been given proper instructions to do it, letalone the fact that I don't want to touch it again, and if I was to just "disable" it, then major functions in a production system would be broken, so I'd have to develop a way around it.

I'm not doing anything, and the other guys agreed with that. It stays as it is, until we're properly told otherwise.

I went back to my desk, and went back to work. I got a call about going to lunch, the senior DBA said he was going to go to the hardware shop.

I went up, we hung around for a bit, and the little guy from royalty came with us. We went to the hardware shop, I got a tape measure, so I could measure the mattress that Dad and I brought up the other day, which is still leaning against the wall, so I can buy a bed to put it on.

The little guy looked for drill bits, he wanted allen key bits you can put in the drill.

We wandered all around, it's like a big supermarket. I decided to buy a new showerhead, one with a bit of pressure, since we just have a big showerhead now, and because of the position in the shower/bath, you have to turn it sideways.

I figured I'd get one with jet spray or something, and it might be a bit easier than turning the showerhead sideways, I only paid about $20 for one.

We continued wandering, and found a doormat. I wanted to look for an antislip mate thing, to put in the bath, since I keep nearly going A over T while having a shower, because of the round shape of the bath. I couldn't find one thought, and gave up.

We went to the checkout, and I bought my tape measure, the showerhead, and a roll of teflon tape, to put the showerhead on with.

The senior DBA bought the doormat, and something else, that I don't remember.

After that, we drove to Hungry Jacks, and had lunch. After that, while heading back to work, I asked to be dropped off at the house, so I could go and measure the mattress, and look for a bed later.

I got dropped off, and went inside, measured the mattress (I don't remember what the size was, but I found out it was just a double bed), and then I went out and measured my bike's rims (21.5"), so I can buy some new tyres, because the ones on it are perished.

I locked up the house, and started walking back to work. I stopped at an intersection, waiting to cross the road, and a truck driver hung out of the window of his truck, waiting at the lights, and asked if I knew where some street was.

I told him, since it was the street we live in, and then I continued walking back to work.

Before I got back to work, I decided to look in the furniture shops across the road, to find out about a bed. I went into Forty Winks. I wandered around, just looking for a basic bed. I wasn't seeing much. I saw one I didn't mind.

Some guy came to help me, and I explained that I needed a bed, for a mattress I already had. I told him the size, and he went over to look at a chart, and work out what size it was. This is when I found out that it was a double bed mattress.

The bed I'd liked, was too big for the mattress. The guy suggested another bed, which I didn't really like, which was $400.

I thanked him, said I'd keep looking. I went across to Sleep City after that, and browsed through there. I looked at the metal beds, I just wanted a basic steel bed or something.

Eventually a woman came over to help me, and I told her that I was looking for just a bed, for a double mattress. I asked if their packages were available as just the bed (since everything was a package, with bedside tables, and bedding etc, which I don't want). She told me they were, but all the stuff was Queen and King size, not double.

She showed me one timber bed they had, which wasn't bad, she asked what I wanted to spend, and I told her "a few hundred dollars", and she told me that I wouldn't get much for that, and that this bed was on special, from $700 or something, to $499.

She asked me if I was going to be making a decision today, and I said I probably was. I looked around a bit more, and then I went to leave. The woman told me that she wanted to sell as much stuff as possible, so if I came back today, they'd let me have the bed for $400.

Hmm. I walked next door, into Harvey Norman, and browsed their beds. There was a cute chick working in the beds section. I looked at the beds, saw a basic steel tube frame bed, on sale from $299, to $199. That's fair, and it was a double bed.

I kept looking, there were some better ones, but a fair bit more. I left, and walked back to work, and sat and thought about it, while I went back to work.

A little while later, my desk phone rang. It was the little guy in royalty. He told me he was down in a cheap shop, near the club, and they had beds in there.

I got off the phone, and I walked down there, to have a look. They had basic beds, black steel, but I didn't like them, but they were cheap, only $99 or something.

I wandered around the rest of the shop, while I thought about it.

While wandering around in warehouse, I ended up going through the electrical section.

I was looking for some sort of an FM transmitter, to use with my laptop, so I don't have to run a lead to the reciever. I didn't find one, but I did see that they had a third party xbox remote control.

I thought about getting that, since it would be nice to not have to use the xbox controller to run XBMC.

I then looked for an svideo cable, remembering that I needed that to use with the tivo, but they didn't have any. This place is a bit useless.

I had another look at the bed, decided that I didn't want it, and then I left.

I walked back towards work, I went into Dick Smith, and I bought an svideo lead, bloody expensive, $14 for a 1.5m cable.

I left there, and then walked across the road to the bed shop near work. I asked the guy about a double bed frame, but he didn't have anything in a double bed at the moment, apparently the container had gone missing or something.

He then asked if a double bed was what I wanted, since a double bed is only 6 foot long, and I'm over 6 foot tall.

I said that was a good point, I don't actually know if the mattress is big enough, the ones in the pub weren't, and my feet always ended hanging over the end.

I left there, and walked back to work, I sat and thought about what to do, whether I should go and buy the bed that the woman had offered for $400, or get the steel bed from Harvey Norman for $200.

I thought I should go and check the size of the mattress before buying a bed, in case I find it is too small, and have to buy a mattress.

I was sitting at my desk, when the senior DBA came down, I would have thought he would have left ages ago, it was almost 5pm. He said he was leaving.

I asked for a couple of minutes, I'd just remembered to get the pdfs with the codes for the tivo remote, so I could configure it to control the tv, and the receiver.

I downloaded them, copied them on to my laptop, and then packed it up, and went out and got in the car.

We drove home, and went in. The first thing I did was go upstairs and check the length of the mattress.

The guy was sort of right, a double bed is a bit small for me. I can't lie out fully, since my feet will be off the end, but I could lie in it diagonally, and I'd fit.

I grabbed the heater (that I'd put in here, and left on last night to dry the mattress), and took it downstairs.

I setup my laptop, and mucked around for a while, getting the serial adapter working, and eventually managed to get it working, I had to reboot the tivo a couple of times in the process, I think something I was doing while trying to establish the connection was causing pppd on the tivo to fall over, and not restart.

After that I sat and configured the remote to control the tv, that was easy, it was about the 3rd code for Sony stuff that worked with the senior DBA's tv.

I tried to configure the remote to control my Kenwood receiver, but I went through all 6 of the Kenwood codes, and none of them worked. Hmm.

I then put in the code to search through all of them, and went through all of them, 3 times, but none of them worked with the receiver.

I noticed it said something in the pdf with the codes that it was an ammended version, because there was a newer remote with new codes in it.

I don't think this is the new remote, because it's a standard stand alone remote, and it's not the directv remote like I got with my other tivo.

I new the codes were in the setup on the tivo, but you can only access that screen when the tivo is running in NTSC/PAL GS mode.

I used tivoweb over the serial link to set the tivo into NTSC mode, and then rebooted it.

I went into the screen that showed the codes, there were more codes in here.

When I tried to enter some of the codes shown here, that weren't in the pdf, the remote wouldn't accept them, the LED would just go off, instead of flashing.

I figure I just need a directv remote, and it'll have the newer codes in it.

The senior DBA asked me to go and help him, I went upstairs, he was hanging his mirror up, with the hooks and wire he'd bought at the hardware shop.

We hung that up, and then I came back downstairs again.

I sat and mucked around with the tivo a bit more, I'd downloaded new guide data, so I worked out how to load that manually.

I copied all the slices across to the tivo, in /var/packages, ungzipped them (gzip -d *) and then just did:

ls *slice |while read SLICE; do
dbload30.tcl $SLICE
done

I opened another telnet session, and watched one of the log files, as it dbloaded all the slices.

After that I forced an update, and the new guide data turned up. I need to get an internet connection at the house, it's a bit of a pain having to load the data manually.

After that I sat and watched tv. The footy was going to be on again tonight, so at 7.30pm we decided to walk to the club to watch it.

It was freezing outside, I found my trenchcoat, and we walked over there.

We got in there, there were a few people from work in there, one of the indexers, his wife (who also works at the department), the guy who looks after the data in geosurvey (the new guy), and another guy from work.

We chatted with them for a bit, and then got drinks, and ordered dinner.

I went in and played the pokies, the other bartender was in here, I chatted to him. I got the feature on the machine, and won $6. I took the money and went.

We sat and watched the lead up to the game, while we were sitting there, the chick from work was in the car with her boyfriend, and a couple of other people from work, the social club guy, and the woman from the mailroom.

They saw us, and the senior DBA went out and spoke to them. They'd got pizzas, and were going to go back to the woman from the mailroom's place, but now they were thinking about staying here.

They asked the bartender if they could eat the pizzas outside, they were allowed to.

They sat and ate their pizza, and we sat and watched the footy (state of origin).

Our dinner was served, and we sat and ate while we watched. NSW got the lead to start with, and when QLD caught up, and took the lead, the people from work (who'd had the pizzas) decided to leave.

I took off my jumper, since I was wearing my Bundy shirt, and I hadn't let on who I was going for until that point.

When it got to halftime, I went in to play the pokies.

I put $20 in, and lost it all. I had another $20, I figured I'd just play another $10. I ended up wasting the whole $20, trying to win my money back. No such luck.

Now I had no money left, and the ATM in the club was broken, so I went across the road, to the shopping centre, to use the ATM in there. I got $60 out, and went back to the club.

I went in, and wasted $20 more, now up to $60 wasted. I went and got another drink, and went back in to watch some of the game. NSW was far away, something like 30 - 16.

I went back into the pokies, put another $5 in, and lost it. I then went and got another drink, and then went back to watch the game, but it was finished, QLD had lost.

I went back into the pokies again, put a couple more bucks in, won $10. I thought about just giving up, and going, but I couldn't help myself.. I put the $10 in, had 2 $5 bets (25 credits/25 lines), and won nothing, lost $10 in about 3 seconds.

Now I'm up to about $75 wasted in the pokies. I give up. Bastard things.

While I'd been in there, there was 3 or 4 other people playing, and there were big features and stuff going off, I thought I'd have to get a win at some point. I saw someone win $130, and someone else got the jackpot, which was $90.

I'd been playing $1 bets on one machine, getting nothing, then when I dropped back to betting 10 cents, I got the feature, and won $4 something, bugger, that would have been $40.

Now I had no money left again, just a bit of change, so I went out to hang around.

We played a game of pool, I had a bit over a dollar in change, so I got a dollar coin, and used it in the pool table.

We played pool, and I finished my drink.

We lost the game of pool, I stuffed up, and after putting one of our balls down, I hit the black down when the white bounced off. D'oh.

The senior DBA asked to borrow $5, to pay for a couple of beers. I told him that I had no money, and I took my wallet out to show him that it was empty. When I did so, $10 I didn't realise I had came out.

I lent him the money to pay for the drinks, bought myself one, and then gave my last 25c to the bartender as a tip.

We played pool again, and lost again, this time it dragged on for a long time, both of us going for the black, and the other team ended up getting it in.

It was now after midnight, and the bartender had been saying that he wanted to close, so we started getting our stuff together, getting organised.

The bartender pretended to pick up the senior DBA to throw him out, I realised how big of a blok he actually is.

We left the club at 12.45am, and walked back with the new guy, who looks after the data in geosurvey.

We walked around to his place, he went in, and we kept going. As we were walking back to the street (he lives in a set of units, down the back), some weird guy in a dressing gown was hanging around in the driveway, and asked "what are you doing here?", I said that we were just going for a walk, and then ignored him, and kept going.

We got back to the house, went in, the senior DBA went to bed.

I setup my bed, on the sofa bed, because I still don't have a bed, and sat and made some blog notes.

Before shutting my laptop down, I decided to run kismet for a second. I'd plugged the ac adapter in, I wanted to see how the battery life estimate in kismet reacted when I unplugged it..

I did so, and it came up and said that my battery was going to last for 563 thousand something hours.

I worked this out to be about 67 years. It'd be good to have a laptop with a battery that would go for 67 years.

I turned off the laptop, and went to sleep.