I went into work today.

We're relocating the Oracle database from the disaster recovery machine we've been running off for the last couple of months during the relocation, back to the production machine (which we finally managed to reinstall Oracle Application Server on).

We got most of the stuff done, and I reconfigured the web applications to use the production server.

I was about to do some web tests on the externally accessible applications, when the internet proxy server decided to crap itself.

We mucked around for a while trying to fix that, I gave up about 4pm and went home.

My mate had a party on Christmas Eve, it was a combination Christmas party/Birthday party for my mate.

I went round about 7pm, had a few drinks.

We did karaoke until about midnight, then just played some music until about 2am.

Then my mate and his mate started playing some boring shoot em up games, and everyone else had buggered off somewhere and was having some whinge session, I can't be bothered with this.

I ended up leaving about 4.30am Christmas morning, went to bed just after 5am.

Got dragged out of bed at 11.30am, because my brother wanted to open his presents.

We had lunch, and then I just sat around for a few hours.

Terribly exciting.

Ok, I haven't blogged in the last 2 1/2 months, I'll try to recap all the stuff that's happened.

In late October, a mate of mine, who I used to go to dinner with at the tennis club every few weeks got sick, went into hospital, and they found it was cancer. He passed away a few days later. He was 60 something years old. I went to the funeral a few days later. He'd had cancer before, but it had gone into remission, they hadn't noticed it come back again.

On the 29th of October, I was on my way to work, and I was racing another bike on the freeway.

He was in front, we both went into the 90 zone, he slammed on his brakes, so I did too, then he changed lanes. I looked, there was a car in the U turn bay, I assumed it was just some idiot turning around, so I hammered on in the open lane.

I got a bit down the road, overtook a 4wd in the breakdown lane, and kept going. I looked in my mirror to see where the other bike was, but the car from the U turn bay was behind me, with lights on the dash flashing. Great.

I kept going for a few seconds, watching my mirrors, and then he flashed his headlights at me, so I pulled over. He must have been sitting in the U turn bay with the radar, and I hammered on just in the right spot for him. He got me doing 136 in the 90 zone. Oops. Even better than that, the cop saw me overtake in the breakdown lane, so I got a ticket for that too.

At least the ticket was for 30km/h over, instead of 45km/h over, since that's $1600.

A couple of days later I got a fine in the mail, a mobile radar/camera got me doing 105 in the 60 zone before the freeway a couple of weeks ago. Terrific. (This again was for 30km/h over instead of 45km/h).

I paid all the fines. I accidently entered the wrong offence code on one of the tickets. Crap, I'll have to sort that out at some point..

Other than that, work relocated from St Leonards to Maitland.

This was done over a few weeks, on the 12th of November, a Friday, I was involved with organising the relocation of a lot of the equipment in the computer room. I decided to have my gear moved at the same time.

I went up to Maitland on the Saturday to find out where the building was, since I had to start work there on the Monday, and in case the guys from work setting up the gear we relocated last night needed a hand.

I went back to the IT department for a couple of weeks, since most of the permanent staff took VRs (Voluntary Redundancies) and left before the 12th, so we're understaffed, and have to deal with getting the new building working, which included racking all the servers, reconfiguring them for the new network range, patching all the desks, everything.

I put the new system I've been working on up live a few days later.

I then got stuck looking after getting the new website going, and all the credit card processing code, and didn't get any time to work on the system I'm supposed to be developing.

Not much else has happened, I've been going to work, working on the website, trying to code the new geological database system.

I went and did the Christmas shopping on the 22nd, I can't stand the shops at the best of times, letalone at Christmas. Nightmare. On the way home, I went to the supermarket to buy some dinner. I just pulled into the supermarket parking lot, and parked, and I hear "you got your license there?". Terrific, here we go again.

I got a ticket for "changing from one marked lane to another over a solid line" or some garbage. I'm getting sick of this crap.

That pretty much covers the last 6 weeks. I've back dated this to before Christmas to keep things in order

I put my bike in for another service today, to get the new manifold seals fitted, and get the bike tuned.

I dropped it off, and walked home again.

I bummed around at home for a while, and then I walked back around to pick it up early, about midday, since I wanted to see them tuning it.

I got there, got some food from the place next door, and then wandered over to the bike place.

Hmm, my bike is parked outside, that was quick.

I spoke to the guy, and apparently Yamaha shipped the wrong seals, 2 of the same, instead of one of each. Terrific. They put one of the new ones on, and left the old crappy one of the other one on.

They were going to check the clutch for me, but there's no point ripping the bike apart to that extent, if not changing the clutch.

I didn't have to pay anything, we'll sort that out when I get the other seal fitted, and a new clutch.

I rode home again. What a waste of a day, I was supposed to go to work today too, I ended up VPN'd in doing stuff this morning.

They reckon they'll have the correct seal on Thursday, but they're busy, and closing down for Christmas, so now this won't be fixed until next year. Argh.

I didn't go into work today, couldn't be bothered.

I was just looking for the rego papers for my other bike (and had just found them) when my mate turned up on it.

He didn't know I was home, had come around to get the address, so he could find out what I needed to do to allow him to register the bike on my behalf.

We bummed around there for a bit, I got everything together, and then we took off about 12.30pm for the RTA to start the long and boring process of getting the bike reregistered.

We then took off, I knew I would need a blue slip, so went over to the truck place where I got my bike blue slipped early this year, just after it went out of rego, but then never bothered to register it.

I had taken the old blue slip, showed the guy, he looked at the odo readings, and seen it had done about 30 kms since the last blue slip, so didn't really bother to look at the bike.

He filled out a new blue slip, copied off the old one, signed it, we paid, and were away.

We went around the corner to the bike place where I'd got my bike serviced recently, to find out if the seals had come in. Yeah, they were in, so I booked in for next Tuesday to get my bike serviced again.

We went into the RTA, got a number, and waited for a long long time.

We got served, the lady in there was nice for once.

I explained the situation, bike hasn't been registered for nearly a year, needs everything doing, but I've got the blue slip.

She told me what I needed to do, get a green slip, take the plate off, and come back, get a new registration started, and a new number plate.

We went across the road to the NRMA to get the green slip, that was relatively painless, and was only about $12 more than with QBE.

We came back across the road, and took the number plate off the bike.

Went back in to the RTA again, with hopefully everything I need. I filled out more forms, new rego plate form etc, and we waited for a long long time.

We finally got served, I gave in all the stuff, blue slip, green slip, new rego form, new rego plate form, rego plate.

While entering the details off the blue slip, the woman had a problem.

Apparently the guy at the truck place had put a 5 in the VIN instead of an S (or vice versa, what difference does it make?) anyway, it wouldn't accept that, and they wouldn't just put the correct thing in there, and they can't accept a modified form.

A stood there fuming for a couple of minutes, trying to get them to just enter it, but they wouldn't. At this point they started talking about coming back to do it tomorrow, which is not a possibility, I've got to go back to work.

We had to go back and get another blue slip. We'd taken the plate off the other bike, and handed it in, I had bugger all chance of getting them to give it back (this is the RTA), so I doubled my mate over to the truck place.

I told the guy what was going on, and he filled out a new form, he'd done his first one by copying the one I had from about March, and it had the wrong thing on it too (which he hadn't done, some other guy there had done it).

He filled in the new blue slip, and rego form, signed it, and we went back across to the RTA again. That wasted an hour.

I waited for a long long time again, filled out more forms, and we finally got served.

While the woman was processing it, she asked if the bike had ever been registered in QLD, I bit my toungue, and just said no. I would have loved to reply "No, but if it was, I would have been done 4 hours ago, and it would have been cheaper and easier!".

This time it was all fine. I paid for the rego, and the number plate, and we were all done.

We got out of there about 4.30pm. Nearly 4 hours to get the bike registered.

We went to McDonalds, had some lunch, and then went around to another mates place, where my mate was staying.

I sat round there for an hour or so, and then took off, got some food for dinner at the supermarket, and went home.

I went to work late, got there about midday, feeling really seedy. Maybe there was more to drink than I thought, or perhaps it was the several years old remnants of a bottle of something we found and drank.

My mate, from Newcastle had a good day today.

He went home..

He was riding his (push) bike from my mate's place where we had the bbq to the train, and ran over something and popped the tyre. He had to carry his bike and run to the train to make it in time, so he didn't have time for a smoke.

He got a ticket, and got on the train, he got between the carriages to have a smoke. He'd just finished, when the ticket inspector came along and caught him, and had a go at him, and gave him a $400 fine for smoking on the train.

My mate didn't have his wallet on him, just his student card, so he showed him that, and made up a name and address. He had a go at the ticket inspector, who then threatened him with another ticket for unruly behaviour or something.

My mate went back inside, and minded his own business.

A little while later, 3 ticket inspectors came back, including the one that gave him the ticket, and started having a go at him. He had a go back at them, and ended up getting another $400 ticket for swearing.

He got home to Newcastle, got back to his place, and his wife threw him out.

He came back to my mate's place on the train again.

He called me about 10pm (I went to work today, nothing remarkable happened), and came round for a bit.

He ended up staying there until about 4.30am, we drank everything there was in the house (not very much though).

People started getting up about 9am, we went and cleaned up outside to have breakfast.

Heh, there's more than a carton worth of empty beer bottles, along with quite a few empty pre mixed spirit bottles on the table (close to 50 bottles), used needles (from the Maxalon), and white powder all over the table (plaster from the casts) it looks like someone had a good night :-)

I dragged the bins around and started chucking stuff out.

Once it was all cleaned up, we got the table setup again, and bbq'd up breakfast.

It was a really nice day, so once we finished with breakfast, we all went out to the beach to recover.

I went home and got my stuff, went back to my mate's place, but they'd left, so I just headed out to the beach after them. Somehow I got there first.

We were out at the beach for a couple of hours, it was a good way to recover.

We left there about 3pm, and I went home.

Didn't do much for the rest of the day.

My mate had his Christmas party today.

I went around about 2pm to help setup or whatever.

We spent a couple of hours cleaning up out the back, dragging chairs and tables etc out there.

We went down to the supermarket, and bought a bunch of stuff, including a set of Christmas lights.

We went over to the bottle shop, and I bought a couple of cartons of beer.

We meant to get ice at the bottle shop, but forgot, so we just went and got it at the service station on the way home.

We got back, setup the beer in the ice, and rigged up the Christmas lights.

My mate's wife's friends turned up a while later, one of them brought a bbq.

We sat and drank beer for a while, and then we cooked the food and had dinner.

My mate from Newcastle who I haven't seen for a while turned up about 10pm, he skulled a couple of beers, and then went to sit in the backyard and feel a bit sick :-)

Not long after both he and one of my mate's wife's friends were feeling a bit sick, and went to different locations to feel sick.

My mate's wife and her friends are nurses, so they have some medical supplies they've "borrowed", so they mucked around putting casts on each other.

My mate's wife also had some "Maxalon", which is a drug that stops you from throwing up, and speeds digestion, so my mate's wife injected both of the people who were sick, and they went off to bed.

I sat down to rest for a minute, fell asleep, and didn't wake up again for hours.

I went and saw Brian Wilson at the Civic theatre.

I left home in the morning, went to the post office, I had a TiVo serial cable to post out. I paid for the postage etc, and the woman's like "put it in the post box outside" fine. I finished packing the cable, and then went to post it, but couldn't find the post box. Bugger it, I'll post it later.

I went to work as normal, left a bit earlier than usual, and rode from Maitland across to Newcastle.

I was going down Hunter St looking for the Civic theare, some stupid woman changed lanes and nearly ran into me, so I blasted my horn, and got away from her.

I was too busy dealing with that, I missed seeing the Civic theatre, I ended up going all the way up to the end of Hunter St.

I rode around Newcastle for a bit, lost, until I followed an ambulance, and found my way back to the city. I went back down Hunter St, and spotted the Civic theatre.

I looked around for a parking spot, couldn't find a good one. I saw a gap between a couple of cars right outside the theatre, that'll have to do, so I parked in there.

I tried calling my mate, he's on the phone.

Waited a couple of minutes, tried again, and again, and again, still on the phone.

I wandered down the street to a post box, to post the serial cable.

I kept trying to call my mate, still on the phone. I gave up, and sent him an sms, something along the lines of "get off the bloody phone!".

He called me back a few minutes later, we met up, and found a pub to get a beer and something to eat.

We found a good pub, had some dinner, and a couple of beers, and then wandered over to the theatre. We looked at ther merchandise, nothing really terrific, pretty expensive, a shirt for $75!

We bummed around a bit waiting to go in. My mate had a jacket he didn't want to carry around, so we went and shoved it in my bike.

We went back, my mate bought a shirt (not the $75 one, about $50 I think) so then we went and put that in the bike.

We wandered back again, and they opened the doors not long after.

We went in, we were in row F, which was about 6 metres away from the stage, it was unreal.

The concert started, it was really good, they played a bunch of songs, mainly Beach Boy's classics, with a couple of the "new" stuff from the Smile album, then after about 45 minutes had intermission.

We went out for a beer, the break was about 1/2 hour.

We went back in, and they did the second set, mostly stuff from the Smile album, it was pretty trippy, there were songs with tools being used as instruments, saw, hammers etc.

Then they did a song where the performers were waving around vegetables, someone was singing through a megaphone, someone else playing a ukelele (that's the hardest word I've ever had to work out how to spell), and then there was a jolly roger (pirate) flag being waved.

At one point I counted over 30 performers on stage, it was brilliant.

They finished up with a couple more Beach Boy's classics, which everyone stood up for, then they went off, and came back for an encore, everyone stood and danced for the rest of the concert.

It finished up around 11pm, and we headed out.

I bought a shirt on the way out, we went back to my bike, and then I doubled my mate back to his place at Wyong.

I came home, got home before midnight.