I woke up, didn't feel as bad as yesterday, got up a bit after 9am, got ready, and left a bit after 10am.

Some mail had been dumped on my doorstep, including a package, and a slip to pick up a parcel.

I looked at the slip, it's dated the 13th. My cd/mp3 player. I have to pick it up from the post office.

I grabbed it all, package, envelopes, and the slip. I decided to go and get my cd player.

I didn't think to grab my old one, so I haven't got any batteries, or an mp3 cd.

I went to the post office, got my package, showed my expired nsw drivers license for proof of address, no arguments.

Took off, went to work. Got in just after 11am.

I started doing some work, copying a bunch of files off one of the servers.

my machine BSODs, some nasty message about kernel paging or something. Ok, it's just a swap file problem, no worries. I'm annoyed I've lost my uptime, and I had a ton of pages open in firefox I needed, and unsaved text documents with scraps of shell scripts I've writing. Oh well.

I sit and look at the BSOD for a minute.

I turn the machine off, and turn it back on again.

Up comes the starting XP hideous screen. About 2 dots come up in the bar, and then it immediately BSODs again. "INACCESSABLE BOOT DEVICE" or something.

Uh, great.

Try again, nope, same crap.

The disk isn't dead.. or else I wouldn't see that hideous XP screen. It's just XP being useless.

I turned it off for a couple of minutes, and tried again, same thing. OK. Now what?

I don't have my cd case with me, with my knoppix disc in it, so I can't try that.

I grabbed a spare machine, and old PII 350. I opened my machine, scabbed the disk out of it, and put it in the 350.

Booted it up (win2000). It wanted to check the disk, I skipped that, let me try accessing it first.

I tried to access my disk (once the machine finished booting, about 15 minutes later), didn't get anywhere. Some rubbish about "invalid inpage operation" or something.

Explorer crashed, but wouldn't go away, I couldn't do anything else. I started downloading knoppix on a working machine. Thank god for the fast connection at work (256 kilobytes (yes, _kilobytes_) / second coming in. It's only going to take about 45 minutes to download 700mb.

I read some newsgroups about the problem. "chkdsk /r" is the answer apparently. I rebooted the 2000 PC, and kicked off "chkdsk /r" against my disk. It went into phase 1 of 5, came up with stuff about "removing invalid attributes" and then it said a whole bunch of file segments were unreadable.

I opened my parcel, and looked at the cd player. woo, a cdplayer. No batteries the cheap bastards.

a cheesy looking remote control, a charger, and a set of headphones. Headphones? who uses those? useless.

I opened the package, the The WHo CDs I ordered a while ago, of the concert we went to. Cool.

They're in these cardboard bootleg looking cases, and they're individually printed, groovy.

I sat and read the paper while I waited for chkdsk to run, and also for knoppix to download.

It eventually got to phase 2, now it added attributes to files, and then it removed some orphan file segments or something, and then it said "an unspecified error occured".

Great.

Tried to access the disk again, same "invalid inpage error" or some crap. It's made no difference.

Knoppix has finished, so I burned a copy. I rebooted the 350 off the knoppix cd, tried to access my disk, oh look, there's everything!

I scabbed all my data off, onto one of the servers. I only had a few hundred meg I wanted, but there were no spare hard disks to put the stuff on.

I got everything I needed except for 1 or 2 files, which were lost, but they were only a couple of text files.

When I tried to look at the directories I'd been copying the files into when the machine crashed, I got a bunch of seek errors. Ah, so that's what did it.. the disk had damage, and when I put stuff on it, windows just shat itself.

Having some files that are in a damaged part of the disk (that aren't part of windows) shouldn't effect windows from booting or running in the slightest. Stupid crap.

Once I had everything, I took the disk out, put it back in my pc, put it all back together.

I went across the road, got some lunch, and bought some batteries for my cd player. As I walked over there, I called my mate to let him know the CDs were here, and arranged to drop one off to him tonight. I'm thinking I'll take off early today, I can't do anything, my machine's screwed, and after spending hours rescuing my data, I've had enough of the shit.

I got back to the office.

I ran the disk check in the BIOS, and it failed with error 7 or something, whatever that means.

I looked on the dell website, I can't find where to log a ticket, it must be well hidden, and I don't want to ring them up, they're one of the useless companies with a call centre in India.

I don't think I will buy the dell laptop I've been thinking about for about 6 months, I'm sick of these companies with Indian call centres, exploiting the Indians for cheap labour.

it's now 5pm. What a complete waste of a day. I've done nothing but salvage my data (oh, and the 5 minutes of copying files that are now lost, before my machine crashed).

I love the irony of the fact that a reverse engineered driver (ntfs support in linux) works better than the original.

Windows can't even mount its own filesystem, but a hacked up ntfs driver (which the authors claim doesn't work properly) worked perfectly, mounted the disk without a single complaint, and I was able to salvage almost all of my data off it, except for the stuff parked in physically damaged parts of the disk, and windows didn't want to let me get anything.

Why do people use NTFS? there's no security, and one little bit gets stuffed up, for whatever reason, and you lose the whole partition. Pointless.

More to the point.. Why the hell do people use windows?

"more productive" my arse.

I'm running the machine _off a CD_ and I can do everything and more than I could do in windows.

The only annoying thing is that the knoppix disk doesn't have an agp module for the cheesy onboard video in the machine (dell craptiplex 270), so it only runs in 640x480. I think I'll take my spare 64mb geforce card with me tomorrow, and install it. Then I'll just run off the CD until I get a new hard disk (and then I'll install the knoppix cd on it).

I didn't use windows for anything, except a window manager, I was running a bunch of copies of putty, logged into all the servers, and firefox.

Oh, and I was using "Dev-php" which is pretty good, but I'm sure there's a better PHP ide in linux.

There's nothing I do that requires windows, and it's just a pain in the arse.

I left work a bit after 6pm, put my cdplayer on, with the first The Who CD in it. Sounds good.

I stopped for fuel, and then kept going. A couple of skips out of the CD player, but it's in my backpack, and I've never had a cd player that would work in my backpack when I'm riding. (the first one wouldn't even work in my backpack if I was _walking_).

As soon as I got on the freeway, the CD player started mucking up, it couldn't handle the vibration. So much for the antishock. Let's hope it's better on mp3 discs, and when it's in the saddle bag. (although the cord to the cheesy remote is pretty damn short).

I'm getting sick of these cd players. I know I'm going to end up biting the bullet and buying a hard disk based mp3 player, but I don't want to spend $600, and I don't want to buy an apple product, but I don't know that anything else available is not an inferior copy.

I got to my mate's place, just as I'm about to turn into his driveway, some dickhead does a handbrake turn on the gravel on the side of the road, so I end up waiting in the middle of the road to work out what the hell he's doing, eventually moves, and I can get off the road.

I gave my mate his CD set, and chatted to him for about 1/2 hour.

I took off, rode towards home, stopped at the GoLo (or BiLo?) and got some food for dinner, then I came home.

What a complete waste of a day. I went all the way to work, to achieve absolutely nothing, and come home again.

Pointless.

I'm listening to CD2 of The Who now (already listened to 1 properly since getting home), and I'm really impressed. It's excellently mastered.

Don't Get Fooled Again!

I woke up about 8.30am, and I felt like I was dying.

I tried to go back to sleep, but couldn't, and I couldn't get up either.

I eventually got up about 11.30am, and went in the bathroom, my head was all stuffed up, and I had a terrible headache, my throat is raw. Ugh.

I sat around for a while, didn't do anything, felt awful.

I watched tv, and had something to eat about 8.30pm, and went back to bed a bit later.

I got home on Friday night, watched some tivo, got into doing a bit of coding.

My mate called me and asked if I wanted to see The Beatnix tomorrow, and also asked about the CDs of The Who concert (they shipped a few days ago).

I said I was interested, and would speak to him again tomorrow.

I ended up sitting up coding, went to bed about 5.30am, it started to get a bit bright outside.

I got back up again about midday (or maybe it was 1pm or something) had some breakfast, bummed around a bit.

My mate called me again about 3pm, we went through the organisation again. I said I'd get to his place about 7.30, and we'll go from there.

I bummed around a bit more, started getting ready about 6.30pm, jumped in the shower, got dressed etc.

I took off, and headed up to his place.

I went to McDonalds on the way, grabbed some takeaway, and some cash out (convenient).

I put the food in the right hand saddlebag, which sits just above the exhaust, should keep it warm.

I headed up to my mate's place, and not paying attention, when right past it again, just like last time.

I came back, found his place.

Went in, ate my dinner, my other mate was already there, they were watching a Frank Zappa dvd.

I finished eating, and we went outside to wait, they'd called a taxi.

There were a couple of spots of rain while we waited, it was a warm night though.

The taxi turned up a couple of minutes later.

We jumped in, and went up to the club. We wnet past a bit of scrub on the side of the road at one point, and the taxi driver mentioned it was where some woman was killed, apparently they found her body in there. Nice.

We got to the club, went in, there was a line of people waiting to get into the concert area.

We walked around a bit, my mate got some money out of the machine, we went back to the front desk, bought the tickets ($15, pretty good).

We got in the line, went in, grabbed drinks, and found a seat.

We were in there for just after 8pm.

The Beatnix came on at 8.30pm, and right from the start I was impressed.

My mate had seen them before, but said they were even better this time.

A little while later a couple of women that my mates work with turned up.

A couple of times I thought that it sounded so good they must have been miming, but then I realised that they weren't.

We had a couple more drinks.

The went off for a break about 9.30pm, and came back on about 45 minutes later, done up in Sgt Peppers outfits.

They did a couple more songs before we all got up to dance.

They finished up just after 11pm.

I would have been happy to just come home at that point, but the others wanted to go out to the club or something. Whatever.

One of the women my mates work with had driven there, so we jumped in the car, and went back to my mate's place. I got my gear, and my bike, and I followed them back to the leagues club.

We hung around in here until about 2am, it was really poor.

The only enjoyable thing was the 2 skanky chicks having a catfight on the dancefloor, punches, slaps, hairpulling. It was great. They even did a couple of rounds.

Eventually security came in, and dragged them away, and threw them out.

I bumped into a couple of other mates as we were leaving, and the others I'd been with disappeared.

I chatted to them for a while, then they came out to wait for a taxi, and I came home.

What a shitty day.

I didn't get home until midnight last night, and as usual, tivo is full, so I had to watch a bit of tv.

I ended up turning it off about 1.45am.

I get woken up at 6.30am by the guy who's place I was at last night, something about the password for his internet account.

I get off the phone, and go back to sleep.

I slept through the alarm at 8am, and didn't wake up until 9.15am. Shit. I'm supposed to be meeting my mate to give him some money I owe him in about 10 minutes.

I call him to let him know I'll be late, I hear a phone ringing just outside.

He's come early, and decided to come to my place instead of meeting me up the road, whatever.

I give him the money, he leaves.

I have a shower, get ready.. great, no breakfast cereal left.

Oh well, I'll get something when I get to work.

I get to work, about an hour later, and realise I've left my wallet at home. Terrific.

I haven't even got enough money on me to get a coffee.

I go in to the office, and I'm there just in time for a meeting, no worries.

Come out of the meeting, get to work.

I can't think what I'm doing. I keep looking at my own code, and trying to work out how it works, it does work, but I have no idea how.

The new webguy shouted me lunch, at least I get something to eat today.

The guy from the colo rang, but I misheard his name, and thought he was the guy from Squiz, so I start crapping on to him about how I can't get the redirection working properly, totally confusing him, before I realise I'm not talking to who I thought I was.

The network problem still wasn't fixed.

As soon as I get off the phone, the problem goes away. The guy from the company we get the servers off obviously doesn't know what he's doing, and edited the firewall rules on the wrong interface.

Now that's fixed, I go about putting in the apache mod_rewrite rules.

They won't work, they should, what the hell's wrong?

I edit the file about 20 times, before I realise I'm editing a backup of the configuration, not the current one.

Ok, fix that, it's all working.

I left work a bit earlier than usual, I get home, get my wallet, and go back out to get some food.

I keep forgetting to buy a new light bulb, and the spare I put in was like an 80 watt ("What is this? A tanning salon?!" I think everyday as I come in the door).

So anyway, I'm at the supermarket, get cereal, dinner, and a lightbulb, come home.

I put the lightbulb in. It immediately blows. Not only that, but it also breaks the light socket.

Now I need to find time to get a replacement light socket, and put it in.

I have had enough today.

I need a drink.

Update:

Just when I thought it was all over.. the hot water clicked off again at some point this morning. I thought the shower was a bit weird this morning.

I tromped out and through the garden, turn the power back on. I come back, sit down to watch tv again, and immediately see interference on the tv, as the hot water heater trips the breaker again. I tromp back out and turn the hot water on again.

Damn I've had enough today.

I sent a complaint to Virgin on Sunday night. I didn't think it would achieve anything, but it made me feel a bit better.

Here's what I received back:

---

Dear Guest

I write regarding a situation that arose on Saturday 04 September 2004, which
resulted in your flight being delayed. Personally and on behalf of the airline, I
would like to extend my apologies for any inconvenience you experienced. All of our
guests deserve to receive a dependable, reliable service, which we strive to
achieve, and we completely understand how frustrating it must have been waiting for
your flight.


Due to the continued expansion of Virgin Blue, a decision was made to upgrade our
I.T. system to meet the increased demand placed on the current infrastructure. This
was scheduled to take place in the early hours of Saturday morning, and by 2.30am
all preliminary tests indicated that the upgrade had been completed and the system
was fully functional.


However, at 6:30 am some problems were identified with the upgrade and
unfortunately, whilst rectifying the problems, the system was offline for
approximately two hours. This prevented us from checking in and boarding you, or
dispatching your flight and also created delays that increased throughout the day.


We make every effort to ensure that our flights depart on time but as you have
experienced first hand, there are unexpected situations which do arise which can
affect our on time performance. Virgin Blue takes great pride in our on-time
performance and almost 9 out of every 10 flights during the past month have left on
time. Indeed, our on time performance figures are available on our website for
public perusal. This however, is not an excuse. We inconvenienced you and did not
meet your expectations nor our own very high standards.


I would like to apologise once again for any inconvenience that was experienced on
Saturday. We are most grateful to you for your continued support of Virgin Blue.
We do hope that we may have the pleasure of welcoming you back on board one of our
flights soon, and we are confident that your next trip will be thoroughly enjoyable
in every respect.


Yours sincerely,

(name removed)

Head of Information Technology

Virgin Blue Airlines

---

Pff.

There are better ways to do upgrades. I think I might go Jetstar next time, even though it seems it's an airline for Bogans.

Here we go for a long and boring post about a long and somewhat boring day.

Get up at 5am, get ready. leave home about 5.35am to get to the station in time for the 6.13am train.

I managed to get there in time for the 5.54 train (which was an express, rather than the all stations at 6.13).

Jumped on the train, got to Central about 7.10am.

Wandered over to the airport line, there was a train already there, jumped on, and was at the Domestic terminal a few minutes later.

I wandered up to the Virgin Blue checking area. It's now about 7.20am.

Hmm, why are there about a million people in here? Something must be wrong.

I got in the line for check in, and started waiting.

I heard some people talking, apparently this happens everyweeked, it's just very busy.

Oh well, whatever, I don't have to be checked in until about 7.45am for the 8.15am boarding of the 8.45 plane.

I noticed the express lane had only a few people in it, why I am waiting here behind people with surfboards and 500 suitcases?

I went over and got in the express lane, since I have no luggage to check in.

I wait and wait. The line doesn't go anywhere. No lines go anywhere. No one is moving.

They eventually make an announcement apologising for the delay, the check in systems are down.

Great.

Wait and wait.

I sent a message to the guy who's going to pick me up when I get to Melbourne, he called me back a few minutes later, and I told him the situation.

The systems are down, we're not going anywhere.

They tell us the system is up.

About 5 people (out of the 2000 or so waiting to check in) get through, and then they tell us the system is down again.

We wait and wait.

Every 10 minutes or so they tell us the system is still down.

8am comes. I've been standing here for over 40 minutes now.

8.20am comes, still waiting. Now been here for an hour.

I don't think I (or anyone else) will be making the checking in/boarding at 8.15am for the 8.45am flight.

There are still earlier flights that have not left.

They manually check in people for a couple of flights which should have left over an hour ago.

We wait and wait.

9am comes. Still waiting.

They make an announcement to tell us the system is back up, about 9.20am.

"There will be a refreshments trolley available".

They start processing the check ins.

There are 3 express lanes, and 2 people searving. A chick a couple of people up in the queue goes up to the desk that's alternating between 2 express lanes, and tells the guy to get someone out here to open the other desk now.

About 3 minutes later someone comes and opens our desk.

I've been standing here for over 2 hours now, and I finally get past the check in.

Go over, unload my pockets, take my belt off etc, throw everything through the metal detector, I got through first go.

I notice I still have my large metallic watch on, they must have the sensitivity turned down this time.

Hmm, why are they putting my bag back over the top of the xray unit?

they put it through again, no problem that time, they didn't say anything.

I collected my bag, and got dressed again, and kept moving.

I don't see any refreshments trolley.

I went down to gate 36 where we were supposed to be departing, it's now scheduled for a 9.45am boarding.

I wait and wait.

They move our plane to gate 38, I move over there.

The baording time has now changed to 10.15am.

It's now about 9.30am.

I wander around, and go and get a coffee.

I go back, and wait, and wait.

About 10am, I queue up to board the plane.

The bring out some boxes of bottles of water, and hand them out.

I go over to get one, and of course they run out just as I would have been handed one.

I go back to the line again, and wait.

We get on the plane about 10.20am.

I sent another message to the guy in Melbourne, and turned off my phone.

Great, I'm sitting right next to the engine. At least I got a window seat.

They finish loading all the luggage/crap, and we take off about 10.50am.

The flight was uneventful, and I was able to relax a bit, and enjoy it.

I ordered about $11 worth of stuff off the food menu, and they only charged me $5. Should have been free.

The plane gets into Melbourne just after midday.

I wander out, call the guy, find him, and we're off.

We head down towards the park where the bbq is, it's about 45 minutes away.

We go to a shopping centre on the way, I went in and got same cans from the bottlo.

We went around to the park, parked the car, and wandered in.

We found the group, and spent the next few hours eating and chatting, it was good.

It was nice to meet the people I've been emailing for almost a year now.

The rain held off, it was mostly sunny, a little bit overcast every now and then, just nice.

We were there until a bit after 4pm, when it got a bit cold, and everyone left.

I was back at the airport about 5pm.

I wandered around for a bit, some guy with a stand bailed me up as I tried to head for the loos.

He's trying to flog me a credit card. Bloody Citibank again, I already copped this speil when I was at Erina Fair a couple of weeks ago.

"Yes I have a credit card", "no, it has no outstanding balance getting charged interest", "it's an amex".

At least the guy was honest "Oh, well Amex has a good points system, better than ours".
"Don't you find that Amex is not accepted everywhere?" "yes, and for that I have a debit Visa card".

"Any reward points on that?" "no".

"Oh, well you're missing out. If you had our card as a backup, you would earn at least 1 point for every dollar you spend."

"It only takes about 7900 points to get a free flight to Sydney".

Let me get this right.. I spent about $7900 on your card, and for it I can get a "free" trip to Sydney.. that would cost me less than $100 if I was to pay for it myself?

I didn't ask that, but I should have.

"Oh, and there's only a $69.95 annual fee". As opposed to the $0 annual fee on both my Amex and Visa? But I didn't ask that either..

I feigned interested, hoping he would just give me a brochure and I could keep going (I really need to go to the loo now).

He then went through the eligibility questions.

"What's the limit on my current card?"
"Am I working?" "yeah, contracting" (That seemed ok, surprisingly).
"Do I have a good credit rating?"
"Are you over 24?"

Aha! My way out.

"No, I'm not over 24".
"Oh, you look like it"
"Well I'm only 22"
"Oh, well we can't sign you up today" (Like you would have anyway).
"Here's a brochure, you can sign up online, you only have to be 18"

Great, thanks, bye. I took it, shoved it in my pocket (never know when a bit of glossy paper comes in handy for something, like making a paper aeroplane). I then went to the loo. Finally.

I wandered around the airport for a while, pretty boring shops in here.

There was a little arcade, I played a simpsons pinball machine, but I think the feet were cranked right up, and it was too hard. I lasted about a minute playing that.

Waste of money.

Kept moving.

I want to sit down for a bit, I went and checked in at the express counter, where there was no one waiting.

"Aisle or window?" It's going to be a night flight, so I don't care, aisle will do, easier to perve on the flight attendents.

Apprently they're down to a 15 minute delay now, and the plane will be boarding about 7.30pm.

Fine. I told her how I had been stuck waiting for over 3 hours this morning.

She told me her parents were on one of the flights to Coolangatta (the earlier ones they eventually manually checked in) and they'd lost their luggage. Terrific.

Get my boarding slip, the stapler didn't work properly.

Can anything at all possibly go right today?

Anyway, I get my slip.. seat 1D. Hmm, front row, aisle, I think that's going to be an awful seat.

It's now about 5.30pm.

I wander in, and through the metal detector, belt off etc. No issues with my bag this time, even with 3 cans of Bundy and coke shoved in it,

My flight is going out of gate 1, which is currently full of people waiting to leave on an earlier flight.

I went down to gate 3 where the next flight out is at 8.30pm. There are about 3 people sitting in here.

I get a seat near the tv, showing bowls. Wow.

I listen to some Music for a while, and try to sleep, but there's no way I can get comfortable.

When the news came on at 6pm, I watched the first few stories, I wondered if there would be anything about the delays, not that I saw.

When it finished, I got up and wandered back to gate 1, empty now.

Sat down near the tv again, and waited.

I called in to find out what was going on with my mate's in Sydney, and told them I was delayed here.

As I was on the phone, they made another announcement, the 7.30pm boarding flight to Sydney is now delayed to 8pm. Terrific.

I call my other mate, who's in the room I'm in. I ask him to leave one of the access cards with reception, and tell them who I am, so when I get there, I can get into the room to dump my bag.

I went to the loo again, and someone had left their sunnies in there, sitting on top of the toilet paper dispenser.

I picked them up, and shoved them in my bag, intending to go and hand them in.

I went out, went to find something to eat, this airport is dumb.. all the shops are outside the secure area, whereas in Sydney they are inside.

If I want something to eat, I'll have to go out, and come back through the bloody metal detector again.

I went back and hung around gate 1. Some bum took my seat, and all the others are full.

I forgot to hand in the sunnies.

If you're reading this, and you left a pair of sunnies in Melbourne airport, and can describe them, then I'll pay to send them back to you.

I stood and waited, it's now about 7.45pm.

We finally boarded about 8.15pm.

The front row seats are crap, as I thought.

I've had just about enough now.

We finally take off just before 9pm.

We get towards Sydney, and have to circle around waiting, because of a storm over the city. The weather is not their fault, I understand that, but I wouldn't have had this issue if we'd been on time, not over 2 hours late.

We finally land, and I get off the plane, and out of the airport.

I get on the train back to the city.

1 stop before the city.. delayed, waiting for the train in front at central to move.

We finally get there.

I get off, and start walking to where I think the hotel is.

Nope. I can't remember where it is. I call my mate for directions, that was no help at all.

I ended up walking around the city for over an hour and a half trying to find the hotel.

I finally found it, and got there, just before midnight.

My mate has not bothered to leave the card, or tell them who I am.

They won't let me into the room.

I'm about 1 second away from walking back to the train, and getting the last train home.

I call my mate again, they call the hotel, and the best they can do is let me leave my bag at reception.

I really wanted to get into the room, to freshen up a bit, seeing as I've now been up for 19 hours.

I leave my bag, and I get a taxi down to the pub where they are at.

(I don't know why I didn't think to get a taxi to the hotel).

$10 cab fare later, I get there.

On my way in the door, the bouncer is like "who are you hear with". "My mates, they're already inside" "ok". What a useless question.

I call them again "I'm here, where are you?" "upstairs, there's a $10 covercharge".

Argh.

I pay, I go in.

I sit down. I must about now have smoke coming out of my ears. If someone pushes me, I might snap.

I've got splitting headache, and I've had enough already.

I get a drink, and sit down.

I'm able to relax a bit.

I have another drink, and another, and another. Now we're getting somewhere, and I don't feel so bad.

It's now about 1am, I've been up for 20 hours now.

Uh oh, it's time to make the mistake that we make everytime we're down here..

Instead of just enjoying where we are, someone wants to go somewhere else.

We spend the next 2 hours going all over the city looking for somewhere else.

Places full of guys, or want $18 or $20 covercharges, or too full to be able to move.

We end up right back where we started, I get a few more drinks, and relax again.

One of my mates walks off "I'll be back".

10 minutes later we go to look for him and the others. They've gone back to the hotel.

Great.

My mate wants to go down to King's Cross.

Whatever. I don't care anymore. It's now about 3.20am, I've been up for over 22 hours.

We get a taxi (eventually) down to the cross.

We wander around a bit, and go into a really seedy strip club, the only reason we went in there, is because the entrance of it is featured in the movie "Two Hands".

The guy tries to charge us $25 entry.. "no mate", "how about $10 then", "no, I've only got $5 on me". (Which was true at that point, a whole bunch of Bundy and cokes at $5.50 each eats up the funds really quick).

"ok, that'll do".

We pay, and go in.

I'd forgotten how seedy this club was, it's not even licensed, and they serve that "premium" beer crap, with like .000001% alcohol in it.

I'll be right (and I've got no cash left now anyway).

We sat in here for about 20 minutes, and it was just so seedy.

We left, got a taxi back to the hotel, and we were back about 4am.

I got my bag from reception.

I wanted some panadol.. the vending machine near our room had it, but didn't work properly. I managed to get a toothbrush out, that's not much good.

Mucked around with the machine for several minutes, gave up.

I really should go across the street and buy some panadol, I will regret it in the morning if I don't.. but I didn't, I drank some water, and went to bed, turned off the tv about 4.30am.

I've now been up for 23 1/2 hours. I'm stuffed.

I woke up about 6.30am, the sun blasting me in the face.

Oh god my head hurts.

I got up, drank some more water, ran some cold water over my face, closed the curtains, and went back to bed.

When I woke up again about 9.30am, I didn't feel as bad luckily.

Snoozed for a bit, got up about 9.45am, got dressed, and checked out just after 10pm.

We wandered down the street, met one of my other mates, his check out was 10am too.

We got some McPlastic for breakfast, headed to the parking station.

My mate had been parked in there since Friday morning.

The guy worked out the price on the back of the ticket.. $66 for parking.

Apprently it had come up on the screen saying $148. There's no way we would have paid that. I would have just pushed the button on the entrance, pulled the ticket, and my mate could have driven out through the entrance.

We came back up the coast, they dropped me off at the train station, I got on my bike and came home.

I feel seedy, and tired, and I still have a headache.

What was the point?

If I had managed to get into the hotel room, I probably just would have gone to bed.

I don't think I'll get to work tomorrow.