I got up about 8am, had a shower, some breakfast, mucked around on the computer.

I left about 8:50, headed down to my mate's place. He said to be there for 9am.

I got there about 9.03, no sign of him. I tried calling him, no answer. I left a message. I waited 10 minutes for him to call back.

I gave up, and then decided to go for a quick ride down the freeway to see if I could see anything. I went past the first exit, I hate that area, and took the second exit, thinking I would just ride down the old road from there, to see if I could see any other bikes or anything (since I wasn't sure where I was going).

The second exit of the freeway came swinging around, and there were bikes parked up. I parked near them, and jumped off. My blinker had fallen off again.

I started having a chat with the guy on the bike next to me. My phone rang, it was my mate who's place I went to and he wasn't there, he was already here.

I swaggered over to find him, there was a truckload of bikes here already, and it's only like 9.30

I found him, had a chat for a bit. He introduced me to some guy he knows. He then lined up for that guy to do some "tricks" on his bike. I didn't like the sound of that, it's not the time or place for it, a ton of bikes moving around, and people wandering near the road.

He went up and back the street a few times, popping monos, it took the cops (which had been doing laps of the area) about 3 seconds to catch on, and come close. The cop car with the radar on it just stopped in the middle of the road, waiting for him to come around the corner to catch him.

My mate went running around the corner, and warned him, so he didn't come flying around the corner on the back wheel.

A car turned up, and then the cop had to move, since he was blocking the road.

That was the end of that.

I got chatting to a marshall, he talked me into buying some raffle tickets, to win a little dirt bike. I bought 3 tickets for $5, then I realised I only had $7 something on me. Oops.

We wandered around for a bit, looking at all the bikes, there must have been about 300 bikes parked up, near the biker's Cafe, and all along the road. Tons of bikes were going back and forth on the road past it all day too. I think there would easily have been 500 - 600 bikes in the area throughout the day, if not more.

Another mate was going to be coming down about lunch time, I sent him an SMS warning him of all the cops.

I borrowed some money off my mate, and got some lunch. He went back to his place, to pick up his other son (who I was supposed to bring down, but he wasn't out of bed when I went there, and his dad, my mate, who I was supposed to be going with, had already left).

My other mate turned up a few hours later, apparently there were tons of cops around now. We wandered around the area looking at all the bikes (and chicks :-) again.

Yet another mate was supposed to be turning up, but when he rang, we talked him out of it, his bike is unregistered, and his license suspended, and there's too many cops about here.

The cops were always visible, at the end, when we left, after hours there, there were 3 radar cars lined up, and all day they were doing laps past the Cafe. At one point, 4 officers did a foot patrol through the area, in a group, bit pathetic.

We came back up the freeway, caught up with our other mate at the service station.

I went to buy some water, remembered I didn't have much cash, tried to use the ATM to withdraw some, but it was dumb, and just ignored my putting my card in, so I dumped the water, and walked out. I then checked, and realised I had enough cash for the water after all that. Can't be bothered now.

We saw a guy with a bike at the servo, my mate reckoned it had Nitrous Oxide on it, I doubt it. The guy did a lap, and came back into the servo, so my other mate went over and asked him.. it was just part of the air intake system.

After that we went for a ride out to Pearl Beach, (noticed the blinker fallen off again) had a chat, I went and bought a bottle of water with my last couple of bucks, and then we came back to my mate's place.

We jumped in the car, went and bought beer and food, had a few drinks, had dinner, sat and had a chat and a laugh for a while.

I'd had a headache all day, and it got really bad, so I took my mate home, on the way we stopped in at the supermarket, so he could get some cigarettes, and I bought some panadol.

The guy at the checkout was a guy I did my bike learners or P course with, he asked if I still had the 250, I told him I had my 650, and how I had to go to Queensland to avoid getting banned from riding for a year. I couldn't chat for long, because I was holding the line up.

I was distracted by talking to the guy, so by habit, I rang up Credit on my card, instead of Savings, bugger, I wanted some cash out. Oh well, $3 on the credit card :-)

I dropped my mate at home, and then I came home.

I went and had a chat with my parents.

I'll have to do something about that bloody blinker. My mate helped me fix the other one before, I have to try and remember what we did.

I got up, got ready,

Headed to the computer fair, I got just inside, bumped into a guy I used to know from a computer club, had a chat to him.

Another guy I know from the same club turned up, and I started talking to him. He was with a couple of people from one of the seniors clubs, they want a network setup, so I chatted to them.

I eventually managed to get away, started looking for a floppy drive, for the pc that was bought for someone to sell through the Cafe recently.

Before I got a chance to get one, I bumped into more people, and started chatting to them, telling them how they could avoid the slow network in Gosford.

I eventually managed to get away from them. I'd been there for about 1/2 hour, and achieved nothing.

I wandered around a bit more, looking at cheap second hand laptops, I really can't justify the money, I'd be better off buying a new desktop.

I found the floppy drive, $15, bought it. I decided to look for some blank DVDs.

I wandered around a bit more. I saw a second hand SGI Indy, I asked the guy about it, he wants $110 for it. Bit much, if it was $50, fine.

I found some blank DVDs ($12 for 5, cheaper than last time) bought them, and then left.

I headed back to Jaycar, bought another phoenix programmer, to try using it as an interface in this box that won't work with card sharing.

I then came back, went to McDonalds, got some lunch, and read the paper.

I came home, I made up the interface, put it in (had the reset wire wrong, fiddled around, got that right), just to find that the whole thing worked exactly the same as the other 2 interface designs I've tried. Argh.

When I looked closely, the phoenix programmer is basically the same as the last circuit I tried, except it has clock generation components.. that don't get used, and used a diode instead of the 7407 chip.

I think at some point I'll finish putting it together as a programmer, and keep it as a spare, or try to sell it assembled.

I put the old decoder back. I then decided I was wick of the whole thing, and I was going to do something useful.

I decided to clean my bike, since I'm going to the bike thing tomorrow. I went down, rinsed it, washed it all, found the left footpeg/gear lever really loose (no wonder I've been having issues changing gears) the whole thing had wobbled the bolts loose, it probably started when I pranged my bike before Christmas.

I also noticed the back left blinker really dodgy, that probably got damaged in the same prang. I was being really careful, but I bumped it, and it fell off. I shoved it back in where it is supposed to be, and it seemed to hold.

I finished washing it, rinsed it again. I managed to fill the saddle bags with water while rinsing, oops. I just use occy straps to hold them upside down so they drained.

I chamoised the bike off, I polished the tank, and wondered what the polish would do on the chrome exhaust.. it actually worked, so I polished that up too.

It doesn't look too bad once all the grime is off.

No sign of Webbly anywhere while I cleaned the bike.

I grabbed my bag, went down to the shops (blinker fell off, pushed it back on), I bumped into a guy I went to TAFE with years ago, chatted to him for a bit. I went into the supermarket, bought some junk food, and some dinner.

I then went over to the bottle shop, bought a cheap and nasty bottle of bourbon.

I went to the service station, filled up the tank with fuel, it was getting towards empty, I checked my tyre pressure.. way low, 4 or 5 PSI under on both the front and back. The bike felt a lot better after that. (Pushed the blinker back on, this is getting annoying).

I came home, parked up, and vegged out watching tv.

I made some dinner, a shephards pie, "not recommended to heat in toaster oven", whatever. I watched some tv (I've still got tv in the tivo from before the encryption on the satellite changed). After 40 minutes, the dinner was ready. I poured it out on to a plate :-) it looked pretty rough, but it tasted ok.

I just finished eating when my mate rang, there was a bbq at his sister's boyfriend's place. I bummed around for a bit, and then went up there. Noticed the blinker had fallen off yet again, so I shoved it back on again.

I had a couple of beers, and a chat.

I came back from there just after midnight.

My mate I go to dinner with called me back, from the Cafe. Centre Management isn't open on Saturday, I thought as much, but it was fine to leave it at his place.

I put the other decoder I can't get working with card sharing back in, if I'm recording for dvd archiving, it's no good with pops and blips in the recording, like this crappy old box is giving. It's still doing it, but it's not too bad, I think the sun is drying the tree out.

I recorded the show.

I then put the new box I tried to get going back in, to see if the improved signal quality would help, nope. I took it, and connected it directly to the dish, rather than through the other decoder, still no good. Must be stuffed.

I just put my crappy old box back in, so I can watch the few channels I've got. I put it back in, and I was putting the tivo IR blaster back, I had a quick look to see exactly where the IR receiver is, it's near the power supply.

I then noticed a really musty smell, and then I saw sparkles coming off the board between a capacitor and a transformer in the power supply. I ripped the power cord out.

I put it back in carefully, noticed it sparkling a bit, and ripped it out again.

I unplugged it all, dragged it over, and went about working out what was going on. I used a small screwdriver to scratch the black off the board that had just appeared, to see if there was a track under it or something, I couldn't find anything at all.

I went and plugged it all back in, put the power in, saw a couple of brief sparkles near another capacitor, and then nothing.

The unit still powers up properly, and works, so I don't know what the problem is/was.

I half wish I'd won that decoder on ebay now. It most likely would have worked, and then there would no longer be an issue.

On the forums, someone suggested using a CRO to look at the signal levels on the data line while booting a working box, and the non working one, and trying to find the difference.

If I had a CRO, this would be fine, but it's $380 for a cheap CRO, or $270 for a new decoder.. hmm.

I didn't wake up until about 11.30. I heard the phone ringing a lot earlier, but I didn't really wake up, and I couldn't be bothered getting out of bed, rushing across the room, to answer the phone, to it just be someone I probably didn't want to talk to, or a wrong number or something.

The decoder was on channel 2, instead of 1. Argh, stupid remote codes still not working.

I got a phone call, my mate's ex girlfriend, trying to get a printer working. I gave her some tips on how to get the drivers for it from the website.

I got up, checked my mail.

I lost that auction for the decoder, outbid by $2.50.

I grabbed $200 cash from the stash I keep at home, the cable I need to send, and my Amex bill.

I went out, went to the bank, deposited the cheque payment for fixing the guy's computer last weekend, withdrew $200.

I came back to the Post Office, paid the bill ($400), and posted the cable off.

While I was there, I decided to check in the chemist for something for my blocked ear. I bought some "Swimmer's Ear" or something.

I went over to McDonalds to get some lunch. While waiting, the guy in Sydney whose computer I tried to fix on my birthday called me. He wanted to arrange getting the PC to me, he wanted to do it on the weekend, when the Cafe is not open.

I told him I would work somthing out and call him back.

I bought my lunch, went and sat outside to eat, and read the paper. I called the Cafe, got the guy in there to check with Centre Management where the Cafe is, if we could get a PC dropped in there on the weekend, and get it from them on Monday morning. He still hasn't called me back.

I then thought that my mate I go to dinner with, who lives just around the corner from the centre, would probably let the guy drop the machine there, I called him, yeah that's fine.

I called the guy back, told him what was going on, he was fine with that, but I don't know my mate's address, only where he lives. I'll have to find out, and call the guy back again later.

I then called my mate's ex girlfriend, to find out how she went, before I get home, have her call me, and ask me to help her, so I have to go out again. She'd had a call from someone else, and had to go out and do something, so she wasn't looking at it, and probably will tomorrow. Whatever.

I came home. I put that swimmer's ear junk in my ear, it did nothing, it just made it sting. My ear is still blocked. Maybe I've got a perforated eardrum or something.

Hmm, the tv signal is still dropping out every noe and then. I went and checked the other decoder, it reckons it's got signal of 85%, which is normal, maybe it's just this crappy old box, but if there's a poor signal, it probably explains why the other box wouldn't lock on to it properly.

I went down there, unplugged some stuff.

One of our servers was running off power in the other rack, so I just shut it down, moved it, and rebooted it.

Not too much mucking around to get everything sorted out.

I was about to leave, when I got a phone call about an issue with the server. I checked it, it had run out of memory. I tried to reboot it properly, but aftr waiting several minutes, and it doing nothing, I got annoyed and just reset it.

I then had to wait 10 minutes for it to disk check all the partitions, and reboot again.

I left, I went to the electronics place, bought more bits to make another tivo serial cable, and came home.

I made up the cable, emailed around a bit.

I was watching tv, it's really annoying, every minute or so the video drops out for a few seconds, I think it's because the signal level is so low. That tree is still in the way, and the rain from the last couple of days must have waterlogged it again.

I made up yet more remote codes for the tivo, I found that the remote for this decoder works on a frequency that Omniremote can't autodetect, I entered it manually, captured the codes, and made up another file for the tivo. It works, but it's still not great, I'm not sure why, I think this decoder is just dodgy, even the proper remote doesn't make it change channels everytime properly.

I was looking on eBay, and I remembered I'd bid on a decoder a couple of days ago. I started watching the auction, I'd bid $150, I was still the high bidder. I got outbid, at $152.50, so I rebid $160, and got it back. I forgot about it, and went to bed.

I woke up early to record the show, it was on the right channel.

I waited for the show to start, fell asleep. Tivo tried to change to 49, changed to 4 (or 9) and then recorded a blank screen. I didn't notice, since it was silent, and didn't wake up until I heard the noise going again, which was 7am, after the recording had finished, and tivo then goes to the same channel it was already on, but this time it went to 49 properly, Argh! The decoded locked up a couple of minutes after that as well. I need to get this sorted out.

I went back to sleep.

Mum came in a hour or so later with the mail, the cash for a cable I made up for a tivo and mailed out a few days ago, and my Amex bill. Hmm, I got carried away on Paypal.

I got up, checked my mail.

I got rung from the Cafe, is the mail down. "No, it will just be slow". I logged in and checked, yeah, just slow.

I then got called by a woman whose network I look after. Here we go, mail complaints again. I started on a spiel about how the mail was working, and then she tells me she can't logon.. Oh yeah, that's right, the RAS in Sydney went silly last night. I'd forgotten about that.

I called the guy I go to dinner with, told him, since he was on his way to Sydney.

I then chased a couple of people up, phone calls I'd got in the last couple of days and put off replying to. Noone answered their phones so I just left messages.

I got called back from Sydney, tried to talk them through what to do. Got it all sorted after about an hour and several phone calls back and forth.

I called the woman to let her know she could connect now.

I was going to go and get the bits I need to make another tivo cable, and get some lunch, I got ready, and just as I was about to leave, it started raining. Bugger it, staying home.

I made some lunch at home, and watched tv.

The guy I did plastering with a couple of months ago called me (he was one of the people I left a message for) he wanted to know about a computer he's thinking about buying (I had intentions of sorting that out for him, but I've just not had the time or inclination to do it). He also wanted to know if I'm going to the bike thing on Sunday, apparently a bunch of bikes are going to be on the Pacific Highway somewhere, yeah, whatever, if the weather's good, it might be fun.

I just got called up, the business in Gosford where our equipment is, is moving today, and they need to unplug stuff, and they don't know what they're doing.

Ugh. I'm heading in there in a bit to sort it out.

I woke up early, found the remote codes not working properly on the tivo with the decoder. I changed the channel manually and left it.

It's a yucky rainy day.

I got up, watched tv for a bit. I found this decoder to be really unreliable, it will just stop decoding, for no reason, and it needs to be reset before it will work again. Hmm, not great.

I mucked around for a few hours.

I pulled the new decoder that was bought recently out, plugged it all in, set it up.. no good.

It never gets past "waiting for NIT acquisition" when I try to boot it, regardless of the signal setup.

Hmm, seems not to work. I tested my interface with it anyway, and it worked, so these boxes will work with card sharing. I might have to buy one, and give up on this other box.

The guy whose pc I fixed on Sunday rang me again, I told him how to use the firewall, and fix the virus scanner proxy settings, more things that got left because he rushed me.

I fiddled around with the decoder a bit more, gave up, and put the cruddy old one back in, worked straight away.

Watched a bit more tv. Went about making up more remote codes for the decoder, the ones I've got don't work properly, and the ones I made last night don't work at all.

The new ones didn't work at all either. hmm.

Watched some tv, and bummed around, went to bed.

I woke up at 6.30, swapped the card in, recorded the show, went back to sleep.

Got up later, got ready, went to the Cafe.

I had a look around my bike for the spider, didn't see him. Found a bit of his leg stuck between the bag and the frame.

I didn't get much done, fixed a machine someone had brought in with a broken modem.. someone had gone in and set that to make a local call, you first have to dial "456456456456456". Hmm, I wonder why it doesn't work.

I went about removing spyware and junk, and virus scanning the machine, no virii? wow.

We've changed the Cafe hours, we closed at 4.30.

just before leaving, I called the guy who gave me my sat decoder, he was at home.

It was raining really heavily, I got soaked moving around the corner to my mates place.

My phone rang when I got there, I missed answering it, I called the guy back and left a message.

I had a look at my bike, the spider was there, getting wet.

My mate got there, I jumped in the car, we went around to the guy's place. I chatted to him for a while, showed him the interface I'd made up.

While we were there, the guy whose pc I fixed on Sunday called me. I told him I would call him back when I got home, around 9pm.

They guy gave me a couple of old Galaxy decoders, and some cams.

I took the stuff back to my mates place.

We sat and chatted for a while.

His wife arrived at the train station, so we went and picked her up, then we went over to dinner.

I came back from there, grabbed the decoder I bought recently for a guy I know, loaded it and the other decoders into my bag, and came home.

I got totally soaked on the way home.

I got home about 9.10pm, I had a shower, and then I called the guy back. I'd forgotten to reinstall the dialup networking adapter and stuff, because the guy was rushing me.

I went through telling him how to fix it all, he didn't call me back, so it must have worked.

I started fiddling with the decoders, I got the better looking one, plugged it all in, found a page on the internet about it, with the installer code.

I set it up to work (not expecting it to) looked for the channels, it sort of worked, but it kept locking up, or rebooting and saying error.

I got the other decoder, plugged it in, I had to open the first one to remove the CAM, since the CAM interface had fallen inside the decoder.

I put it in, set it up, and it seemed to work. I could watch the bloody shopping channel on it.

I pulled it out, opened it, soldered in one of my interfaces, put it back, booted it up.. away it went! No more shopping channel!

Just before my deadline too, if I didn't have this working in a week, which ended today, from when my gold cards died, I would give up. I got it working at 11.40pm :-)

Fox8 doesn't work, so I don't get to watch Simpsons, or Futurama, or King of the Hill.

I found a ccf file with codes for the box, used it to make up tivo remote codes, they work, but not great. I think I'l make my own.

I bopped around watching tv for a while, and went to bed.

I got up at 6.20 am, I put the proper card in the box, and recorded the show for dvd archiving.

I checked the forum, there were a couple of comments in the thread I'd posted to with my theory, didn't deal with it specifically, but the guy reckoned his interface with a max232 chip on it, (and powered) was working fine.

I dug around, at some point I'd downloaded schematics for an interface with a max232 driver and a hex buffer on it.

I worked out the parts I needed, no issue, I think I'll try building it and see.

I started looking at it, decided it was too early, and when the show finished at 7am, I went back to bed.

I got up again at 10am.

Started making up the veroboard layout for the circuit, decided I could work that out later, I still needed the parts, I wrote up the parts list.

I ended up leaving home at almost midday, I rode up to the Cafe, I grabbed a modem, went and checked, it would fit in a standard express post bag, went back to the Cafe, made up the invoice, printed it, went over and posted the modem to the guy who's pc I fixed yesterday.

I helped my mate make up the invoice for one of our clients.

I had some lunch, bummed around a bit, and then took off.

I went over to the electronics place to buy more parts, it started raining on the way, as I came out of a roundabout, the whole arse end of my bike started slipping as the wheel spun in the wet, I grabbed the clutch in, the wheel slowed a bit, and it locked back in to gripping to the greasy road, and the whole thing pulled back to where it was supposed to be, I nearly shat myself when it first started to go.

Anyway, I got pretty wet, but I didn't really care.

I got the bits I needed, all of $10 worth, I noticed that the gold cards they sell are on special, what a surprise, now that they are useless. I commented to the guy about it, and he mumbled something about "yeah, now that the encryption's changed", I said that was what my bits were for, "can I ask?" he says, so I told him how card sharing works, and the fact that they sell all the bits required to do it, but I think he got a bit lost.

I'm not sure of their schedule, there were different guys in there today, to when I was in there on Thursday and Friday last week. Once I get all this done, I might pop back and show him, he seemed pretty interested.

I came home after that, I took the key out of my bike, and chucked it on the seat, a huge huntsman spider came running out from under the pillions seat. I wondered where they bugger who keeps putting webs all my bike lives.

I had a bit of fun maiking him run around, then I got bored, unloaded the bike, and left him.

I thought I might call him Boris, I commented that on irc, and someone asked why spiders were always called Boris, so I think I'll have to find some other name for him, I can't think of one.

I drew up another design for the interface.

I made the interface up, I found a 5v power supply (the 9v I was going to use to run the card reader, that I used on my pic programmer yesterday, has died, bugger), I wired up the rj45/serial adapter for power over ethernet (well, except it's not ethernet :-) to power my new interface.

I soldered it into the decoder, plugged it all in.. it doesn't work.

hmm, must just be something silly. I started looking, oh.. here's one of the electrolytic capacitors that powers the MAX232 in backwards. I turned it around, still no go.

I started looking more carefully, comparing my design to the board, hangon.. it looks like the wire links from the rj45 socket are a bit screwy, the carrier detect is wired where RxD should be, RxD is where TxD should be, and TxD is out in the middle of nowhere connected to nothing.

I fixed all that up.. hooray, it seems to work, i can use it for logging, and I can use it with the old dos based card emulator.. but.. the client still does not work! argh!

So now I'm, back to my original theory, we need a dumb gold card to bootstrap the box, and then pass control over to the client, since the new interface with max232 and hex buffer makes to difference whatsoever.

At least it has a couple of flashy LEDs I can watch while I try to boot it with the client running :-)

I managed to get on the forum again, and post my findings, someone suggested I try a different OS.. yeah, so I went back to trying 98 instead of 2000. No difference.

I ate my chips and dip for dinner, and started drinking.

I had a quick fiddle to see if I could find the AP down the street again, nope, must be gone.

And I haven't even got that wireless card yet. (Where is that bloody thing??).

More nightmares about this decoder.

There must be a way to get it working.

I mucked around with it again, trying different emulators, and clients, still no good.

The guy who was going to turn up to get his computer rang, he was running late, and would be here about midday. No worries.

I went back to cleaning and sorting that I started yesterday.

Dad came in to ask if I wanted my guitar. I told him that it would distract me from concentrating on getting the decoder working, and that I'll get it after I've spent a week on this (until Tuesday) and then I will give up, and get the guitar.

I was just vacumming when the guy turned up.

I told him he could leave it and come back in an hour or so. He wanted to stay, hmm, ok.

I forgot I lent out my spare monitor, I grabbed one that was hanging around, then found the vertical hold doesn't work, so it just draws a very bright horizontal line in the middle of the monitor. I grabbed of my monitors.. only vga, d'oh. I grabbed another one, the refresh rate was wrong. doh again.

I ended up plugging it into my 17" monitor. Then I realised the right mouse button didn't work.

I got a working mouse, removed mcaffee nonsense.

The network card wouldn't autodetect. Hmm, I tried another one, same thing.

I found the intel drivers, downloaded them. My machine refused to copy the file, without locking up.

I put the monitor back on my pc, then after trying to copy the file, I remembered the floppy drive in this machine doesn't work.

Argh, I put one of the monitors back on it's pc, and used that to copy the file.

Then I tried to copy the drivers on to the guy's pc.. the floppy disk was stuffed. I went back and copied the file again, onto another disk, it worked.

I loaded the drivers, rebooted, the network was working. It only took 50 minutes of his 1 hour I quoted him to get it working to this point.

I installed AVG, updated it, updated AdAware, machine looks fairly clean. I found the drivers for the modem.

I shutdown, installed the modem, not detected, hmm. I tried to install the drivers, nope, for win2000, and there's 98 on here.

I went and found more drivers, on gateway's site. They wouldn't download in IE. I ftp'd in and downloaded them.

I tried to install the drivers, windows locked up.

Rebooted, I installed the drivers, is the modem on com1 or the parallel port windows asks, uh, where's the "neither" option.

I installed it as being on com1, even though it's not. Oh look, it doesn't work.

I think it's stuffed, it should have detected.

I put thunderbird on for him, and downloaded his mail.

He went through and got some details he needed (I don't have a printer).

I told him he would need a new modem, this one doesn't seem to work. I'll ship him one in the morning.

So, he got 2 1/2 hours work for 1 hours pay, not too bad, for him.

I went back to mucking around with the decoder.

I know what the problem is. The client software doesn't respond to the cam fast enough, when I use a gold card to answer the reset, it gets one step closer. I theorise that if there was a gold card that basically just bootstrapped the decoder, answered all the nanos the client is too slow to do, that it would work.

I managed to get on the sat forum (heavily overloaded atm) and I posted my theory, noone has commented on it yet.

Oh yeah, I went to check that phone number auction yesterday, it's been deleted.

So now I'm back to listening to music, watching the shopping channel, and drinking.

Another restless night, thinking about the stupid box. What's going on?

I realised, it's the camkey, the camkey doesn't come out. Why?

I've tried googling, I came across a groovy newsgroup post explaining how it all works (http://groups.google.com.au/groups?q=uec+cam+key&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=38ed8f03.0%40news1.mweb.co.za&rnum=5)

There must be something funny going on with the camkey, does the new firmware screw it up?

I searched around, not getting anywhere.

I started cleaning, I've arranged with some guy to drop his pc here tomorrow for me to fix it, it looks like a bomb's gone off in here, there's a tangle of about 50m of cat5 just inside the door, and the rest of the room is no better, there's junk with cat5 tangled around it.

About 12.30, my mate rang me, "it was my birthday last week eh?" he asks me, (only took him 8 days), our other mate is off to the US for a week, and the ADSL is buggered up. Somehow I think it's not working for a reason, I told him I'd come and have a look in a bit.

I started getting ready, I had intentions of going out, getting some grog, and coming back and getting pissed. I went and saw him, checked what was going on. I don't know what the idea was, the ADSL router was plugged into a network card, and then a second network card was connecting it to the switch, and the other pc through there, with 2 different network ranges, and XP internet connection sharing. It's no wonder it doesn't work.

I plugged the router straight into the switch, and reset all the IP settings on both PCs, and disabled the second network interface. What was the idea behind this?

Anyway, that took all of a few minutes to get working.

I then sat and had a chat to my mate for a while. We might go out for a drink later.

I went to the supermarket, bought a new light globe, to replace the one that blew last night, and the one that blew several weeks ago. I also got some coke to dilute my alcohol (the irony, I couldn't have a drink last night, because I only had cheap and nasty Bourbon, and nothing to dilute it), and some junk food. Oh yeah, and some shampoo, so now I don't have to wash my hair with the Aloe Vera crap I bought for my sunburn.

I came home, had a few drinks.

Spent a few hours looking for a vpn solution to setup a secure tunnel into my network. Finally came across zebedee, it's pretty cool, supports private/public key based security etc, got all that setup.

I got up.

I ignored the decoder.

I checked my email.

I started looking at the decoder. What am I going to do?

While fiddling around I broke the replacement card slot. I'm getting good at this.

I started complaining on irc, someone suggested that I try not having the cap there, or that any would do.

I thought about getting a whole bunch of different values and trying them, I found a greencap hanging around, I soldered it on.

I removed the interface (I put it on and off a few times last night, trying to use the serial interface instead of the card slot etc, after I broke it). I plugged it all in.

I had to hold the card slot together, and it worked!! hooray.

It will only work with a card in there, my interface doesn't work, but I'm not too worried, the box isn't stuffed.

I bummed around again trying to get the interface to work, still no good.

Mum had got that bogan gardener in again, all he did for the 2 1/2 hours he was here was abuse his son loudly.

I had another hot shower.

I intended to go to the electronics shop again, get a replacement card slot, and bits to make more interfaces (make another one, maybe it will work, or maybe it's just this box). But I spent too long working out what I needed, and I wouldn't have had time to get back for the appointment in Gosford.

I decided to try one more thing.. this software is trying to boot up the box as if it has a locked card, but it's not. This is so simple it will have to work. I reset the card locking details, tried it again. Still no good.

I took off about 11.45, went into Gosford, saw my mate I go to dinner with, the guy who's interested in buying the business turned up. I showed him the equipment we have there, my mate told the network provider (who are upstairs) that we were there. They offered to help us with the issues we're having with spam.

I showed the guy our equipment in the rack, then the guys from the network provider turned up.

We went up to their office, and their linux guy had a look through the server, there's nothing we can really do, it's running Red Hat 2 from 1996.

I left from there, went to the electronics shop, got the bits I needed to make more interfaces.

$52 worth? Yeah, spose, $26 worth of rj45s, $9 for the replacement card slot, and $8 for solder. And then the few dollars for the components.

I went to McDonalds, got some lunch, and read the paper.

I came home, filled up the tank on the way.

I made up another interface, put it in instead of the other one. I also put a switch on the card slot (the original had a normally closed switch, the replacement has a normally open). Still no good. What is going on here?

I emailed the guy that had the proper interfaces made up, to see if he had any idea about this, he suggested I try a newer version of the card sharing software.

I searched around a bit, and found it. I thought this just might work, but, nope.

I put the proper card back in the decoder, recorded the episode for dvd archiving.

I give up.

There must be something dumb going on here. I think this box is just stuffed.

I'm going to make up another dodgy card interface using the old gold card, and try a few different boxes to see if I can get others working.

I have hot water!

I was able to have a hot shower for the first time this year.

I went to Jaycar, and bought the bits I need to make the interfaces (without the pcb to go in the slot).

The guy put the wrong transistors on the receipt.. $10.50 for 6 20c transistors? I realised when I got back to my bike, so I just went back and sorted it out.

I came home, soldered up the interface.

I opened the decoder, traced the tracks from the card slot, found where they joined to the board. I soldered the points on.

I plugged in the serial cable, made up a serial adapter, plugged it all in.

setup the card sharing server/client.

It didn't work.

I could see traffic on the software, but it didn't work.

I was using a win95 laptop.

I fiddled around for a while, and decided to try using 98 as the client.

Rebooted the box, bang, it's working! (except for being scrambled because the card in the server doesn't work anymore).

I went and got the working card, put it in the server, restarted everything, but it wouldn't work.. hmm.

I realised I hadn't pressed the "start" button on the client. Oops. Then it worked. Hooray!

I went back and forth for a bit, trying to get the 95 laptop to work, no good.

I put the working card back in the other box.

Halfway there, now I just need to get the other box working.

I made up another interface, these only take a few minutes.

I had a smart idea.. use an old gold card (since they're no good anymore) and I had a stuffed one anyway, I carefully soldered wires on to the pads of the chip, and put it in, it didn't work. Either it's not contacting properly, or the card itself is interfering. I desoldered it, tested for resistance, a lot of pads were joined together.

I sanded and scratched the chips off the back of the card, just leaving the pads, I soldered the wires back on, put it in.. it works! This bypasses needing to make pcbs now (not too pretty though).

I went to borrow the working card again, but my brother and his friends were watching tv.

I made another serial adapter, found a long bit of cat5, went in and setup my parents pc as a client. The cat5 was about 1m too short.

I went and found a serial extension cable, d'oh, db25. I went and got my db9 -> db25 adapter. D'oh, the db25 is female to female.

I found a db25 male to male. Now I have db9 female -> db25 male -> db25 female -> db25 female -> db25 male -> db25 male -> db25 female -> db9 male -> serial adapter. ( -> cat5 -> interface).

Guess what? it didn't work! I expected this, I would have been terribly surprised if it did work.

I went back and found all the rj45 joiners I could (2), then I chained together the 3 longest bits of cat5 I could find.

I ran a lead from my pc, outside, inside, through a room, to the loungeroom, into the interface.

It still didn't work. Maybe the cable is too long.

I dragged it back, and plugged it into my decoder. It worked again.

Hmm, now I am confused.

Maybe they changed the card slot in the newer box, and my dodgy card interface that works in my box doesn't connect properly in the other one.

I swapped the boxes, and took the one I couldn't get to work away.

I opened the decoder, started tracing the tracks so I could solder on the interface. they had changed the card slot, I couldn't get to the pins in the socket now, I started removing the plastic of the slot (I found in my box the plastic pulls away from the pins) in the process, I managed to snap the slot. Oops.

I had a spare slot on my PIC programmer, that I don't need anymore. I desoldered it.

I removed the rest of the slot. I noticed there was a surface mount capacitor missing from right near the slot. Uh oh.

I found the capacitor on the chair.

I finished tracing the tracks. I should have just poked around with the meter.

I put the new card slot on (luckily the pins lined up), and I reattached the capacitor (my first go at surface mount). I soldered the interface in too.

I plugged it all in. It still didn't work.

I put a card in, it didn't work. Uh oh. I think I've stuffed this.

I felt sick.

I continued fiddling around. Maybe it's the capacitor, maybe I didn't solder something in properly, maybe it's the interface.

I removed the interface, still no good. Now I was feeling really bad.

Maybe the cap is polarised, and around the wrong way. I think it's shorted anyway. I removed it again, had another go. Hmm, I think there's only half a capacitor here.

I left it. I've had enough. I'll look again tomorrow.

Wednesday.

I'm not really sure what happened on Wednesday (I'm writing this on Friday, the last couple of days have all been really similar, I might update it if I remember things).

On Wednesday I researched ways around this card blocking. I basically need to make us pcbs to fit in the card slot. ugh. I really can't be bothered getting all the chemicals and mucking around, to make such a simple pcb.

I chased up the guy who was going to get some made up, he made them up, he's got the manufacturer to sell them directly. $45 each. hmm, all I want is the card pcb, should only be a few dollars worth.

I borrowed the working card so I could continue my dvd archiving.

This is no good, I need to get this working again.

I sat and worked out how to make up the interface circuit on veroboard, I'll find a way to interface to the box later.

I wished I'd gone to the shops and got the parts (6 resistors, and 3 transistors, about $4 worth).

I went and talked to my parents, I'm sick of watching the home shopping channel.

I complained about the fact there's no hot water again. Dad went and reset something in the fusebox. Hmm, I traced the power, and it didn't appear that the hot water tank had it's own fuse/circuit breaker.

I woke up early for some reason. Lay in bed waiting for the alarm to go off.

I went off, I must have it set on radio for some reason, a song started playing, and it scared the crap out of me.

I went back to sleep a bit.

I got annoyed by people loudly talking just below the balcony. I was going to yell at them to go away (well, F$^* off really), but thought better of it, turned out it was Mum, and some guy she's got in to do the gardening.

I got up, started checking email.

I got called up, "theres a problem, can't get to any of the servers" "yep, you're right. Hangon, it's ok now" "oh, yeah" "bye".

I listened to some music, bummed around getting ready. Sent a bunch of emails trying to help a guy having trouble getting his tivo to connect to his XP machine.

Checked that phone number, $68000.

I took off, headed to the Cafe.

I started dealing with email, replied to a bunch of messages from days ago. I'm surprised we have any customers, they never get helped.

We then had to modify an invoice we issued to one of our clients, this should have taken 20 minutes. Remove 2 phone numbers from the invoice, send an email, add up some bandwidth usage, and print the invoice.

After 2 1/2 hours, I lost my patience. While trying to explain all that needed to be done, someone mucking around at the back of the computer managed to unplug it.

I lost it.

I just got up and walked out.

I thought about not going back. I thought about going back, collecting my stuff, and going home.

I can no longer handle this.

I went to the fish shop, bought some fish and chips, waited, took it back to the Cafe, sat out the back and ate my lunch.

I then sat and mucked around browsing on the internet.

The phone number is up over $200000. Ridiculous.

I just basically wasted time for the rest of the day. I don't care anymore.

Just before leaving, I started looking at the telephone bill someone was making a major issue of. Do you think 100 ISDN lines are free? What do you think will happen when you don't pay the bill? yes, it will get bigger.

Here's a charge for a PAPL link with nothing attached to it. Ring up, find out how to disconnect it.

What is this charge for disconnection/reconnection? call and query it.

1/2 hour later, I end up talking to them, trying to explain what are lines are, and work out what is going on.

No, this PAPL link is not for a fire alarm. How many times do I have to explain this? It had SDSL equipment attached to it. It was installed without permission, the equipment is no longer installed, there is nothing attached to the line.

Ok, I'll go through our convoluted method to cancel the line.

Ok, I'll wait for you to get back to me tomorrow as to why I have been charged disconnection/reconnection, when it never occurred. (I think I would know if 100 dialin lines were disconnected).

My friend's De Facto arrived, she asked me how I was "at wits end". I explained what was going on.

I didn't say I was planning to leave at the end of the month.

If I get pushed one more time, I'm walking, and that's it.

We left. I went to my mate's place, jumped in the car, and went around to see the guy that gave me my Sat decoder a couple of months ago.

I was just going to install another card. Uh oh. Channel Scrambled. I hope this is one of those isolated issues like I've seen before. "yeah, it broke 20 minutes ago" I'm told.

I tried a different card. No good, waited long enough for the card to update, no show. Maybe it got EMKd, and I just need to reprogram the cards.

I tried calling home, engaged. I tried calling a mate, no answer. I tried calling Mum's mobile, no answer. Far out.

I got a call back a few minutes later. "Is the Foxtel still working?", "yeah, oh, hangon, nope".

Great. Shit. Game over.

I setup the guy's VCRs so he could copy NTSC videos, tried to fix his printer, crappy Canon thing that keeps complaining about "invalid access to memory location".

I got the tuning details for the FTA Sat service. I set him up with FTA. Great, there's nothing on here worth watching.

Left here, went to dinner. Went back to my mate's place, set his that was also broken to FTA.

I came home. I decided I wanted some alcohol. I drank everything last night, and was left to drink Gin and water.

I went to pull into one bottlo on the way home, shut. Went for the next one, shut. Damn.

Went into Gosford, they were just shutting. Got a bottle of Black Jack, and came home.

After all that, I haven't even opened it.

It must have been windy, the wireless device had fallen off the monitor, I found my makeshift aerial by standing on it (oops, still works though), and there were bits of paper everywhere.

Fixed all that up.

Wasn't interested in fixing the Sat tv. Just looked at the error LED for a while.

I started dealing with email again.

I read some sat forums, looks like most of the cards have been killed now, to the point where even some valid subscribers that haven't got their new cards yet are getting cut off.

Apparently some cards still work, but probably only for the next few days.

I really need to get my card sharing stuff setup. I need these interfaces, I don't feel like hacking into the box and soldering onto the card interface, I'd rather have a pcb that just fit in. Maybe I can make something by drawing on some plastic with a conductive ink pen.

I tried putting a few different cards in I have hanging around, all no good.

I watched home shopping channel (not encrypted) for a while. It became unbearable.

I'm now listenening to streaming mp3, and trying to find the details of making card interfaces again.

I woke up about 8.30

Started mucking around on the computer.

Reading slashdot, there's a telephone number up for sale, that was in an 80s song (ooh, I had to download it) "Tommy TuTone - Jenny/867-5309". The guy is selling the phone number, with 212 (NYC) area code. It's currently going for $41100. It still has 6 days left, I wonder what it will get up to:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3077991790&category=1503

I left to go to the Cafe, need to get the ADSL sorted out today.

I got there, there was some guy I've not met before there, he owns a computer shop in Newcastle, and is interested in buying the business.

I checked the mail servers, seem to be working. I then started going through the email. about 1000 spam came in over the weekend.

I got rid of all that, then I started replying to the people who had been whinging over the weekend.

A guy who's website I transferred to us a while ago came in, he's got virii on his machine again, and he can't access his email. I configured usermin on the server, so he could use the web interface.

Then I came across an email to say that our domain name had expired. Great, only half the business runs off that domain name.

I started trying to login to GoDaddy to renew it. I couldn't work out the password, and the password reset is very convoluted, you have to put in details from a recent transaction, and the details of the credit card used to pay for it. I gave up on it, I'll sort it out tomorrow.

I called our ADSL provider, told him to transfer all the accounts from the current nonsense setup (60 people sharing a 384kbit connection to the internet) over to a shaped account, 50Mb/day, then shaped to either the same or a bit faster than they are getting now. It's just because of about 5 people who are downloading 24/7.

Anyway, the way this changes in the next couple of days, will mean there is no IP address changes, which is good, I don't have to go to Newcastle and fiddle around trying to fix the config of a customer's site.

I then called the customer, to let them know it would be getting sorted out. They were all in meetings. A short time later they called me back. They still wanted to query a couple of ADSL circuits on their bill that shouldn't be there. I took the numbers, I'll chase it up tomorrow.

A guy from the Tax department rang, about a tax invoice we had issued. Uh oh. I explained to him about the fact the Director was killed recently, and we're trying to run this, and there are some difficulties, so he can give me the details and we'll look at it and get back to him later. He said he could do something else, and would try that.

I think we're buggered now, if they work out we're not paying tax.

Then I tried to go to our website, and got a "No DNS Records" error from the proxy server. Oh shit.

I then had another go at logging in to GoDaddy, or resetting the password. I called my friend's De Facto, and got some credit card details. I tried to reset the password, no good. I found another receipt from them, for payment of a different domain, and I went through the credit card details again. Hooray, I found one that worked, and it reset the password.

I logged in, renewed the domain, there's a few others that have expired, I'll chase them up tomorrow.

I tried to pay for it with my friends credit card, but it was rejected. Not surprising, considering a letter from Amex turned up today saying the bill was seriously overdue. I put my details in, paid, and was reimbursed in cash. Good exchange rate currently, $17.50 USD is only $22 AUD.

It was at this point I realised that the No DNS Records error probably came from the fact that i tried to go to the domain, without www in front, and it's probably not configured correctly with a default A entry in the zone file, but usually that results in an error something like "address ok, no record of requested type" or something.

We closed the shop, I went to my mates place, had a quick chat for a while.

A guy from one of the bandwidth providers called in to find out about a connection we were going to get in Gosford, sorted that out.

My friend's De Facto called up, we told her the domain was renewed.

I took off after this, came home.

I've just writren this blog, and listened to some of the mp3s I've downloaded over the last couple of days with my free ADSL.

Woo I got it working again.

A ton of reboots, manually setting TCP/IP settings, and installing Internet Connetion Sharing and I'm back.

Why do they try to sell NAT32? (probably because ICS is such a pile, even though it's free).

I went and saw the guy I used to work for.

Setup the foxtel for his daughter, the box had been unplugged for too long, and the card had died, so I put a new one in. I'll just reprogramme the old one.

Had a chat about updating his website, and about the database I was creating for him a while ago.

Came home again.

Mum gave me some brochures on holidays, contiki tours etc.

I give up on this wireless. It's buggered. Can't connect, or if it can, no traffic works, even when connecting to my own AP basically next to it. Must have died. Reinstalling the drivers did nothing.

Where's my Gold card?

I got up about 12.30. The heat woke me up.

fiddled around with the internet connection again, bloody thing keeps dropping out.

I decided to blog, I'm still mucking around with the connection.

The aircon guy I used to work for called me, can I setup foxtel for him, and he wants his webpage updated, and will I be doing the database I was going to build for them a while ago.

I said I would be there in an hour.

I think this wireless adapter is a dud. It will either get stuck "changing configuration" or it will connect, but no traffic will go across. I need to unplug it for a minute (and reboot to get it working again) before it will work.

When the dumb trial version of the NAT stuff I have exits, it seems to bugger up the WLAN connection.

I thought I would try using the dopey internet connection sharing thing.

I'm giving up. Umpteen reboots and still no good. I bought an Orinoco Gold card off a guy on irc the other day, if he's posted it, it should be getting here soon enough.

I can't win. I tried to change back to my isdn connection, and the dumb windows machine I have to use (because the crappy isdn interface card won't work in linux anymore) is crashing "unable to start OLEACC.dll" or something.

Press the "windows fix" button on the front of the case.

Except for the dopey firewall that doesn't seem to work, I'm back online. Oh, there's another firewall update. I'll wait 1/2 hour for this to download/install, and then the firewall will work for a couple of days before it breaks again.

Oops, time to go see that guy.

Valentines Day.

I got up, started mucking around with the laptop and my free ADSL connection.

My ear is annoying me, it's all blocked up.

I got it all working, ate breakfast, got ready, and went to leave. I grabbed my phone "no space for new messages" as usual. Deleted one.

I was just down getting on my bike when the message came through, can I bring the laptop and stuff to the Cafe when I come in for the meeting this morning. Argh. Nope, I don't have time to go back and pack it up, and load my bike, I'm already late.

I left, rode to the Cafe, went in a bit late.

had a meeting to discuss all the meetings we had last week, and the changes we need to make to sort things out.

While I was in the meeting, a woman who's network/computers I look after called me, complaining about the email again.

I told her I would ring her back.

The Solicitor asked about his computer he had brought in, with a stuffed powersupply. Someone had got a new one, and found that it didn't fit.

He could get a replacement from Compaq for $130. For a $30 powersupply?

I put the unit in, it didn't fit, the cutout on the back was too small. I made a couple of adjustments with a hacksaw, and then I took ages to drill a little hole for a screw using a knife and a screwdriver.

I put the unit in again, screwed it in, and went to connect it.

WTF? this stupid Compaq piece of poo. They've used some sort of proprietry power connector on the motherboard. It looks like ATX, but it's got 4 extra pins, and the colours are totally different.

WhyTF would they do that, other than so they can charge people up the arse when the original unit fails? This is the dumbest thing I have come across for a long time.

So I pulled it out again. luckily my modifications are too noticable, and it's on the back anyway.

I borrowed an ADSL router from the Cafe, for my mate that called me yesterday. This was used in Newcastle for the pop we shut down.

Dad called me, where was I, what was I doing etc. I am busy, I'll call you later.

We finished up the meeting a short time later. I called Dad back, he asked me to go to a shop in Gosford, I don't know why.

I called back the woman that called me, and explained about the spam/worms that are overloading our mail servers.

I went to Gosford, I'm not sure why I had been asked to come here. I thought I was going to be looking for a unit to put my tv/speakers/junk etc on.

I mentioned yesterday that I wanted a guitar, and so the reason I was here is because there's a music shop here.

Looked in there, the guy showed me some guitars and amps. $400 for a cheap beginners guitar, and a 15watt amp.

Went to another music shop, $600 for a kit, a really nice Yamaha guitar, and a big 30 watt amp. This was really nice. I sat and had a play with the giutar, not much I could do having never played before.

Dad bought himself a clarinet.

We travelled back, went to another music shop, it was really seedy, and they weren't very helpful. an "ESP" guitar for $550, and a rough looking (probably second hand) 30 watt amp for $275. Pff.

Went to lunch, my ear was now really pissing me off.

Went and looked at tv units, nothing really useful. Looked for some brackets to mount my speakers, probably use ceiling mount tv brackets. Not at $150 each.

I think I'll go to the hardware and buy some basic galvanised brackets (L brackets etc) and just bend them and bolt them together to come up with something I can use to mount the speakers.

I went to my mates place, as I turned up my ADSL mate turned up too. He was there to pinch my other mate's number plate, since his bike is unregistered for not paying his fines.

They had both forgotten my birthday.

I put the ADSL router in, mucked around for ages trying to get it to connect.

My mate called BigPong, "oh, there's no account created yet" so they've just DSLAMed the line, but not created a radius account, so you can't logon. That's terrifically useful, but what do you expect from a completely useless organisation.

Started watching a movie my mate had copied, some war thing with Bruce Willis in it. I didn't pay much attention.

Popped down to the shops and got some junk food, came back, sat outside and chatted for a while.

The guy that lives in the place with my mate (another mate), and yet another mate turned up. Neither of them knew it was my birthday.

We chatted for a couple of hours, then we decided to go down the club. We went to the servo and got some food first, then we got a taxi, at about 10.30.

We got into the Leagues Club, wandered around for a bit. We sat down and chatted for a while. I played Keno and picked 13 and 2, that should be a hint. (Didn't win). I didn't buy I drink, someone asked me why I wasn't drinking "I'm expecting someone to shout me a drink". "Who would that be?" "Any of you can" which was ignored. I was now getting a bit depressed. Sitting at a table with 4 of my "mates" and no one remembered my birthday.

I wonder how long it will take them to remember this year. It was about a week last year.

Went and played the pokies a bit. Didn't win. Played a pinball machine. Lost all my mates when I went back to the pokies.

Bumped into another mate I haven't seen for ages.

I finally managed to get a hold of one of my other mates, they had gone up into the nightclub I said I wasn't going to.

Now I'm faced with either paying $11 to get into the crappy club, or paying $15 to get a taxi back to my bike to get home. (Or paying $10 to get a taxi to home, and have to muck around getting my bike tomorrow).

It was now just after midnight.

I asked if you get in cheap on your birthday "Is it your birthday today?" "No, yesterday" "Yesterday, Saturday?", "No, Friday", "No then". Great. Thanks. Wasted $11 and went in.

Found my mates. I was now really annoyed. We were in the "rewind room" at this point, it's ok, but I've got all the songs at home, so I might as well just be listening to them there.

We were in there for a while, and then we moved back to the main club area, with all the doof doof music. We ended up sitting in the corner (what it the point of this) I was just waiting for someone to decide to leave.

I could hardly stay awake at this point. A bouncer noticed my nodding off, and tapped me. I thought I was getting thrown out (no great loss), but then he just made a motion like drinking, and kept going.

I sat and tried to stay awake again. I went and bought a Coke, I should have got Red Bull or something. A couple of minutes later one of my mates (the others had disappeared) said he was leaving.

Fine, we left. Got a taxi back, I paid $10 of the taxi fair (which I would have had to have paid one way or the other anyway). Sat and had a chat for a few minutes, and then I came home.

My ear is really annoying me now. I think I need to go to the doctor. No amount of poking around in there is doing anything. I tried running water in there, no good.

I eventually found, that if I took a deep breath, held my nose, and forced the air out of my lungs, that it made my ears pop. I had to do this a few times, I could feel (and hear) the water moving around. Eventually it popped open. Hooray.

I mucked around on the computer for a bit, and went to bed about 5am.

Had dinner.

They asked me if I had decided about the air conditioner (my Grandma want's to buy me one for my birthday) I said I had not.

Did I want anything else. I don't know. I suggested a guitar half jokingly. I've been thinking about getting one, but not done anything about it.

Some crap show came on the tv, where they kept saying "underpants", that was enough for me, so I left again.

Happy Birthday to me.

I got up, got ready. I noticed the email server was incredibly slow. I restarted the daemons.

I left, I travelled down to Homebush to fix the guy's PC. On the way some inattentative driver ran up the back of an overcautious driver, I just laughed and kept going.

I got into the markets, I couldn't remember where the office was (Shed C), so I went through the sheds looking for it, couldn't find it. I pulled over to call the guy, immediately some clown comes over and tells me I can't leave my bike there. I had pulled over, and put the stand down.

I still had my helmet on, and the bike was still keyed on. Give me a break. "I'm not leaving it, I'm making a phone call". "oh". He then tried to make small talk with me, I'm not interested buddy, go and annoy someone else for scratching their arse or something. I noticed 4 missed calls on my phone. I called the guy, he told me where they were, that he was roaming around the markets, and which PC had the problem.

I found it, parked, and went into the office.

My phone rang, it was the message service, someone complaining about issues with the mail again.

I called them, told them the story, and that I would look at it when I could.

I fiddled around trying to fix the PC, first it wouldn't give video, so I cleaned and reinserted the card, that fixed that, then I got windows to boot, but it kept rebooting itself. I went through and checked for dodgy startup items (or virii infections), fixed all the software things I could think of that could cause it.

I noticed a lot of hardware was installed twice, removed it all, reinstalled it.

I thought I had it all fixed, then I right clicked on something, and the PC rebooted again.

I decided to check if the CPU was overheating or something, I checked it, seemed fine, checked the memory etc.

The machine wouldn't boot after that, the power light just flashed whenever I tried to boot it up. I mucked around for 45 minutes trying to sort that, but it just would not boot.

I could have checked on the internet for ideas, but his office with the other PC/internet was locked.

I gave up. I called him up, told him to send the PC up the coast with the other guy who works there, and to get it to me up here, where I can test/fix it properly.

I then headed for home again.

The markets has to be the scariest place I have ever ridden. It is the second largest amount of forklifts in one place in the world. The forklift drivers are crazy, they don't look, they fly along, and if they do see you, they come charging directly at you.

I was glad to get out of there.

I came some of the way back, pulled in for lunch. More missed calls on my mobile, the Cafe. I called back, "the mail's down", "No, it's not down, we're being heavily spammed, and the servers can't handle it. I'm at Carlingford, there's nothing I can do here. I will look at it when I get to Gosford".

I ate my lunch, and headed back. I went into Gosford to check the equipment. Apparently a lot of people were complaining about busy signals. I thought maybe with my fiddling in there on Tuesday when I removed the voice gear, that I bumped some dodgy Kroned connection out or something, and we were down 30 lines.

I climbed up, checked the Tigris, 4 WANs up. No probs there. I forgot to check how many modems were in the Tigris, I climbed up again. It has a 62 port card, and a 48 port card, 110 ports, with 4 E1s. I dunno what those extra 10 lines with no modems do. Maybe the 4th E1 only has 20 lines on it.

I went in, and restarted the mail daemons on a couple of servers.

I called into the Cafe, what's happening with the Solicitor, he's busy today, so we're having the meeting in the morning. I've got better things to do on a Saturday morning than go to more bloody meetings.

I came home after that, watched a bit of tv.

My mate was over in the US recently called me, I thought maybe to give me brithday wishes or something. Nope. He's not coming up this weekend, maybe next weekend. He had been mucking around on his brother's computer and mucked the sound up when he tried to play games or use media player. I suggested he reinstall DirectX. Didn't hear back from him, so that must have fixed it.

I found that WEP has been turned off on the WLAN I found the other day, so I attached, it's running DHCP too, bang, away we go.

It's got a 256k ADSL connection available, so I've been browsing on it all afternoon. Not great, 20k/sec, but not too shabby either, for free anyway.

Mum came in and gave me a card and some chocolates.

I've just been called in to have dinner with them, so I'm off.

I got up, got ready, took off.

I headed up to my mates place, jumped in the car, we drove down to the city, found a park near the PowerTel building.

We went in, Qi was still listed on the business directory, I thought they'd gone bust.

We were early, so we had time. We went up to level 14, and into the office I used to work in. I thought I saw a couple of the technical guys I used to work with. Some woman asked if she could help us, I told her I used to work there, and was anyone I used to work with available.

She called over one of the guys, we went into the meeting room.

He was the last guy left from the original staff back when I worked there, he'd put in his resignation, and was leaving tomorrow.

The guy I worked for had left 2 weeks ago, and the other technical guy left a year ago.

I chatted to him for a few minutes, and then we left, and went to our proper meeting in the building.

It turns out that my friend had signed contracts worth thousands of dollars a month, and they're not interested in terminating the contracts.

I don't know what will happen after this, we're going to find out about transferring our services there, and consolodating things, but it might not work.

We finished up there, went to see the guy who owns the Internet Cafe we provide data to (and his translator) and tried to explain the situation.

He wanted a discount on his access, which was fair enough, he was getting 2.4mbit until recently, when it reduced to less than 1mbit, and for a couple of days it was 600kbit.

We told him we were researching other bandwidth solutions, and we were waiting on details.

We left there, came back up the coast, went to the Cafe. I then explained what was going on, and changes we'd need to make.

I went back to my mates place after that, we went for dinner, and then I came home.

Got up, got ready, rode up to my mate's place.

We drove down to Rosebery, to the Optus facility, mucked around checking in. Some guy who worked there, and had a pass, walked in, the fat security guard asked him who he was and if he was supposed to be there, he told the fat guy he'd worked there for 3 months and if he didn't recognise him then it was his bad luck, and then he wandered into the building.

The fat security guard went after him, and came back about 5 minutes later.

As we were checking in, he told us that the car would have to be moved, because it was in the disabled parking, "yeah, and it's got a disabled sticker on it". Oh.

We got past him, and into the people that manage the "Telehousing". While I was there getting a proxcard (10.43 check in), I was told that the car would have to be moved "why is that?" I asked, "because it's the disabled parking", "yeah, and it's got a disabled sticker on it" "oh". For God's sake, twice in 2 minutes, can't you people get a life? just because you can't park in the disabled parking.

Went around to the colo facility, the guy opened the rack, I unplugged everything, ripped everything out, carted it out to the car, loaded it all in, we were done in about 40 minutes. Brilliant time. Oh yeah, and I noticed in the bottom of the rack a shelf and a keyboard shelf, so I took both of those, they should fit in my rack :-)

Went back, checked out (11.21), left.

Drove over to a guy's place, unloaded all the gear in his garage, and started packing it. My mate went and got lunch (McDonalds again) I stopped and ate that, then got back into packing. He called up TNT to arrange it being picked up, at 3pm.

I called the guy in Darwin, arranged to hang on to the RAS (I thought it had 120 ports in it, but it's only got 62). He gave us some of the other equipment he doesn't need, that was cool.

We packed up everything he wanted returned, servers, voice gear, and some other misc equipment. Finished packing at 1.30pm.

A guy I've done work for before called me, could I come and sort out a problem with his computer, yeah, sure, on Friday (oops I forgot that's my birthday, oh well, it's not like I'm doing it for free).

Rang TNT to see if they could come earlier. I sat and watched some of "Changing Lanes" while I waited.

TNT finally turned up at 3.40pm. Took all of 5 minutes to give him the stuff, we locked up and left.

Got about 10 minutes away, the guy who's place we were at called us, we had to go back. We went back, he wanted to give us a pop rivet gun for putting in wall plugs or something. We left again, went to the shop where my mate's wife works, picked her up, and headed for home.

We decided to stop in at my place on the way, and drop off the equipment we didn't have to ship.

Coming off the freeway, there was a big traffic jam, very unusual to be backed up that far. There was no traffic coming up the hill, and a lot of people were turning around.

We went back, and went down the hill the old way, went to my place, dropped off all the equipment, and then headed back towards my mate's place. Heard on the radio that apparently there had been an accident between a motorbike and a truck, and it was still backed up.

Got back to my mate's place, sat and had dinner with him, my friend's De Facto called me, apparently the Gosford service is slow and full.

Maybe I caused an issue when I was in there mucking around, but it could just be that too many people are dialling in, and that when you can get on, too many people are downloading.

I said I would have a look at my next available time, probably Friday afternoon.

I came home not long after, I fiddled around getting the shelf to fit in my rack.

A DVD I burned last night was finished, I tested it, fine. I went to delete the recordings from Tivo (need the disk space, desparately) I then found that tivo was not recording Jackass, but Evangelion. hmm. Argh! the bloody channels have moved again.

I spent about an hour working out what the channels were doing now, and reordering them all again.

I'm now going to bed, I'm tired, and I have to get up early to go back to Sydney again in the morning, more meetings.

Got up, got ready.

My mate I go to dinner with picked me up, I introduced him to my Mum.

We went into Gosford, had a meeting with one of our clients that owes us a lot of money, ended up being there for 2 1/2 hours. Got some things sorted out.

After that, we went to where our equipment is, and I removed some pieces of equipment that were not necessary (some voice gear, a desktop computer, a bunch of cables) and tidied and reorganised the equipment slightly.

I got dropped back at home, got my bike, and headed towards the Cafe. I went into Hungry Jacks and had lunch with my mate on the way.

Went to the Cafe, tested the SDSL router that I removed from Gosford, it doesn't seem to work.

I talked to our ADSL provider, I need to make some changes to make it usable, he doesn't want to do it until next month for billing purposes.

Someone called in with a problem with their email. I tried to login to webmail to check it, but the connection was so slow it was impossible. I lost the plot and flew off the handle, I threw the mouse at the monitor, swore, and stormed off outside. I have absolutely no patience anymore.

We got the server that needs to be returned to Darwin along with some of the voice gear removed from Gosford. I forgot to get the disks. I borrowed some wireless gear, a couple of APs.

I called a guy I was going to give some sat cards to, he wasn't home, I left a message.

I went home, some bogan in a Commodore nearly caused an accident.

I mucked around with the APs for a while, tested the range, poor.

The guy rang me back, and I told him what was going on, I'll either see him tomorrow or Thursday, depending on time, otherwise it will be next Tuesday.

I got up

I went to the doctor.

I have a chest infection, I got some new asthma medication, and I got a prescription for some antibiotics if it doesn't help.

The stress I'm under is not helping with my health.

After I finished here, I went and got some lunch, sat in McDonalds and read the newspaper.

I went and saw the aircon guy I worked for, wired up a fan unit for him to use on Tuesday.

As I was leaving, my ADSL mate turned up, apparently the sewer behind his house has an issue, the police and the fire brigade were there about it apparently. He was there to collect the mower and whippersnipper to clean up his lawn so that he can get the landlord to come out, because the garden was looking rough.

I came home, bummed around for the rest of the day.

Last night I was trying to install my street directory on CD, but the CD is all scratched, I spent hours trying to copy the files to the hard drive. I got called up about 11pm, my adsl mate, he was with my mate that was in the US (and came back recently, obviously), they were at another mates house (where we had the bbq recently). Did I want to come for a drink?

Yeah, whatever. I was feeling a bit crook, but I thought bugger it.

Got dressed and took off around there. Left the laptop trying to copy the files.

My just sat and drank and chatted for a few hours, I came home just after 4am.

The files were still not copied from the CD. I tried putting it in a different machine, my DVDR drive had real issues with it, and just gave up trying to read it. I put it in my CDR drive, and left it going when I went to bed.

Sat and mucked around on the computer for a couple of hours, and went to bed just after 6am.

I woke up again about 1:15pm. It was hot.

Read email, listened to music, mucked around with the laptop again. It had finished copying the files, finally.

Got hungry, ate marmalade on toast. I need to go to the shops.

I want to know more about this wireless node. I went searching on nodedb, nothing.

I remembered the hard disk out of my friend's laptop I was supposed to be doing something with, I installed it in my computer, and started copying the data off it. Very annoyingly, the only file I can't read is his email inbox. I tried several times, no go.

About 3.30 my mates' ex gf called me, she had the money she owed me for a computer I gave her about 6 months ago. She told me where her new place is, and that I could come get the money about 5pm.

I went back to mucking around with the wireless stuff.

I intended to have a shower, but I didn't get around to it, I'm not big on cold showers.

I left about 5pm, went and found her place, had a chat for a while, fixed her monitor (needed a degauss), and left again.

I went to the shops on the way home, bought junk food and some breakfast cereal.

I went to the bottle shop and bought some grog, and came home.

I bummed around, I drank one of the litres of juice I bought, then I had a rum and coke. I was tempted to just eat chips for dinner, but I instead did something useful, had fish and chips, and did the washing up while I waited.

I ate my dinner, about half way through I got a shocking pain in the stomache.

I decided to watch one of the Indy Jones DVDs I bought months ago, got them out, opened them up.

I booted up 2000 on my machine (after fixing the "software" file that corrupts itself everytime I shut down, quality software), and tried to copy the inbox. no good.

I then got another bad pain.

I went to relieve myself, and was stuck in there for 45 minutes.

I've just run a disk check, "no errors" it claims. Ran it again, checking for bad sectors, still claims "no errors". Now, instead of copying some of the file, and then just clicking the hard disk, it now complains of a CRC error. Great.

I think I'll go to the doctor in the morning, I'm sick of this, and I want to know what it is.

I was just cleaning out my inbox, and I just came across an email from a few days ago.

It's from the oztivo mailing list, one of the members is buying one of the new dvd burning models, and someone made a comment about having others camping on the lawn. Someone else then commented they'd already planned the road trip, and wanted the front lawn for their tent.

I replied and asked if the portaloo had been arranged, and if an extension cord would be available, this caused someone else to ask if broadband internet would also be available, and here is the email reply with answers to all the queries:

-------------
There's good news and bad news.

There is no front (or back) lawn, but I'll move the car out of the carport
and you can make a cardboard city.

The permit for the portaloo was refused by North Sydney council on the
grounds of hygiene, theirs, not yours. Apparently unless I'm building
another butt-ugly block of overpriced 'lifestyle' apartments we can't have
one. Hacking a Tivo, even a 57H, does not count as freehold improvement.

Wireless broadband (b & g) is available in the carport and I can drop an
RJ45 with a hub on for those of you stuck in the 20th century.

I'll put a splitter in the cable coax and in the antenna cable so you can
have foxtel or FTA but you'll need your own STB.

I have one spare TV which I suggest be run on prison rules, if you don't
like the channel, you need to shank someone to get it changed. That should
keep arguments short and infrequent.

Anything else?
-----------------

I found it quite humerous, and didn't want it to get lost in the mailing list archives, which is why I've put it here, in case at some point someone wants to read it again, Google will probably find it here.

OK, I've caught up.

I was having a nice sleep, when at about 1.15pm some clown started up a chainsaw.

I've now got up, started checking my email and blogging the last couple of days. That's all I've done so far.

In my email, someone else has gone on about Tivo collecting data, in this case, about how many people saw Janet's boob. Here's the news item they linked to:

http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-5154219.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=news

And another interesting email, the first guy I emailed about the Silver cards he's selling on eBay replied. Too late buddy, and you say "ship to US only" anyway.

Ok, time to watch tv, and eat pizza.

I'm getting really sick of this cold, or whatever it is. My throat is still saw, I've had a headache for about 3 weeks now, but I think it's being prolonged by the coughing fits I keep suffering trying to get crud out of my throat. I cannot understand how I can spend 5 minutes blowing my nose (and nearly blowing up my head), and then 2 minutes later I have to do it all over again.

I think I was go to the doctor on Monday and find out about this, I've waited too long for it to just go away.

I woke up, got up.

at 9.30 I was fiddling around on the computer when I got called up, I didn't have to go and see that lady, her phone line is stuffed. What a surprise.

Ok, I've got an hour and half between now and having to leave to go to the Cafe.

I fiddled around with the wireless again, downloading different network tools and trying them, nothing worked.

I went and looked at netstumbler, and saw the list of supported devices.

I went over to eBay, and started searching for the supported devices. I want an Orinoco gold card, they are supposed to be great, or you can get a Silver and flash it with the Gold firmware to upgrade it.

I found one lot of silvers that could be bought for $25, emailed the guy.

I found a cheap device, a Dell TrueMobile which is a Gold card, bid on it, I had a couple of hours left.

I went back to trying more network sniffers and stuff, everything either doesn't work or is for linux, which I don't have on the support laptop (yet).

I packed the laptop up, I'll need it in the Cafe today. Took the SDSL routers and powersupplies I was fiddling around with a couple of days ago, and took off.

I got in, checked my auction, I'd won.

Then a guy we sell lines to in Sydney who's been trying to get his radius server IP address changed in our RAS called up, so I had to go about sorting that out.

I found the login details in an email, I worked out how to change the settings in the RAS, it should work.

Some more SDSL routers had turned up, so I set the laptop up and used it to configure them, they both linked up, and worked, groovy, now we have a backup pair.

I went back to fiddling with the RAS, and noticed that I lost connectivity to it, and also to all our other equipment, in Gosford and Sydney. Must be a major issue.

My friend's De Facto had brought in his laptop, I need to go through it and find things we might need, emails, back records etc. I booted it up, started fiddling with it.

The phone started going off it's head, people couldn't browse, what's going on etc. I was terribly interested, they're only paying customers.

I told the tech support woman to call our provider, she got put on hold, got through after a few minutes, and was talking to someone, but she wasn't sure what they were saying, so I spoke to them. Apparently they'd made some changes for upgrades to ADSL, and it had bunged up the whole network. They had 3 guys working on it, and would be fixed ASAP.

Fine, change the outgoing voicemail message to something like the same, and unplug the phone.

The guy with the lines in Sydney called again, I told him what was going on.

I went back to the laptop, it had shut off. Hmm. It wouldn't come back on. I decided to just remove the hard disk and extract all the files like I did recently with the other laptop. I started pulling it apart, got the keyboard out, couldn't work out where the disk was, undid all the remaining screws (most are already missing, I don't know how this thing holds together, magic I think), and then I found a little side cover that came off, and the disk was sitting in underneath there, and just slid out. So I only had to undo one screw. D'oh.

I put the whole thing back together, then I found the power socket is dodgy, I got that working, tried to boot it up, the screen doesn't come on now. Hmm.

Oh well, I've got the disk, I'll just get all the files off and go through it that way.

My friend's De Facto showed me some pictures on her phone, of the plane after it was crashed, there wasn't anything left, it just looked like scrap metal, and you wouldn't know it was a plane.

Anyway, I started fiddling around with the wireless stuff after that.

I found a few wlans in the Cafe, one I was running, 2 I was not. I could get on to one, and get an IP address from DHCP, but the default gateway didn't work, I couldn't get out to the net.

I put a port scanner (nmap) and some other software on, so I could fiddle around on this wlan and try to find a way out.

The guy with the lines in Sydney called again, still not working. I got back in and fiddled around again, called him back. Left a message, he's not called me back, so it must be working now.

I packed up, left. Went to my mate's place.

I started fiddling around with the laptop again, I could get on to both of those wlans I found in the Cafe from his place.

I started snooping around on the onne that gave me an IP address. Found a bunch of hosts up, with lots of open ports, ooh, this'll be fun.

I tried incrementing the default gateway, in case a machine had IP forwarding enabled, and had a working gateway, no such luck, wasted too much time on this.

There were webservers, that gave me some idea of what this network is, there was even a machine running VNC. It took me 3 guesses to get the password. Hint: don't make your password the same as your domain name.

Now I had admin access to a Windows 2000 server. I quickly fiddled around with the software running on it, a web interface to some sort of management tool for certain basic services provided to people that live in a certain area.

Around this time my mate came back from picking up his wife, and the pizzas for dinner, so I hoed into that.

I got back on the laptop after that, but I made the mistake of moving it to a different spot, where I thought I would have better reception.

Unfortunately both wlans I could see had the same SSID, so it would always connect to the stronger one, which doesn't give an IP (and I can't sniff to find one). No amount of reboots or reinstalling the driver would help. I gave up, and moved back to the table again. Bang, straight back on.

Once I tired of the the web interface tool, looking at pictures, status reports, maps, weather station details, I brought up a command prompt to check the network settings, same default gateway as I was being issued, didn't work on this PC either. This LAN must not have access to the web. How boring.

I used the computer management thing to enable the guest account, with no password, and make it a member of the admin group. I then connected to all the other machines on the lan, and did the same, except for the domain controllers, because they don't use "local groups and users". I found a way to access the domain controller, but just as I was in the middle of enabling the guest account, VNC bunged up.

I tried to get back on, but I couldn't. SMB was still working on that machine, so I went through all the files on the disk, nothing terribly interesting. A printer I could have used, that could have been funny.

I tried port scanning other machines I knew about, to try to find VNC running on something else, but no such luck. It was now abou 10.30, and I was tired.

I packed up the laptop, took what was left of the pizza, and came home.

I emailed the guy I won the wireless card from, to say I was in Aus, would he ship to me etc.

On irc, someone mentioned that TiVo is collecting private data. I'm not worried, this will only affect people with subscriptions, who dialup and collect guide data from Tivo's servers. I'm happy to give away info from my Tivo, that's why I've got MRTG and Big Brother running across it, providing the data to a globally accessable webserver.

I clicked around watching tv for a while, and then went back and checked my mail.

A couple of hours later the guy I emailed replied and said he had cancelled my bid and offered it to the next bidder. Bloody discriminating ass clown.

I went back to looking for another one, all "Ship to US only". I tried emailing them to find out if they would ship to me, and eBay said "Unable to send message" everytime. Useless.

I started whinging on irc about it, and someone in there said they had a card (Orinoco Gold) they didn't want anymore, so after a bit of haggling (not much) I agreed to buy it, for a little bit more than they go on eBay, but it was worth it to know that I didn't have to go through all the hassle, and that the card would get sent out in the next couple of days.

I clicked around watching tv again for a while. Went to bed about 4am.

OK, here it is, days later I'm updating again.

On Thursday, I was supposed to be travelling down to Sydney, to see the guy at the Internet Cafe we provide data too. We need to change the arrangement, so that we're not getting stuffed around having to run down here everytime there's a problem.

We were then going to go and see a guy in the PowerTel building I used to work in back in 2001, and try to work out consolidating our lines/accounts etc.

Something happened, and we ended up postponing all this until next Thursday.

So I ended up getting up about 10am, watched tv most of the day, while mucking around finishing setting up the support laptop.

I had the wireless device plugged in, not that there is any wireless networks around, I didn't even have an aerial, so as a joke, I put a paperclip in the hole.

About 5pm, I remembered I was supposed to ring a lady today, I was supposed to go and see her tomorrow, I think her phoneline is stuffed. I called her, left a message.

I got off the phone, and noticed the wireless adapter falling off a wireless lan. What the?

I went and did a site survey, and there was indeed a wlan around. I moved the wireless device around a bit, found a better position where I got better reception, and it reconnected.

I tried to get an IP address with DHCP, but there was no answer. I looked a bit closer, and saw that the wlan has WEP enabled.

I spent hours wandering around trying to work out what direction the signal was coming from, it's really flakey, sometimes in one point it will be really strong (80% I saw at one point) and then it will just disappear, and you can never find it again at that position.

I tried looking for ways to crack WEP, but nothing supports this device (Gigafast USB wireless adapter, based on the Atmel at503a or whatever).

After hours of mucking around, I gave up and went to bed.

So much for today being an easy day.

I didn't get to sleep until 2.30am. My mate rings me up at 9am. I don't remember the conversation.

I bummed around getting ready.

My mate who has been over in New York for the past few months called me. He did get married, and he's planning to move back over there in a few months and apply for citizenship.

It was raining outside. I had to be at the Seniors club at about midday. I waited for the rain to stop, it slowed off a lot around 11.35, so I took off. It stopped a few minutes later.

I got to the club, and had lunch. My mate I go to dinner with told me the network link to the Internet Cafe in Chatswood had failed again, and someone had to go fix it.

I installed the router machine I'd configured for them, finished doing the configuration and testing. Got paid for setting it up, groovy.

We left. I was going to leave my bike at a mates place, and jump in the car, but thenI realised we didn't have the keys.

I went to the Cafe, the get the keys, I then went and dropped off my bike, went back in the car, got the keys. While I was there, I configured a laptop that was hanging around so I could use it to diagnose the wireless link, including installing the config software for the SDSL routers I'd found last night.

We left, went down the freeway to the Cafe, went in to let them know we were there, before we climbed on the roof where the wireless equipment is. I checked the SDSL router.. the linnk was down. I power cycled the router, the link came up, I could see LAN and WAN traffic. I got the guy in there to test it, no "still not working".

I plugged in the laptop to check the config of the router, maybe it's got a sane IP address so we can try pinging it remotely to diagnose issues.. no such luck, they are in bridge mode, and just do MAC encompassing, so there's no way to interface with them except over ethernet directly. bugger.

No DHCP on this LAN either, so I can't even try pinging across the link. Useless.

I was sure it was working though, there wouldn't be WAN traffic otherwise. I saw the link fall down again, and then come back up, and the lights flashing away again. Try it again, oh yeah, it works now.

Great, we can go home again now, that was a waste of 2 hours getting keys, configuring a laptop, and driving down here.

While we're down here, might as well check the other end of the SDSL link, and the wireless equipment. It's on the roof of a building nearby. I wander over there, manage to find a mantainence guy so I can get on the roof. Go up, climb on the roof, inspect the equipment.

Nothing seems wrong. Messy install as I expected, but nothing wrong.

Got off the roof again, traced the Cat5 with ethernet/phone on it that runs to the link. It goes down through a hole in the floor to the level below.

We go down to the level below, there's a telco cupboard there. "Have you got the keys?" "no, they're in the car" my mate replies. "What was the point of getting them if you're going to leave them in the car???".

So we went all the way down, out, back to the car, got the keys. Now we had an issue, they would wonder why we were going back up. We're not supposed to have a key to that cupboard (I don't know if we even do). We tried to go up in the lifts that reception can't see. The door is locked, you need an access card.

We waited for a minute, a delivery guy turned up, dialled one of the apartments, and we followed in when he got buzzed in.

I tried to go back to the 28th floor where the telco cupboard is. Can't go to 28. Can't go to 27. Can go to 26. Fine.

Go to 26, open the fire stairs.. once the door shuts, you can't get out of the stairs again. I found this when I was in Melbourne, and almost got stuck in the stairs on the 48th floor. Buggered if I'm walking all the way down.

I propped the door open, went up to 28, can't get out. Great. Can't get back to the cupboard to try the keys.

Went all the way back down, out, down the lift, out of the building, and back to the car again. What a complete waste of time. I was really pissed off.

Why did we spend an hour getting the bloody keys, just so they could be left in the car, and not even try to trace the end of the cable. It's a bit hard to make documentation, or diagnose faults, when you can't see things.

I sat in the car fuming.

We came back, my mate picked up his wife from the shop she works in, and we came back up the coast again.

I tried looking for wireless networks, but I didn't have the aerial for the wireless adapter.

We got stuck on the freeway behind people that can't drive as usual.

I was so annoyed still.

I loaded up my bike, and came straight home. I stopped in and grabbed some grog on the way home.

Now I intend to have a few drinks. What a complete waste of a day. At least I'm getting paid, I would have rathered an easy day though.

Got up.

Went to the Cafe.

Sorted out network issues. Got wireless equipment working.

Found powersupplies for dodgy SDSL routers.

Tried to print something. Stupid HP 4 in 1 printer is a piece of poo that doesn't work. I tried to get the Lexmark printer working, it just prints ASCII characters. I tried to get the network interface working on it, but windows doesn't support network printers natively.

I tried to set it up with the linux box, but it was busy downloading updates, so apt was locked, and I couldn't install lpr.

I took the dud SDSL routers with me when I left, I wanted to try using the serial port on them.

I went with the guy I go to dinner with to see a guy (that gave me my Satellite decoder), he wasn't there, so I went back to my mates place and watched tv.

We went to dinner.

Went and saw the guy again, gave him a working card. Setup a second decoder for him. My mate fitted a new modem on his PC, we found that it was full of virii, Swen etc.

While waiting for the virus scanner to update, someone called, and call waiting disconnected the internet connection. Instead of being a 1/2 hour job, we were there for an hour and a half. We didn't finish, so we're going back again next week.

I got back to my mates place, and came home, because I was tired.

I sat and watched a bit of tv.

I started fiddling with the SDSL routers, can't get anything out of the serial ports on them.

I googled about them, found some config software for them, grabbed it, tried reconfiguring them. One SDSL router is totally stuffed, the config software can't find it. The other one works, but it doesn't seem to accept changes to the settings.

It's after midnight, I'm going to bed.

I've watched more tv.

I ate fish and chips for dinner.

I've coughed up crud.

I really need to put endpad on my tivo, I'm sick of missing the end of things.

Advil doesn't do anything.

I'm boring.

Got up.

Watched tv.

on the phone to my mate, (at the Cafe) apparently there's an alarm going off at "360 Elizabeth St", something to do with out ISDN PRIs. I couldn't work out what's at 360 Elizabeth St.

I got off the phone, googled, 360 Elizabeth St is the Tower in Melbourne. I assumed they were talking about Sydney.

I called back, but he was on the phone, so I left a message.

Watched more tv.

I was on the phone again, and the mail arrived. A box, a padded envelope, and a a dell newsletter thing (why do they send me these things, I've never bought anything).

The box contained a bunch of 8 tracks:

Chicago,
Chicago V,
Chicago VIII,
Chicago IX,
The Doobie Brothers: Minute by Minute,
The Doobie Brothers: The Captain and Me,
The Doobie Brothers: Livin' on the Fault Line,
The Doobie Brothers: Best of the Doobies,
The Magic Organ: Penny Arcade,
The Magic Organ: Good Time Show,
The Magic Organ: Street Fair (x2).

Why I bought some (or all) of these I don't know. They were 3 separate auctions, all by the same seller, so I saved on shipping by putting them all together. I also could have saved on shipping by not buying them, but anyway.

I've never heard of The Magic Organ before, I hope they're ok, and I've only ever heard like 2 Chicago songs before.

The padded envelope contained another one, "Greatest Rock n Roll Hits of the 50s and 60s, from the movie Lemon Popsicle".

This one is still in the original shrink wrap! in a spiffy cardboard holder (which they call a "specially designed slip case").

I haven't opened it yet, it's in mint condition. It's too bad they aren't worth anything.

I spent hours opening all of them up and checking them, based on the info I read about repairing cartridges a couple of nights ago. I'm glad I did, a few I opened had kinks in the tape, loopbacks, and would have wrecked themselves. One had the foil splice hanging by a thread, so I reglued/taped it.

almost all of the carts had cheap and nasty foam in them (which sits under the play head in the player) which has died, as soon as you touch it it just falls apart or squashes to nothing.

None of the pinchwheels had died, that was good.

I went out, I wanted to get some weather strip to replace the foam, get some lunch, and some throat drops. I went out, got fuel, had lunch, it started raining, so I couldn't be bothered going to the hardware shop, I went and sent a Money Order off for more 8 tracks, and then bought some throat drops.

I saw Advil on the shelf, so I had to buy some.

Oh, and I bumped into a guy I used to teach somethings on the computer, who lives in the retirement village where my Grandma is.

I came home, and typed this up. time for more tv.

I've spent the day fiddling with my 8 track player.

I worked out what the issue is, it's not a stretched belt, the motor's timing is based on the voltage frequency. This is a 60hz unit, and I'm running it on 50hz, so that's the problem.

I mucked around putting tape on the spindle, the worked a bit, but then the shape was wrong, and the belt was going all wobbly.

I either need to find a way to change 50hz to 60hz, replace the motor, or make a new wheel for the motor.

I've listened to Spanish Flea about 50 times today. It's now well and truly stuck in my head.

I downloaded Homer singing it, I downloaded the original (so I could listen to it at the correct speed), and I also found some pretty cool flash animation called "Mr Nice", which you can view at the following URL:

http://www.columbia.edu/~sjt59/mr_nice.swf

I finished watching 2001 before too, I had intended to watch the whole thing last night, but I was too tired. At least I could have watched the whole thing in one go, unlike when I was using that crappy Philips DVD player.

Heh, I just went to sign this off like an email.

I think I'm dying. I was woken up by the heat, I feel awful.

Anyway, I checked my email, 25 new email, 23 of them spam, the 2 others I don't care about, that was easy.

I started browsing. I want to play GTA Vice City, I looked for it on kazaa again, but all I can find is dud files.

I decided to look on ebay. I went to ebay, and saw in the featured items "Pioneer DV466S Multizone DVD Player Brand New" Hmm, I checked it out. I wish I hadn't. it's a newer version of the player I bought yesterday, and it's $20 cheaper than I paid, for the display model, and this one is still factory sealed. And it's got free shipping.

Oh well, who cares. I can never win anyway.