I'm posting this one out of order (usually I wouldn't be posting this for another month or so), because it's got stuff in it that people might be looking for, ie details of the Finn Brother's concert at the Sydney Opera House on the 15th July.

I woke up, noticed that both the satellite boxes were saying "INF", great, either the signal went crap again, or they've reset for some reason.

I figured I'd get up (since I left the remote on the floor), fix the box attached to the tivo, and go back to bed, it was about 9am.

I got up, tried fixing up the signal, but it wouldn't. The box attached to the tivo wouldn't lock on to the signal, but the other one would. Strange. I wondered if it had something to do with the satellite signal cable (from the other box/LNB) being split.

I tried swapping the cables on the splitter around, but that didn't make any difference either, it must be something else. I tried taking the splitter out all together, and that didn't even fix it.

It must be something dumb with the other box, or the signal feed, like when I found it hanging out of the wall.

I found a shirt, put it on, and went in to see what was going on. I got asked if my satellite tv was working, no. I had a look, suspected the card, because all the channels were coming up as scrambled.

I then checked the signal leads, they looked to be plugged in. I checked the signal quality on the box inside, and it wouldn't lock on either. Weird. I wondered if the cables had somehow got swapped around, so I tried that, but that didn't fix it either, the signal level would spike from nothing to 80% and back again constantly.

I decided to check what frequencies the box was trying to use. I compared what was in the settings, with what was on the box I had that would lock on.

They were different, so I changed it to match, rescanned the channels, it still didn't work though.

Now however, I found that my production decoder (attached to the tivo) would work, so I got the settings from it, and went and entered those into the box inside, and reset it.

It sort of came up, but the channels were all scrambled. The little serial interface I made for the box is a bit more involved than the other ones I use, the one in this box is powered (because the run to the server is so long), and has a couple of LEDs on it.

I could see the power was there (red LED), but no green LED flashes to show card access. I checked the info screen, and saw the details of the gold card that was in there. Hmm, it's been put in the right way, with the contacts in the right place, instead of being put in upside down or back to front, just to push the switch in the socket.

I pulled it out, turned it around the wrong way, put it back in, I still didn't see any flashing from the green LED.

I came out, exited the client software on the card server, and restarted it. I went back in, pulled the card and reinserted it again, saw the green LED flashing away, and the correct card details come up, ie the red card sitting in the card programmer attached to the server.

I rescanned the channels again, and it was working. There was a different channel layout to before, but they were all there, and could watch all of them.

I came back out, it's my brother's 9th birthday, and there was going to be a bunch of kids turning up at some point, I didn't want to know about that.

I fixed up both my boxes, and went back to watching tivo recorded stuff from a couple of weeks ago.

I noticed the boxes went back on "INF" again, since they never get the "NIT", and the scan had to be exited manually. crap.

I kept doing it, putting it on a channel that should work, and then it would just having the flashing dashes on the display, to signify it was searching for a signal, and then go back to the "INF" thing again.

I wondered if they were going through the channels inside, and if some of the extra channels we've got are on vertical polarization. If this is the case, then when they go to watch them, I'm going to get a vertical signal only, instead of a horizontal, and I'l only be able to watch a few channels.

I tried that, going to one of the channels I suspected was vertical, but I couldn't get that either.

I gave up, and want back to watching recordings, exiting the "INF" scan every now and then, only to see the dashes, and have the boxes go back on "INF" again.

I wondered if the pcmcia WLAN card that was in the other access point I've got (an SMC "2652W", that doesn't seem to work) could be used in a laptop.

I tried it before, putting it in to the crappy old laptop I used to use, but it's only got a 16bit card slot, and I think the card is cardbus.

I grabbed the old access point, and took the card out of it. I guessed which way it would fit, and slipped it in to my laptop.

I checked the output from dmesg, I couldn't beleive it.. it had been detected, it was a 2632W SMC card, and the hostap driver, which I'd tried to get working with the ipw2200 had detected it, and loaded, setting up a couple of extra interfaces in my laptop.

I mucked around for a little while with that, configuring it. I managed to get the hostap driver/daemon running, to act as an access point, which I could see when I ran kismet on the other interface.

I then grabbed fakeap, which was the reason I tried to get hostap running, looked that, and mucked around with that for a while, configuring it, making sure to get the pcmcia card interface set correctly, and kicked it off.

The first time, it didn't work as it was supposed to.. in kismet, I saw a ton of clients to "probe networks" showing up, ie while fakeap was changing the essid on the card, it wasn't in master mode, so it made the card try to connect to a bunch of different WlANs.

I then fiddled around a bit, got the card in master mode, ran it again, and saw stacks of WLANs appearing in kismet, oh, this is groovy.

I then sat and wrote a shell script, to set the card in the right mode, and kick of fakeap, with the manufacturers file from ethereal, to change the MAC of the card, and with the system dictionary, to use to generate essids for the fake WLANs.

I ran that, and it was groovy, millions of odd named APs appearing.

After that, I sat and configured the laptop properly, so I could use it as a legitimate access point. I configured dhcpd on the laptop, and then I connected the ipw2200 card to the SMC card, and used dhcp to get an IP from myself, which all worked, so I wireless connection to myself, heh.

I sat and watched some tv after this, a while later, Mum came in, and asked if I would go in, because my brother was having his cake.

Nope. I'm not going in there, I can't handle kids, and other people, I'm happy here on my own, watching tv.

I continued watching tv, and playing the guitar, for another couple of hours, until my brother came out, and asked me to go and look at his presents, I said I'd come in a little bit later.

I finished watching the show I was watching, and then I went inside. My brother was lying on the floor, playing with a lego truck.

I sat down, and Mum asked me if my satellite tv was working, I said that it was not. She didn't ask to fix it though, and was watching a dvd, so I couldn't even look at it.

A little while later, my brother came over, and showed me a remote control hovering ufo thing he had, it needed to be recharged apparently, and it kept just flying away, and crashing into things.

I wonder how long that will last, before the fan blades under it snap.

Dad brought out a few more presents for my brother, and he opened them. The show mum was watching finished, (I'd thought it was a video, but it's a cheesy quality dvd). I expected to get a chance to look at fixing the satellite tv, but she just put another show on.

It was now about 5pm, and I had to come back inside, to get ready, because I'm leaving in an hour, to go to Sydney, to the Finn Brother's concert.

I came back in, had a shower, got dressed (I wore the Pink Floyd shirt I bought the other day), and grabbed the tickets out of my laptop bag, and put them in my jacket.

At about 5.40pm, I went back inside, to look at fixing the sat box.

Dad commented that I had a nice jacket (the red one I bought the other week), and they asked if I was going out. I said I was, they asked if I needed a lift, and I said that I didn't.

I just reset the sat box again, and hoped that would fix it. I came back out, and immediately both my boxes would lock on to the signal.

I checked the extra channels though, and they were all saying they were scrambled. So much for this free channels for 8 days, more like 8 hours, since they're all scrambled again.

I went back to watching something I had recorded, while I waited for my mates to turn up, to pick me up.

I waited, and waited. I checked my phone, there was a missed call, from my mate, his home number. I called it back, and his dad answered. He told me that my mate had already left, (good), I told I expected so much, and hung up.

I waited around a bit more, it was now after 6pm. I called my mate on his mobile, and he told me that they were at Ourimbah, and they'd be at my place soon.

I waited a bit more, and they (my drummer mate, and my other mate, who I went to school with, who used to work at Target, and now works in Maitland) turned up, at about 6.30pm. I don't know how we're going to get to the Opera House in the next 75 minutes.

They told me there had been a huge prang at Chittaway, and it had taken them 20 minutes to get through it, which is why they were late.

We left my place, and headed for the freeway, we stopped off on the way, at the service station. My drummer mate and I went in, he went to the ATM or something, I grabbed a packet of chips, and a drink, since I was starving.

I got back in the car, and we went from there, drove down the freeway. We got off the freeway, and headed down the north shore. The traffic was pretty rough, our mate knew a different route, so we took that, and it got us to North Sydney (Milson's Point) a bit quicker.

We parked under the railway bridge, in a 4 hour paid parking spot.

We went to the meter, and we just pumped money in, my mate who drove put a few dollars in, and then I put about $3 something in, until it came up and said we had 4 hours, the maximum.

It was 7.45pm (Mercury Rev, the supporting act, had just started), so we had until 11.45pm to be back at the car.

We walked up the street a bit, there was a taxi, but it's light was off. I was going to cross the road, and ask him to get on the radio, and get another taxi, but he took off before I got a chance to cross.

Luckily another taxi came up the street, so I flagged it down, and we jumped in.

I told the guy we wanted to go to the Opera House, and we took off. We drove some of the way, and then the driver asked what we were going to see.

I chatted to him for a minute, telling him about getting the tickets etc.

We got to the Opera House, and the fare was $10.20. The guy said it was $15, with a tip.

That's a bit more than I'd usually tip, but the guy was quick, and it had taken us less than 10 minutes, and he had to go through the toll to get across the harbour bridge.

I paid, and each of my mates gave me $5.

We went in, up the stairs, and because Mercury Rev had already started, we went straight in, and found our row.

We sat down, and I worked out which seats we were in, and then we moved to them, a bit further in the row.

They were really good seats, we were a little bit left of the centre seats of the row, and only about 20 metres away from the stage.

We sat and watched Mercury Rev, I hoped I hadn't missed "Opus 40", (and that they would do it), so I thought about ducking out to get a drink, but didn't want to, in case I missed it.

They did a couple more songs, very groovy, orchestral backing track, with video clips projected behind them, and famous quotes being displayed.

They did Opus 40, it was slightly different to the other version I've heard, which I expected, since it's live, obviously, and I couldn't say it was either better or worse live, it was just different, really enjoyable.

They ran it on into another song, and did about 4 more songs after that. They finished, and went off.

We left the theatre, back to the foyer. We went straight to the bar, there were stacks of people out here. I was only going to get one drink, but then my mate suggested getting 2, which wasn't a bad idea.

I'd already ordered one, so I checked how much money I had, just enough for another one (with a bit less than a dollar in change left), and asked for another one.

I took my drinks, and looked for an area with a bit of space, since it was so crowded out here (heh, a Crowded House :-)

I waited for my other mates. There was a woman with programmes, assumeduly for sale, and I had no money left, so I couldn't get one. The others came from the bar, and we had a quick look at the merchandise table.

I wanted to get some cash, so I could get a programme, and a shirt, so I finished both my drinks, and asked a woman watching the door to go outside, where an ATM was.

She told me where it was, and I headed off towards where she'd told me. I wasn't exactly sure, so I went and spoke to the chick running the cloak room, and I asked her.

I then continued, down to the car park, down an escalator, past some shops. I still didn't see the ATM. There was a bar here, which I thought I was going in to, with a bouncer on the door, and I'd have to show ID or something.

I asked the bouncer where the ATM was, he told me it was past the bar (you could go through it, without being in it apparently), so I kept going, past the bar, and got to the ATM.

Apparently, while I was down here at the ATM, Peter Garrett turned up, with his daughter, into the foyer (my mates told me when I got back).

I went to the ATM, I couldn't remember my PIN, I had a total mental block. I put in what I thought it was my pin, and it was right. (phew, lucky).

I went back, went to the loo on the way, and then went to head back into the foyer, and some guy asked to see my ticket, so I showed him the tickets, and went back in.

I found my mates, my mate only had one beer (after he'd suggested getting 2), since he didn't have enough money to get 2, so I asked if he wanted another one. He said he did, gave me the $5 he had left.

I took it, went over, and bought him and myself another drink, and then I went back and had another look at the merchandise. I should have got a programme.

Our mate who'd driven us, said that he should have given me the money for the ticket, to save me going to the ATM, and he gave me the cash. Bugger, that would have saved me going all that way.

I got a form to join the fan club. We'd been out for maybe 20 minutes, and they made an announcement that the main act would start in 10 minutes.

My mate who'd driven us wanted to go to the loo, so I gave him the tickets, so he could get back in, and held his beer, he went, and came back a minute later, and gave me the tickets back.

We chatted for another minute, and then they made another announcement, that the main act could be starting in 5 minutes.

We waited a couple of minutes, while they finished their drinks, and then we went back in.

We only had to wait a couple of minutes, and then some weird music came on, and a fake donkey came out on to the stage.

I suspected it was Neil and Tim. It went across the stage, and off again, and then Tim and Neil came on, Neil tossing the donkey head on the stage, and Tim pulling off a shoe thing, and throwing it off to the side of the stage.

They didn't say much, just hello etc, and started playing.

Before I continue, I'll mention that the setlist was compiled by "timothius", over on the "frenzforum" (frenz of the enz), the post should be here. I've pinched it, I hope he doesn't mind :-)

Anyway, the first song they did was "Part Of Me, Part Of You". Some of the way through the song, Tim realised his acoustic guitar wasn't working properly (the cable, or the battery or something).

He called in a roady to fix it, and while that was going on, Tim and Neil had a bit of banter (Neil was playing the piano), and they joked that Neil could just fill in with the piano.

This went on for nearly a minute, they just continued playing the song, until the guitar (or the amp or whatever) was fixed, and then they finished the song.

When Neil stood up from the piano, he knocked the piano stool over backwards, and didn't notice.

He walked across, and was given a guitar to play, he picked up a bottle of water from in front of him, and complained that it didn't have his, or any, name on it.

Tim picked up the bottle near him, said it wasn't labelled either, then they both joked about the roadies not being up to scratch, and spreading typhoid.

They joked a bit more, and Tim asked Neil if his shoes were still slippery, and he explained to us that the soles of his shoes were really slippery, and dangerous.

He then gave us a demonstration, going over to the side of the stage, getting a little run up, and then sliding halfway across the stage, and nearly falling over.

He then said that he picked a bad part to start sliding, where there was a roll of gaffa tape, and nearly killing himself.

They then played "Bold As Brass" and then "Distant Sun", a really good live version.

I think they did "What's The Matter With You?", and "Angel's Heap" at this point.

After that, Tim went over to the play the piano, and he noticed that the seat had fallen over, and called for a roady to come and pick it up, in a joking way.

A roady came out, and Tim starting picking the seat up, and the found that the seat had come off the stand. Neil joked that some handy person in the front row could come and fix it.

Some bogan with a flannel shirt tied around his waist jumped up on the stage, and then just stood near Tim, obviously using all his mental capacity to maintain being a bogan, and didn't actually do anything useful.

Neil started bagging him out, while Tim was going through the stuff that had been in the seat. This went on for a couple of minutes, with the bogan not getting the hint to leave, until Neil said "ok, you can fuck off now", and he got off the stage.

They finished picking up the seat, and then Neil commented on what a really long preamble it had been, that it was a good time for it, because they were going to dedicate a song, and that someone who always like a long preamble, was Paul Hester.

Neil then grabbed an acoustic guitar, and told the guy on the soundboard to turn the PA right down.

I think the only amplification was a bit on Neil's voice. He came over, and said that we all had to sing along, like we'd do at home, for Paul.

He then started playing, and it was "Four Seasons In One Day". The audience, along with only Neil, and the acoustic guitar, sang at least half the song, and then the band kicked in to do small part of the song.

After that, we went back to acoustic, and finished off the song, with the last lines repeated a few times.

After the song, the woman sitting next to me commented that the song was lovely, and that my singing was too.

After that, they did "Won't Give In", and "Nothing Wrong With You".

There was then a bit more joking, and some conversation. Neil started talking about the induction (Split Enz being inducted into the hall of fame), and then they started going on about different inductions, and ended when Tim said "anal induction".

Neil continued his anecdote, and played a little bit of "Wild Thing", to set the scene.

After that, they got back to playing, and did "Only Talking Sense", "All The Colours", "Edible Flowers", "It's Only Natural" (which I really enjoyed), "Six Months In A Leaky Boat", (with a few people in the front row clapping enthusiatically during it), and "Anything Can Happen".

The guys all went off stage, and the audience just continued clapping, and stamping their feet for a couple of minutes, until they call came back on to the stage, Neil sliding back on.

They did "Weather With You", with Neil having a bit of fun, because he missed starting to play it on the 12 string, and said that he hated that, so that had to start again, but before that, he said that we could have "sung" the guitar bit, so we had a go of doing that.

They restarted "Weather With You", and played it really well.

(The guy I got the setlist off had "-> True Colours (Let's Rock!) Snippet" here, but I don't recall that).

They then did "How Will You Go?", saying they'd stay on Woodface for a bit.

After that they did "History Never Repeats", and went off stage again.

As before, there was clapping and stamping, until they came back on.

Neil slid on again, and they did "Shark Attack", which I'd thought was going to be "I See Red".

After that, Neil sat down at the piano, and this time found his bottle of water was labelled, and said he felt safe again.

He did "Message To My Girl", which I was really happy to hear, because it's one of my all time favourite songs.

After that, they said they only had time for one more song, which was "Don't Dream It's Over".

This was a bit like Four Seasons, with it being extended, and having the audience sing a fair bit of it, and finish it off.

After that, the guys all went off stage, the house lights came on, and we all wandered out.

I went to the merchandise table, and I bought a couple of tshirts, a Finn Brothers tour one, and a Split Enz one.

The woman selling the programmes was gone, so I didn't get a chance to get one of those.

We wandered down, along with everyone else, and back to the carpark. We walked across the carpark, towards the train station (at Circular Quay), my mate wanted to go to the loo, so we went down some stairs, back to near the bar again.

I wandered over to the edge of the harbour, to look at the view, of the harbour bridge etc, while my mates went to the loo.

They came out, and we continued wandering. We got a little bit further, and stopped to wait while my drummer mate used the ATM.

After that, we kept wandering, there was no point trying to get a taxi, because there'd be at least a thousand people waiting for taxis, we'd just get the train.

We had about 35 minutes to get back to the car, before the meter ran out.

We got over to the Quay, and our mate, who'd driven us down, suggested getting a ferry to Milson's Point. I looked, but the next one wasn't until 11.40pm, and that only left us 5 minutes to get back to the car.

We walked over to the station, our mate bought a ticket, and then I bought a ticket, and my drummer mate complained that he had no money (only a $50 note, and he would only get $20 change), so I bought him a ticket (it was only $2.20).

We went up to the platform, waited for a couple of minutes, and the train turned up. We got on, didn't bother to sit down, since we were only going one station, to Wynyard.

We got off the train at Wynyard, changed platforms, and waited for the next train, only a couple of minutes later.

As before, we didn't bother to sit down, to go one station.

We got off the train at Milson's Point, and wandered out. The gates were all open, so I didn't even need a ticket after all that, but it would have been my luck, if I'd not bought one, then I would have got busted.

We walked back to the car, and I checked the meter, we had 2:56 left on the spot, heh, less than 3 minutes, that's getting your money's worth.

We got in the car, and we left, drove back towards the north shore. We headed up the Pacific Highway, and we stopped off a little bit before getting on the freeway, at a service station.

Our mate parked, next to a car full of chicks. I tried to look a bit suave as I got out of the car, and wandered in to the service station.

I didn't really need anything, because I hadn't finished the chips and drink I got at the service station on the way, I just got a couple of chocolate bars, because they were on special.

I came back out, and the car with the chicks was gone, D'oh, I'd been hoping to sit in the car next to them for a couple of minutes, while I waited for my mates to come out.

I did that anyway, only without the chance to perhaps start chatting to the chicks, and then we left, and continued driving towards home, getting on the freeway.

We drove up the freeway, I noticed a couple of highway patrol cars parked in the old entrance to the lookout, after the Mooney Creek bridge, the cops out of the cars, standing behind them.

My mate had been doing 120km/h as he went past, and was worried about getting done, but there's no way, because there was no flash, and they have to chase you, and pull you over (at least they have every time I got busted).

We got off the freeway, came down the hill, and I got dropped off at home, I grabbed all my junk out of the back of the car, chocolate bar, chips, drink, t shirts, and I came inside.

It was about 1am, I sat and watched some tv, and then it was so cold, I went to bed.

And now.. for anyone googling, here's some keywords, like I'd search for:

The Finn Brothers tour Sydney Opera House July 15th Setlist

And here's the setlist again, again thanks to "timothius" from the "frenzforum", his post here.

Part Of Me, Part Of You
Bold As Brass
Distant Sun
Whats The Matter With You?
Angels Heap
Four Seasons In One Day
Won't Give In
Nothing Wrong With You
(A few bars of Wild Thing)
Only Talking Sense
All The Colours
Edible Flowers
It's Only Natural
Six Months In A Leaky Boat
Anything Can Happen
------------------------------------
Weather With You -> True Colours (Let's Rock!) Snippet
How Will You Go?
History Never Repeats
------------------------------------
Shark Attack
Message To My Girl
Don't Dream It's Over

I just found a link to a survey about blogging, while trying to find if there was anything in the blogger status blog, explaining why the dashboard keeps rendering all weird, with edit buttons that fill up the whole screen.

I didn't find why that is, but I did the survey anyway, here's a link to it:



I just tried to look at the current results of the survey, and it looks like the database server is having some trouble at the moment. See here.

Update, 4/7/05: I just went and had a look at the results at the moment, and I'm bang on average for almost every question they asked. Hmm, that's not very exciting. I'm not a statistic, I'm average.

I've just tried to get the volume keys working on my laptop again. I'd previously looked at this, but not spent much time on it.

I found that I needed a program called "hotkeys" (which apt-get has a package for), and then I had to create a definition for my laptop keyboard.

For anyone else running a 2200, here's the file:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<definition>
  <config model="Dell Inspiron 2200 Notebook">
    <volup keycode="176">
    <voldown keycode="174">
    <mute keycode="160">
  </config>
  <contributor>
    <name>Simon Quigley</name>
    <email>squigley@squigley.net</email>
  </contributor>
</definition>

(It's really hard to insert xml into a blog, without it being interpreted, so the indenting is probably wrong, I had to replace the tabs with non breaking spaces).

Anyway, once I had that file in /usr/share/hotkeys, as inspiron2200.def, I was able to "hotkeys -t inspiron2200", and have my volume keys work.

It even has a groovy OSD, to show the volume going up and down.

The only issue now, is that it changes the master volume control, and this volume control has no effect when I'm using headphones, only the PCM 1 and 2 effect the headphones volume.

Hmm, oh well, at least I should have hardware volume control when not using headphone, which is a start, so that in the office if my laptop starts making noise without the headphones in, I can just hit the mute keyboard combination, and shut it up.

I woke up, got up, had a shower, and got ready.

I shutdown the stuff (NSLU2, disk etc, since I'd left it running while extracting recordings from the tivo last night), and packed my bag.

I went in, waited around, and then Mum gave me a lift to the service station.

I hung around in the carpark for a little while, and then the email support guy turned up, and I got a lift to work.

I did some work, and then my mate in Melbourne told me that he'd got a new XBMC build.

I gave him my gmail login, and he used that drive mount hack thing to put the files in there, and I was able to get them out again, at work, using the same thing.

I did some work for a couple of hours, and then got called up by the little guy, he was asking if I was going to lunch.

I went upstairs, and hung around for a while. I chatted to the Senior DBA, about the stuff over the weekend.

He told me that the cops had told him not to go back in the laundry, they eventually turned up on Sunday, and took some fingerprints, and a report.

I doubt anything will happen though, the stuff is gone.

I went for a walk with the little guy, and we went to a cheap shop, he was looking for a piping bag, for making a cake.

While we were there, I bought some batteries, a power point timer (for the heater), and a cheap knockoff xbox remote.

We walked back towards work, and I went to subway, and ate it on the way back to work.

I hung around upstairs for a little while, and then went back to my desk.

I worked for a while, but I couldn't think straight. I went and got a drink from the vending machine, and tried to work a bit more.

Eventually I gave up, and packed up my laptop, to go. Then I remembered that I needed to get the tivo guide data slices, so I setup my laptop again.

I downloaded the guide slices, and then packed up my laptop, and walked back to the house.

I think this is when I put the bed together, but I'm not sure.

I setup the gear I'd brought back, the AP, and NSLU2/disk etc.

It was weird, the NSLU2 booted up, but was running off the internal config, instead of the disk.

I wondered if it was because I turned the disk on before I attached the USB cable to the NSLU2 or something.

I fiddled around for a bit, and after powercycling both the disk and the NSLU2, it came up properly.

I got the wireless working again, with one running as a client to the other, since only one has OpenWRT on it, and the other has the stock firmware on it, which doesn't do WDS.

I found that xbox routing doesn't work properly, it wouldn't connect to the NSLU2, which was on a different subnet, because of the wireless bridging.

I tried to install the new XBMC I'd got this morning, but I had disk space issues.

I fiddled around, and eventually, after moving some other stuff off the disk, had enough space to install the new XBMC.

I hadn't realised that it had run out of space while copying a couple of times, and I'd wondered why it didn't boot, or had errors about missing files.

Anyway, I finally got it running, but then I couldn't get it to connect to the NSLU2 anyway.

I put some stuff on the harddrive in the xbox, and tried playing that, but it didn't seem to want to play movies for some reason. I wondered if it was something dumb I was doing, pressing the wrong button or something, but I couldn't work it out.

I even tried using the xbox remote, but that wouldn't play movies either, I could only get it to play music.

The senior DBA had come back a little while before, and he'd arranged for us going to dinner at the mailroom woman's place.

The chick from work and her boyfriend turned up, and they hung around for a while, and then we all got in the car, and took off.

We stopped in at the bottleshop on the way, and got some grog, and then we went to the mailroom woman's place.

We chatted for a while, and then had dinner, and desert.

We sat around for a while, and then all the others ended up in the laundry smoking, and I sat and watched some of a DVD that was on.

We left, and we got dropped back at the house. I watched some tv, and setup the serial link, and loaded the new guide data.

It took ages to index for some reason. I went to bed after that, did a bit of blogging, and then went to sleep.

I woke up about 9am. The others weren't up, so I went back to sleep.

I heard my drummer mate come in to the room about 11am, and I spoke to him for a bit, but then fell asleep again, and I didn't end up getting up until after 1pm.

There was a message on my phone from my mate I'd seen yesterday, about a letter, he thought he'd left at my place.

I replied, and told him I was not at home.

We left, and I forgot to take my autographed poster. We went to McDonalds, and got some food.

They were totally disorganised, they put ice in the drink, when I'd ordered it without, and they forgot to give me part of my order, and when I asked about it, they said they'd bring it out, and they forgot, and I had to go back again.

Useless. After all that, I managed to get my food.

While we were eating, there were a bunch of noisy kids on the next table, I could have done without their crap.

We finished eating, and then left, and I got dropped at home.

I got the mail in, but there was nothing interesting.

My mate turned up, and picked up the letter he'd forgotten, and then I sat and blogged for a while.

I watched some tv, and then I extracted a bunch of tivo recordings on to the disk attached to the NSLU2.

I had dinner, and then Dad came in, whinging about DHCP being broken, so I restarted it on the router.

He said he still couldn't get his laptop working, so I went in, and fiddled around a bit, and it just worked.

I asked about getting a lift to the service station near the freeway in the morning, so I could get a lift with the email support guy, and Mum said that was ok.

I rang up the email support guy, and arranged a lift with him, and the time, and then I let Mum know.

I went back out, and watched more tv, and extracted more stuff on to the disk. I packed up my laptop, and then I went to bed.

I watched some tv, and then I went to sleep.

I woke up, and lay in for ages, watching tv. I eventually got up, at 1.15pm.

There was some really annoying noise going on, I thought it was a hard drive or a fan, and while looking to see where it was comeing from, I realised it was actually someone playing the drums in a garage nearby.

I sat around for a while, and got a message from my drummer mate, he said he was at his cousin's place.

I got a message from my mate, whose wife left him, he wanted to see me.

A couple minutes later, my mobile rang, and I started chatting, and then my landline rang, it was my other mate.

I got off the mobile, told my drummer mate I'd call him back, and answered the landline. I arranged to see my other mate, so then I called back my drummer mate, and I told him I'd see him later, at the show we're going to.

I had a shower, and then my mate turned up. We had a drink, and chatted for a while, and then my mobile rang.

It was the senior DBA. He said something along the lines of "don't freak out", and I initially thought it was something to do with the tivo I'd installed in the house, but then he followed it up by saying "we've been robbed".

Hmm, terrific. I imagined the place was ransacked, but then he told me "not inside".

We spoke for a couple of minutes, and basically someone had gone in the laundry, that wasn't locked, and pinched both our mountain bikes.

They'd also gone through the back shed, and pinched a whole bunch of the senior DBA's tools, including power tools, and some paint brushes.

They must have been there for ages, because all the boxes in the shed had been gone through, and they'd taken what they wanted.

They'd also pinched the washing powder, and the pegs, this was what had made him realise what had happened, when he couldn't find the washing powder.

It could have been days ago, because I hadn't been in the laundry since Tuesday, and the senior DBA hadn't ridden his bike to work all week.

My mate suggested that I tell him to go to the police station, and file a report.

I got off the phone, and went back to chatting with my mate. I wasn't that worried, I'd only lost my pushbike, that was pretty much stuffed anyway, and I was going to buy a new one.

We chatted for ages, and then sat and watched "Lock, Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels".

I called up my drummer mate, and arranged to go around to my guitarist mate's place, so my mate pillioned me over there on his bike.

I realised I hadn't been on a bike since before I went to court, months ago.

On the way, there were a couple of old farts driving really slow on the road, my mate blasted around them, and the old fart driving put his high beams on, so I gave him the finger.

Damn I miss riding.

I got to my mate's place, and went in, he was watching the end of "True Lies".

After that finished, we left, and got in the car, and drove to the service station around the corner.

My mate bought some smokes, I got some chips, because I hadn't eaten much all day.

We drove to Westfield at Tuggerah, and went in to the bottle shop, and I bought some grog.

We went to our drummer mate's place, and sat and drank, and watched some of "The Rutles".

We got a lift to the Doylo, and went in, and bought tickets to see the Led Zeppelin show.

Our drummer mate went to the loo, and my other mate and I went in to where the show was going to be.

We waited a while, and our other mate didn't turn up, so I went out to look for him. I played the pokies first, just putting a dollar through, and then I found him, wandering around looking for us, outside the concert area.

We went back in, and I got more chips from the vending machine.

The opening act came on, they did some stuff by The Offspring, and Blink 182 etc, I'm not a big fan of that stuff.

A while later, the Led Zeppelin cover band came on, and we watched the show, and got up for a dance.

I ended up having 9 drinks, and some more chips later on in the night.

Between every song, I was yelling "Ramble On!", and eventually they actually played it, last.

After they went off, I went over to the stage, and I pinched the set list, and a sheet with the verses of Stairway to Heaven listed on it.

(I just looked at the setlist, and Ramble On isn't on it).

We waited around, and the guys from the band came back on stage. We saw the guy who was Robert Plant, he came over, and we had a chat.

We went out, and I saw there were posters for the even in the foyer. I asked the chick on the desk when they usually take them out, and she asked someone else, and he said to just give me one.

She opened up the frame, and took the poster out, and then some Leb that was hanging around grabbed it.

I asked him what the deal was, and then a bouncer came over, and he must have seen me ask for the poster etc, because he told the Leb to give it to me.

He did, but there was another one, so the chick went to get that one for him I assume.

I went back in, the Robert Plant guy was hanging around near the mixing desk, I got him to sign the poster for me.

I thanked him, and then we left. A guy that my mate's work with at Target turned up, he's a bit of a designated driver.

He drove us over to Wyong Leagues Club, and we went to go in.

The others went in, and the guy on the door asked me for some ID. I showed him my NSW license, since it's the only ID I've got now, and he looked at it, and then said it was expired.

Yeah, so? I asked him if he didn't think the photo looked like me, and that I didn't look over 18 anyway, but he said he wouldn't let me in.

I didn't really care, I didn't want to go in there anyway.

My mates eventually worked out that I was still outside, and came back towards me, and I explained that I couldn't get in.

We all left, and went back to the car. The guy drove us back towards our drummer mate's place, we went to the servo on the way, and I got yet more chips.

We went back to our drummer mate's place, and jumped out of the car. I wanted to give the guy who'd driven us back some money.

He wouldn't take the $30 that I offered him (less than a taxi would have been), eventually he said he take $10, so I gave him that, and then I flicked the $20 at him as I shut the door anyway.

We went in, and out into the back room of the house, and we watched rage, it was pretty crap, so my mate went and got his Rutles DVD, and we watched that.

I ate my chips, and then we watched Spinal Tap, and I kept falling asleep through it, eventually that finished, and we all went to sleep about 3am.

I woke up, heard the senior DBA in the shower for ages, he came out, said he'd see me at work later.

I got up, went and had a shower. The new shower head I put on was crap.

I got ready, head breakfast, and I walked to work. I worked for a while, and then filled out my timesheets, and got the geophysicist guy to sign them, since my manager and the indexer's project manager was away.

I faxed them through, and then I called up the temping agency, and asked them to send through an invoice for my pay for the year.

I got a call from the front desk, some packages had turned up for me, I went and collected them, opened them, and went through them all.

It was the stuff from NetBro, damn, that was quick.

I didn't bother opening up the WRT54G, I knew what to expect there, I opened up the NSLU2, it was a lot smaller than I was expecting, looks cool though.

I looked at the hard disk caddy, it wasn't very exciting, considering it's just a box with a hard drive in it.

I did some more work, and then I got an email from the woman at the temping agency.

She needed my most recent timesheets, and I told her that they went through at 10am. She went off to try to find them, and found them. That should have been all sorted.

I went upstairs about 12.30pm, and asked the email support guy about getting a lift home this afternoon, and then I went to lunch.

I walked down street, with a few guys from work, we got pies, and ate, and then walked back to work.

I sat at my desk, and I mucked around with hard disk caddy a bit. I opened it, and put the drive in properly, because the guy hadn't mounted the disk inside, it was bouncing around a bit.

In the process of taking the case apart, I dropped one of the screws, which disappeared under the desk, taking me a few minutes to find.

I finished mucking around, and put it back together.

I went back to work, and then the woman chasing me for my invoice, so that they could pay me properly came around about the invoice that the temping agency had sent in, there was something not right about it or something. I couldn't help her with it.

I got a call from delivery guys, they told me they were waiting at the house, and there was no one there.

Crap. I told them I'd be there shortly, and then I pissbolted back to the house, having an asthma attack on the way, and felt like I nearly died.

The delivery guy asked how old I was, and then said I was unfit. Oh duh mate.

I opened the door for them, and they moved the bed in, then I signed for it, and they left.

I sat down for a minute, and I used the nebuliser, because my asthma was so stuffed up. I had a drink, and waited a minute, then I moved the bed upstairs.

I didn't put it together, I just dumped all the bits in the room.

I grabbed the serial adapter I'd meant to take this morning, and then I locked up, and walked back towards work.

I went in to the supermarket, and bought some soap, because I've got none left at home, and I got some bread and a scone from the bakery.

I walked back to work, and I bumped into the royalty manager's kids on the way, and chatted to them.

I got back to work, sat down, still puffed from running back to the house, and then I worked a bit more.

I went upstairs for a while, and spoke to the sysadmin.

As the senior DBA was leaving, I bumped into the woman chasing me about my invoice, she was now trying to get my invoice signed off, but there was no one around who was authorised to do it.

The email support guy came around to my desk at 4.30pm, so I packed up laptop, grabbed my bags, and the bread, and went and got in the car. We left work, and went to the service station just down the road.

There was a power blip, and all the service station bowsers and the traffic lights reset. That was pretty weird.

The email support guy got fuel, and then we got on freeway, and I got dropped at home, I said I might need a lift to work on Monday, and we sorted that out.

I grabbed all my stuff, and I came inside. I sat down, watched some tv, and ate some bread.

I setup the second AP, but I couldn't get bridge mode working on it.

I eventually found that I needed to be running OpenWRT on both APs, so I put it on the new one, and then I managed to get the bridge setup, and I installed some packages on the AP.

I grabbed the NSLU2, and I installed unslung on it, and installed some packages for it, and then I went to bed, at about 2am.

I woke up, and was just lying on the sofa bed.

The senior DBA's phone rang, he'd left it in the loungeroom, I didn't answer it.

The door bell rang, so I got up, and went and answered the door. It was the little guy from work.

He came in, and hung around for a while. I went and had a shower, and some breakfast.

I got a lift with the little guy to work, and the senior DBA stayed in the house.

I setup my laptop at work, and I mucked around with xscreensaver a bit.

I configured the webcollage screensaver, and after about 10 images through, it came up with this one.

Hmm, I can do without that going on at work, so I disabled that screensaver again.

I worked on the files I'm writing for a while.

I sent an email to the guy at NetBro, and asked about USB hard drives. He stocks them, so I ended up ordering a Linksys NSLU2, a Linksys WRT54G, the external USB drive caddy and drive.

It came to $500 all up. I went out to lunch, and saw a few people from work.

I went to the ATM, and I pulled out $800, to pay for the stuff I'd ordered.

I got some lunch, and sat and ate, and chatted with the people from work. I went to the bank on the way back to the office, and I deposited the money for the stuff I'd ordered, $500 worth.

I went back to work, and continued coding. I remembered about the registered mail I'd arranged to get forwarded to Maitland. Bugger.

I left work, and I walked all the way down to the post office.

I collected the registered mail, and opened it as I walked back to work, I found that it was the concert tickets I'd booked a few days ago, to go and see the Finn Brothers.

I sent a message to Mum, and let her know what the mail was.

On the way back to work, I went into Harvey Norman across the road from work, and I bought the bed I looked at yesterday.

I arranged to get it delivered, but this meant it would come tomorrow, meaning another night sleeping on the sofabed. Ugh.

I asked them to let me know about 1/2 hour before it would be delivered, so I could be there to let the delivery guys in.

I went back to work, and I sat and cleaned up the data in the database I'm working on.

I added in support for some "WordPro" files that are in the dataset. Someone's put the description of them as "wordpad" files, so I had to sort that out.

I added in some code to detect WordPro files, but I couldn't get it to work, there was something suspect going on.

I got an email back from eksys, the guy wanted to know if I wanted an X-factor network card, instead of a Turbonet card, since they're cheaper, and also how I wanted the stuff sent, I sent an email back, saying the cheaper card would be fine, and wanting clarification if the prices were Aussie dollars, or US dollars.

I continued working, while I waited for the reply, I looked for the problem I was having with the new code.

I eventually found it, I was working in a switch/case, and I'd missed adding in the break, so it was falling through into the next case, and bollocksing up the variable values.

As soon as I found that, and fixed it, I decided to leave. Before I could do so, the senior DBA called me, and said that he wanted to go to McDonalds to get something to eat, so I said I'd go too, and he said he'd come and pick me up.

I started packing up my stuff, and then the indexer's manager asked me if I'd got my timesheets/invoice sorted out yet.

I said I hadn't, because I had to put in timesheets for the rest of the financial year first, and have them sent the invoice back.

I told him I'd get it sorted in the morning, and get my invoice in.

I put my stinky jumper on, I grabbed my laptop bag, and went outside to wait, the senior DBA got there just as I got there to wait.

I got in the car, and we drove to McDonalds. We sat and ate, and then drove back to the house again.

I sat around watching tv for a while, and then I went and put the shower head on that I bought, it should be a bit better.

I sat and did some blogging, and we watched tv.

I went and made a cup of coffee, the soy milk had gone a bit rough, understandable, since it's been in the fridge for a week and a half, so I just had a black coffee instead.

The tivo hadn't been changing the channels for some reason, so had recorded all the wrong things. I mucked around, and found it was something to do with the ir emitter, it wasn't changing the channel at all, but the other one did, so hopefully that fixed it.

I sat and watched some tv, stuff that tivo had recorded from the wrong channels.

The senior DBA went to bed, I watched some of tivo suggestions, "the complete cosmos". I tried to setup a season pass for this show, but it didn't show up in the guide. Maybe there's no more episodes in the guide data I've got.

I downloaded the new data today, but I couldn't be bothered to setup the serial link, and manually load the data, just for one day. I'll wait, and do it all again on Monday night I think.

I went to sleep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We played pool, and I finished my drink.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I turned off the laptop, and went to sleep.

I got up, and I got ready, having a shower etc. I went to make a coffee, but I couldn't find the jar of coffee that I bought the other day.

I looked all around, in all the cupboards, including the one under the sink, and then I saw the jar, empty. Hmm.

I asked the senior DBA where my coffee was, and he told me that is was "gone". Seems strange, since one of those jars usually lasts me a few months.

(It was used though, since the senior DBA usually made the coffees, and when I went in with him one time, I saw that he was putting 2 heaped teaspoons of coffee in, and I usually only put 1).

Anyway, I had a coffee, because he had a huge jar of coffee, some brand I'm not a huge fan of. I finished getting ready, and I left the house. There was a bunch of junk mail in the letterbox, so I grabbed it out.

I put my ipod on, and I looked at the junk mail on the way to work.

One of the catalogues had a really cool looking bike in it. I wondered if it was just easier to buy a new bike, rather than pissing about trying to fix my other bike, which needs new tyres, the handlebars fixed, and something done about the gear change mechanism.

When I got near work, the woman from the mail room that's going out with the contract DBA was going somewhere, we said hello, and kept going.

I got to work, and sat at my desk, I set my laptop up, and I put some music on. I'd listened to "Rocket Man" on my way to work, and I wanted to hear it again, so I put that on.

After I'd listened to it, it randomly selected the next song from the playlist, strangely, the same song came on after as when I walked to work. Maybe the random code from xmms is the random code used in the ipod.

I worked on some code for a while, and then I went up to see the senior DBA, to talk about going to the shop to look at the bike I'd seen in the catalogue. I shoved the catalogue in my pocket.

I went up, and found the senior DBA on the phone, I spoke to the manager of royalty for a while, he told me about a restaurant he'd been to, where they have a mechanical bull.

He'd been on the bull, and someone had videoed it, so he showed me the video of that on his laptop. He lasted a fair while on the bull, and then got thrown off, and ended up on his head or something, quite funny.

The senior DBA got off the phone, and we all decided to go across the road, they wanted coffees, I don't drink the shitty coffee they serve, but I went across anyway.

We had a chat while we were over there, and on the way back to work, I showed them the bike in the catalogue.

I went back to my desk, and I did a bit of browse to find an NSLU2, because I'd decided to buy one, so that I could setup more disk space for my laptop, and not have to worry about dragging it around, and connecting it to my laptop.

I also wanted one because I'd seen them mentioned on hackaday a couple of times, and were supposedly very hackable, which sounded like fun, and the WRT54G I bought recently is supposed to be pretty hackable as well.

I also browsed for a wireless bridge, so I could setup the access point and the NSLU2 (if I got one) in another room, and still have the xbox and the tivo in the loungeroom connected, without having to run wires between the rooms.

I figured I'd try and find Linksys' wireless bridge, because equipment (especially wireless) usually works better together when it's the same brand.

I didn't really find what I was looking for. (sorry for the overlapping blog posts).

I'd received an email from someone upstairs, about going to lunch, but I'd missed it, I hadn't noticed it arrive, or checked my mail.

A little while later, someone from upstairs called me, asked me about going out to lunch. I went upstairs, and waited around for a little while, and then a few of us went out to lunch.

We walked down the road, the senior DBA, the contract DBA, and the woman from the mail room he's going out with. As we walked down the road, a guy rode past on a bike, the same as the one I'd seen in the catalogue, it looked pretty groovy.

We went to Subway. The senior DBA waited in the line with us for a minute, and then left, and went and got food somewhere else, but sat outside with us to eat.

After that we walked back to work, and I went back to my desk, and worked for a while.

A couple of hours later, I sent an email to the senior DBA, and asked about going to the sports place to look at the bike this afternoon. He replied immediately, and asked if I wanted to go up there and look at it now.

I said I'd do a bit more work, and then we'd go. I did a bit more work, and then I packed up, and I went upstairs.

When I went up, I started talking about the bike I was going to look at, and the annoying support guy mentioned that he'd recently bought a couple of bikes at an auction house recently, and didn't really need 2, so was going to get rid of one of them.

We went down to the carpark, the senior DBA, the annoying support guy, and myself, and we looked at the couple of bikes, since they were in the back of the annoying support guy's car. He said he still had to work out which one he wanted, and which one he was going to get rid of yet.

The senior DBA had ridden his bike to work today, so I started walking back to the house, and the senior DBA rode back, since his car was there.

We got back, and I dropped off my laptop and stuff, and then we got in the car, and drove to the sports place at Green Hills.

We went in, and I went and found the bike, it looked a bit smaller than I expected. I dragged it off the rack, and sat on it, and found that it was much too small, I couldn't even peddle it, because my knees hit on the handlebars. Useless.

I got off, put it back on the rack, and we started to leave. Some guy asked if we needed help, and I told him I'd come in to look at that bike, and found it too small, expecting the guy to say they had a bigger one, but he didn't.

We left, and got back in the car, and I then I commented on the fact that Strathfield car radios was next door, and I was still looking for speakers, so we drove over near there, and went in.

The senior DBA mentioned that he was after a new CD player for his car, I said he was looking for a head unit that's compatible with Sony stackers (since that's what's in the car already, and just the head needs replacing).

We browsed around for a while, I didn't see much in the way of speakers worth having, and then we left. On the way out, I noticed they had a DVD/disc player thing for about $60, that played divx, and xvid etc.

We got back in the car, and drove back to the house. I sat around for a while, and then I setup the access point in the loungeroom, and connected the xbox to it.

I still had to run the serial cable to the tivo, since I didn't have an ethernet interface for it yet. I'd breifly looked for a serial to ethernet adapter, but I couldn't find anything reasonably priced, they were all hundreds of dollars.

Anyway, I ran the serial lead, and loaded some guide data into the tivo, a little while later, the guy from Orange who looks after the IT group, and the woman from the mail room he's going out with turned up.

We chatted for a while, and the 4 of us decided to go to get some dinner in the restaurant next door. We left the house, went to the pub, and found that the restaurant was shut.

We stodd there for a minute, trying to work out what to do, and decided to go to the club for dinner, so we walked over there.

When we got there, the guy from CCB was in there, we spoke to him for a little while, ordered drinks and dinner, and sat down for a while.

I went in and played the pokies, don't recall winning anything. I came out, and sat down for another while, and then the senior DBA and I decided to play pool.

There was some really crazy woman in the club, claiming that her mother had passed away a few days before. Either it was effecting her badly, or she was just a nutbag.

Before we started playing pool, our food came out, so we sat and ate. When we'd finished, we played our game of pool.

The crazy woman had sat with the guy from Orange, and the woman from the mail room, and they didn't look too impressed, trying to eat their dinner with this crazy woman sitting at the table.

The senior DBA and I couldn't handle her any more, we got more drinks, and then we snuck away, and went and sat outside.

I went back in and played a couple of dollars I had through the pokies, and then we left, and headed back towards the house.

On the way, I remembered that I needed to buy breakfast cereal, so the senior DBA and I headed towards the shopping centre/supermarket.

We got near the door of the shopping centre, and there were a couple of odd looking people hanging around there, a guy and a chick.

The chick came over, had all shit in her face, piercings etc, and asked if we'd buy her a pack of cigarettes (so they were both under 18). The senior DBA said he wouldn't, and while I briefly thought about it, the thought of it possibly being a sting, and me getting busted and a $10000 fine wasn't really worth it, so I told her I wouldn't.

We went in, and I bought a box of cereal at the supermarket, and then we walked back to the house, and the senior DBA went to bed.

I put the tv on, and watched it for a while, and I mucked around with the access point a bit.

I decided to move the heater up in to my room, to try to dry the mattress out, that was still leaning against the wall, so I took it up, plugged it in, and set it up to try to dry it, figuring I'd just leave it going all night.

I went back down, sorted out my clothes, and went and put a load of washing on.

I continued mucking around with the access point, there wasn't much I could do with the standard firmware, and I wanted to be able to use some of the extra features the device could do, that I'd read about (and saved a bunch of files about on my laptop).

I had a copy of "freeman", I put that on there, since it still retained most of the standard features, and a web interface, that "openwrt" doesn't have, and I wasn't prepared to put that on yet.

I have no problem with "freeman", I think "talisman" is the problem, since there's a company trying to make money out of Linksys' GPL firmware, and not releasing their code under GPL.

Anyway, I found that the boot_wait hack documented in the openwrt twiki worked, and then I flashed freeman in, and fiddled around with that for a while.

I went and put the washing in the dryer, watched a bit of tv, before I went to bed, on the lounge again.

My WRT54G turned up this week. The ebay seller sent it to the wrong address (to home, instead of to work like I requested), but I got it anyway, just a few days later, when I got home, so no biggie.

I haven't much of a chance to muck around with it yet, I plugged it in on Saturday morning, and couldn't connect to it, assumedly because it's not configured (and I didn't plug it into the wired network, so it didn't have access to the dhcp server.

I'm now looking for a wireless bridge, instead of drilling a hole through the wall, I thought I might stick with linksys stuff, since manufacturers usually have better luck with stuff working with their own gear.

I figured I'd get a WGA54G, but then I found them not to be as cheap as they should be. It's actually more expensive to get this silly little 1 port bridge, than to buy another WRT54G.

Also, while looking around, I've found that the WGA54G seems to have a lot of problems, and I've read quite a few stories of people having no luck getting it to connect, spending hours on the phone to support, and ending up having to return the unit for a replacement before it will work.

I don't think I'll be doing this.

I might as well just get another WRT54G, put the alternative firmware on it, and run it in client mode. I also get 4 ports that way, so both the xbox and the tivo will be able to use it, without needing a switch to get more than 1 device connected to it.

There's also a WET54G I've just seen, a slightly more expensive unit than the WGA54G, which I think might be a 4 port unit. Still, I got the WRT54G for $126, and the WET54G is $150 before I've even got it shipped, so it would end up costing half the price again.

Also, it only says that it supports "Wireless-G (draft 802.11g)", not IEEE802.11G, the published standard.

Hmm, I'll do a bit more research, but somehow I think I'm going to end up with another WRT54G. I should have done this earlier, and just bought another one at the same time.

Oh, I'm also looking for an NSLU2. I don't want to get one off ebay, because they're in the US (there's no local ones), so then I'd have to pay extra to replace the power adapter, on top of the shipping, and waiting time.

I googled around, found a few places in Australia that stock them.

It's a bit suspect, I went to the "sponsored links", ie ads that google brought up, and it looks like "Dycom Business Systems", "DPI Systems, and "AlphaOnline" are all the same site (the same products, in the same order are displayed), but the prices are all different.

It doesn't matter anyway, I found that a place called "minidigital" is cheaper than the three of them (on the nslu2 anyway, it's more expensive for some stuff).

I can have the nslu2 from minidigital, including the shipping, for about $160. Have to think about that.

Ooh, I just found the nslu2 even cheaper, at "oztechnologies", and the shipping is only $11, so I could have it for $158.60 shipped.

I was woken up the alarm, so my reaction was to just punch it, and it shutup.

A few minutes later, it went off again. As before, I hit it to shutup. This went on 3 times I think, and then I put the tv on, and tried to wake up.

I got up, and I started getting ready, to go down and have some breakfast, which is only served until 9.30am or so.

I was getting ready, and then the clock was saying that it was after 10am, WTF? did I set the alarm wrong? I checked the time, and it was only about 9am, so I figured that when I punched the clock to shut it up, I must have accidently changed the time forward by an hour.

I finished getting dressed, and my drummer mate and I went down to get breakfast, because our other mate was in the bathroom, and we didn't want to wait for him, and risk missin out on breakfast.

We went down, went to the restaurant area, and the 2 of us went in. We started getting some food, and then our other mate came in. We sat and had breakfast, we'd cut it fine, because before we'd finished, they started packing stuff up.

We finished breakfast, and then went back up to the room, finished getting ready, and packed our stuff up.

We left the room, and I realised that I couldn't find my sunglasses. I was hoping that I hadn't left them in the room.

I checked my backpack, and in the process of jamming my hand in my backpack, I caught my fingernail on something, and it got bent right up, and pulled off from my finger about halfway down the nail.

This hurt like hell, and my finger started bleeding, from under the nail.

I found my glasses in my bag after that, so we went down to reception, and I lined up to checkout.

I had to wait for ages, the people in front of me were squabbling about paying through travel agent, and they didn't want to stay any more nights, and the hotel hadn't been paid, and apparently they'd broken something.

I was getting pretty fed up, eventually I got served, so I could check out.

The woman brought up the bill from the room, which now had the 3 breakfasts on it as well. My mate had said that the breakfast was $4.50, but it was actually $13.50 each.

I paid for the room, $160 something it worked out to be, and then I went outside, where my mates were waiting.

We walkked down to the parking station where we'd parked the car, we had to pay for the parking before we could leave.

We went to the window to pay, but there were no attendants. There was a machine, but we found that it wouldn't take notes, only coins, and it's going to be a bit difficult to pay $30 something parking with coins.

I thought there was another pay area, on the floor below, so we went down there, to find no payment things of any description, just ending up in the shopping centre.

We went back up to the other level, and had a closer look, there was an attendant sitting in the office/window, she'd been sitting on the floor or something.

We paid for the parking, it was $24, that wasn't too bad. We went down, chucked our stuff in the car, and left the parking station.

We drove home, and on the way back, I made a couple of suggestions, "back seat driving" if you will, only because I used to drive this route home every day, so I knew which lane to be in, and where you could gain a bit of ground.

When we got to the entry to the freeway, there was a guy stopped at the lights, and he got out of his car, so I suggested that my mate get in the other lane, so we could go around this dope if the lights went green.

My mate got pissed off, and told me that he knew how to drive, and didn't need me to tell him.

I just kept my mouth shut for the rest of the trip back, until we got back to his place, and then our drummer mate and I got out, and we got in his car, and left.

We went to the service station, my mate needed some fuel, and then I got dropped at home.

I sat and did some blogging, and then Dad came in, and asked if I had all my stuff organised to take to Maitland.

I went int, and spoke to Mum, she was asking what I wanted to take up, there's an old tv cabinet thing, they asked if I wanted that, I figured it would be ok to put a tv on.

I went to the shed to get my pushbike out, and found that it wasn't there, Dad had already got it out.

I sat around inside for a bit, and I finished setting up tivo, and then I put the cover back on.

I packed up the access point, which I still hadn't done anything with, I figured I'd set it up in Maitland.

I went down to the car, Dad told me the car had just rolled down the driveway, with the weight of the trailer on it.

He was loading the bed up, someone had painted it blue, and it looked hideous, I couldn't stand it, so I said that I didn't want it.

I said I would have the mattress though, and get my own bed.

We loaded the mattress on to the trailer. I went and got my pushbike, and brought it down outside the garage. The tyres were totally flat, I found the pump, and I pumped them up.

I then found that the tyres were all perished, I'll have to replace them.

I sat on it, and it was just awful. The handlebars weren't even straight on it, the bolt holding the handlebars on is stripped, and they can move independently of the wheel, great.

I went over and sat on my motorbike. I then got really upset.

I didn't want to have to move all my stuff to Maitland. I didn't want to have to live there during the week. I wanted to ride my bike. This whole thing is fucked. I hate the government, and the so called "justice" system, it's just fucked.

Mum asked me if I wanted a bedside table. I was really upset, so I just said no, but then I realised that I did want it, but I couldn't say anything, because I was worried about just losing it.

I walked away, I went and sat inside, and felt really angry, and sad, and upset.

I just sat there for a while, and then I finished getting things organised in there, packing up the tivo etc.

I went back down to the garage, and there wasn't much going on, so I went back inside again, and just sat there.

My parents came in at about 3pm, and asked if I was ready to go? I told them I wasn't, that I would be in a bit.

I finished getting organised, I packed up my laptop, and my backpack.

I went down to put my tivo in the car, but Dad had locked it. I went and got the keys off him, and then I put my tivo, my bag and laptop and some other stuff, a bag of sheets etc, in the car.

I locked the car, and gave Dad his keys back. A few minutes later, we went down, and got in the car. Dad noticed that his mobile phone battery was flat, and asked my brother if he'd been playing with it, he said he had been.

I told dad that I had a car charger, it was in my bike. I got out of the car, and started going towards my bike, and then I remembered that the adapter was in the side of the bike, and I'd need the key to get it, which was inside.

I then went to go inside, and remembered that I'd locked my door, and the keys were in my bag, in the car. I went back to the car, got my keys, and then I went inside.

I grabbed my bike key, went down, opened the side of the bike, took the charger out. I locked the bike again, and then I went and got in the car. I realised that I had my bike key ion my hand.

I got out of the car, leaving the charger, I went back, unlocked the door, dumped the key inside, then I locked the door again, and went and got in the car again.

Dad had plugged in the charger, and plugged his phone in, but it didn't charge. I looked at the LED on the charger, it wasn't lit. Hmm, looks like the charger is stuffed after all that.

That would explain why it didn't work when I tried to use it to charge my mate's wife's phone, when we were at the car yard, before going to Dreamworld.

We left home, and headed towards the freeway. Dad had to get fuel, going to the service station before the freeway. It's a "no right turn", and he'd like "when did they do that?", and makes the right turn anyway.

The driveway to the service station had a "no entry" sign on it, but Dad just went through it anyway. He got fuel, I sat in the car and waited.

My brother, sitting in the bag, started singing along with some reallying annoying song that came on the radio, and I asked him to stop.

Dad finished filling the car, went and paid, came back and got in the car. We left the service station, and got on the freeway, and started heading north.

A few minutes up the freeway, it started raining. We pulled over, and Dad and I got out, to put a tarp over the mattress, to stop it getting wet. It was a bit late. We also put a cover on the tv cabinet thing.

We covered it anyway, spending a few minutes covering it, and then we got back in the car, and started driving again.

We went for a couple of minutes, and then the tarp started flapping excessively, so we pulled over again, and fixed it, retying it, and moving things in the trailer around a bit.

We started going again, went for about 10 or 15 minutes, and then had to pull over again, because the cover on the tv cabinet was flapping around. I left Dad to get out and fix it this time. I was getting fed up. It wasn't even raining now either.

We started going again, and then we took an incredibly long time to get to Maitland, because Dad was driving so slowly. We eventually got there, at 5.10pm, taking over an hour and a half to get here.

I used to do this trip in an hour. I went to the front door, and found it open, the senior DBA had just got back. Apparently he'd been in Morisset all day, and it had only taken him 15 minutes to get back from there, doing 200km/h at one part.

He came out, and helped Dad and I to unload the stuff from the trailer. We moved it all inside, the mattress was soaked. We put the mattress upstairs, and lent it up against the wall to dry.

I put my bike out in the laundry. Dad wandered around, and looked through the house. As soon as we were finished, Dad left, to go home, and the senior DBA and I decided to go over to the club, for a beer.

We walked over there, to find that it was closed. Bloody public holidays. We walked all the way back again, and went in to the pub next to the house, there were a few people in here.

We sat and had 3 beers, I was starving, so when I left, I went across to the supermarket to get some food, and the senior DBA went back to the house.

I went in, found some food, went and queued up, and paid. The usual banter with the checkout chick went on "how are you?" "I'm fine, and how are you?" crap. For once, I actually got an honest answer. The chick said she was sick of being at work today.

I commented that the public holiday pay must have been worth putting up with being at work for. We had a chat for a few minutes, and then a couple of people came to the register, so she had to serve them, and I left.

I walked back to the house, and cooked some dinner, I setup the tivo while I waited for it, and then I ate. The senior DBA asked if I wanted some wine, he had a couple of good bottles of wine he'd found when unpacking some stuff, so we sat and drank the bottle.

We watched tv after that, and the senior DBA went to bed at 8.30pm, I sat and watched tv for another couple of hours, and then I setup the sofabed, because all I'd brought was the mattress, which was soaked, I didn't have a bed.

I realised that I'd left the sheets in the car, I sent a message to Mum about it, and she replied and said that Dad had realised when he was on the freeway on his way home.

I went to sleep after that.

I was woken up by my alarm, I had to get up a bit earlier today, since we were going down to Sydney tonight, to see "Southern Culture on the Skids".

Anyway, I was woken up, and then a few minutes later, the phone rang, I got up, answered it, it was my drummer mate, telling me that he was leaving soon, to come and pick me up.

I had a shower, got ready, had something to eat (since I had some food today).

I had another quick look at the access point, trying to find a network patch cable for it, so I could configure it.

My mate turned up. I hadn't planned on taking anything with me, just wearing casual clothes, but my mate convinced me to take my green leisure suit with me, and wear that.

Oh well, any excuse. I grabbed my backpack, dumped everything out of it, and loaded it up again, with my suit, and some clean clothes.

We left, got in the car, and went around to our mates place.

Our mate got ready, and while we waite, my drummer mate and I sat and read the newspapers that were hanging around.

Our mate finished getting ready, and we all jumped in his car, and left at about 11.45am.

We drove to the service station a little bit round the corner from my mate's place. While he was getting fuel, I went in and got some junk food.

We finished there, and kept heading for the freeway. On the way up Kariong hill, there was some chick who had no idea how to drive in front of us, she was all over the road, and then she just decided to change lanes, without bothering to look, and ran the car in the lane next to us off the road, in to the brakedown lane.

The guy driving the car that got run off the road blasted his horn, and was visibly swearing at the stupid chick.

We kept going, left that behind (there was no contact/accident, the guy had been able to avoid that), and then we got on the freeway.

We drove down, got off at the end, and drove down the highway and into the city.

The road had changed around, they'd finished some roadworks, and we ended up on some new route, and didn't know where we were. We eventually found our way around, and went to the parking station that we normally use, near the Travelodge, to find that it was full.

We drove around the city a little bit, looking for another parking station, hopefully not too far away, and we did find one.

We parked the car, it was now 2pm, we grabbed our bags, and walked up to the Travelodge.

We were being dodgy, I'd only booked 1 room, and 3 of us were going to sleep in it, someone on the floor, so my mates waited at the side, and I went to the counter.

I checked in, and got two keys. When I checked in, I had to show my ID, I used my expired license, the chick didn't notice that it was expired (it shouldn't matter anyway). She then started going on about how her brother lives on the Central Coast or something.

I wasn't really interested in he conversation, I got the keys, and left the counter.

We went up to the room, on level 10. I opened the door, to find the only thing in there was a double bed.

Hmm, Deja Vu, this is what happened in the Formule1 in Coffs Harbour, on the way to Brisbane/Bundaberg.

We came out again, and we all went back to the foyer. I went to the desk, and I complained that I'd booked a twin room, and now I had a double, which I didn't want.

They checked, and found another room available, so the woman on the counter (a different one than had just checked me in) redid the cards, with access to a different room.

We all went up to the new room, this time on level 16. We got to the room, and went in, it was a twin room, that stank, of stale smoke. This must be a smoking room or something.

I couldn't be bothered going down and complaining again, thought I wonder what floor I would have ended up on that time :-)

My mate lit up a smoke, to try to cover the stale smoke smell, and then I noticed a no smoking sign, so he put it out again.

I tried running the air conditioner, but it did bugger all.

We dropped off our stuff in the room, and then we left the room. We went out of the hotel, and across the road, into the pub.

We got drinks, and sat down, and had a chat. I was starving, so I went back to the bar, and got a packet of chips. The chick behind the bar served them in a basket to me, saying "here you go darling". heh.

We ate the chips, finished our drinks, and then went for a walk, to find another pub.

The next pub, that my mate had wanted to go to, was shut, which was a bugger. We wandered down towards Chinatown, and we went in to Paddy McGuires, we got drinks, and went and sat outside.

There was some free music magazine thing on the table, so we looked at that, just full of ads and rubbish.

While we were sitting there, some dero looking woman came wandering along the street, and asked us for money. I didn't have any change, and I told her that, and then she arcced up, saying that we could afford beers though.

Gee, having a go at me is going to motivate me to give you my money isn't it?

She went off after that, and we decided to go inside. We heard a band on, so we went to find that, it was in the other part of the bar.

We sat in there, and listened to the band for a while, they were pretty good. I got another drink.

There was some really weird guy, sitting with some foreign guy, who was really hairy, on another table near us.

He started talking to us, I wasn't having much to do with him, but my mates were talking to him, so then the both of them came over, and sat on our table. The foreign guy was deaf, or didn't speak English or something.

I really wasn't comfortable with them sitting there, some of the stuff the guy was saying was just wrong.

Our drummer mate went of somewhere, leaving the 2 of us to deal with them. I sat there for a while, and then I checked my change, and found a couple of dollar coins, so I ran off to play the pokies.

I went in, put my money through, won it back, tried a different machine, lost it. I put the other dollar through, and lost it too.

My drummer mate came in, said he'd been to the loo, I figured that was a good idea, so I went down there, and when I went in, my other mate was just coming out, so he'd escaped the weirdos.

We left the pub after that, and we walked back to the room. We took it in turns to have showers, someone got stuck using the bathmat for a towel, because there were only 2 towels.

I had to iron my shirt, so I grabbed the crappy iron you get (it doesn't even take water), and I plugged it in.

When I was plugging the iron in, I noticed that there was a breaker switch thing on the powerpoint. I wasn't sure if it was on, because there was nothing else plugged in to the powerpoint, and I didn't want to wait for the iron to heat up, to find that it wasn't powered.

I pressed the reset button on the powerpoint, and the tv which my mates were watching made a static noise, and the channel changed.

Heh. I found this quite funny, so I waited a few seconds, and I did it again.

My mate was like "the channel keeps changing on the tv!". I waited, and I did it again, only to have him whinge about it again.

This was getting funnier and funnier.

I stood there, pressing it, waiting for my mate to complain, change the channel back to the one he was watching, and then I'd do it again.

This went on for about a minute, I must have done it about 30 times, and then finally my mate asked "are you doing that??", and I lost it, and pissed myself laughing (not really, but it was pretty funny).

I stopped doing it, waited for the iron to finish warming, ironed my shirt, and finished getting dressed into my leisure suit.

Once we'd all showered and changed, we left the hotel, and we walked down to go to the pub we'd tried to go to before, apparently the food is really good.

We got there, to find that it was still closed. Hmm. We then decided to go back to the pub across the road from the hotel, since they served dinner in there.

We went back there, got more drinks, and I asked about the menu. We were given one, and we went and sat down, and looked at the menus, and worked out what we wanted.

Some chick came to the table, and asked us what we wanted, we ordered, and then sat and waited.

I finished my drink while we waited, and then went and got another one, when I came back, my dinner was served. We ate, and drank, and then we left the pub.

We waited outside for a few minutes, flagged down a taxi, and asked the driver to take us to the Gaelic Club, because we didn't know where it was, and hoped he would.

The driver said that he wasn't sure where it was either. Hmm, great. He said he thought he had an idea of where it was, but that he wasn't entirely sure.

He took us around to where he thought it was, it was there, and the fare was only $5.

We went in to the club, upstairs, to the bar area. There was an old Irish guy working behind the bar. We got some drinks, and then went and sat down.

There was a jukebox, we put a few dollars in it, and picked out some songs. The volume was turned down really low.

I felt around on the back of the jukebox, and found the volume knob. I tried adjusting it, but it didn't make any difference.

I went over to the bar, and I asked the guy if we could get the jukebox turned up a bit.

He told me that if we'd put a song on, and didn't hear it, that he'd give me the money for it, but I told him not to worry about it.

I finished my drink, and went and got another one. I'd had a rum or something when I came in, and the Irish guy had ribbed me about not getting an Irish drink, so this time I got a shot of Irish whiskey.

I went back, and sat to listed to the jukebox. Some other people in the pub came over, and told us that they were about to have a sing along, and we could join in if we wanted. We told them we weren't there for that long.

The Irish bartender came around a few minutes later, witha big plate of sandwiches, and offered them to us, this is a pretty cool pub. The drinks are cheap, the people are nice, and there's free food.

We finished our drinks, and we went down, and back to the street, to wait to get in, since the concert area is separate to the bar we were in.

It was about 8pm, we waited to get in. More and more people came and waited. Eventually they opened the door, at about 8.20pm, and we started to go in.

We had to get our tickets, and they were linked to the credit card they'd been bought with. A second person came to run another machine, so that people could go in 2 at a time.

I went to move in to the second machine, and the bouncer grabbed me, and held me back, and then the person at the counter said it was fine. What a dickhead.

I went in, scanned my card, and the three of us went in. We went to the bar, and got drinks, and then found a good place to stand, a bit back from the stage.

The "act" that was on, just 60s music playing, and a couple of Go Go dancers on the stage, was called "Sounds of Seduction". My mate had seen them before.

That went on for a while, and then they went off, and the opening act came on, some religious band that I didn't think were too terrific.

I spent the time that they were on drinking more.

Eventually they went off, after 1/2 hour or so, and the Go Go dancers came back out again, this time a third chick came out, she wasn't bad.

After another 20 minutes or so of that, or maybe half and hour, the proper band, "Southern Culture on the Skids" came on.

People started dancing, and we moved in a bit closer to the stage. The band was pretty good, most of the people in the place were dancing.

I spent about half the time sort of dancing with a chick near me, and then she ran away. We kept dancing.

After about an hour and half of music, a couple of chicks climbed up on the stage, and started dancing around. The security guy came in to grab them off, but the chick playing the bass guitar told him to leave them.

A couple more chicks got up, and I was thinking that I should try to get up there. The next thing I see, my drummer mate is up there.

I knew I had to get up there at that point, so I went over to the side, where the stairs to the stage were, rather than trying to climb up on the stage, like the other people had done.

I asked the security guy standing there if I could get up there, and stood to bring attention to my green suit, and the security guy was like "yeah! get up there!", and so I went up on to the stage.

There ended up being about 10 people from the crowd up on the stage, 8 chicks, and my drummer mate and I, this was terrific.

We all danced around up there for about 5 minutes, while they finished off the last song, and then we all came off the stage, down the stairs at the side.

As I came down, the security guy came over, shook my hand, and gave me a pat on the back.

I waited around just off the stage, they'd put some background music on, and we all danced around a bit.

The guys from the band came back out, and down on to the floor. I saw the lead guitarist come down, so I went over, told him it was a great show, and shook his hand.

I spotted the chick I'd been dancing with, she was upstairs now, so I went up there, and I stood next to her, and I said hello, and she said hello back. We stood there for a couple of seconds, I couldn't think of what to say, I was put out a bit by the fact that she'd said hello, and then walked off.

I stood there for a little while, and then I came back down, and went back to dancing out on the floor.

I saw the chick bass player come down off the stage, and I was going to go and talk to her, but she started talking to someone else, so I just hung back, and continued dancing.

I'd seen a guy and girl done up to look like they were in the 50s earlier in the night, they looked really good, so I went over and paid them a compliment.

I went over to find my drummer mate, and I asked if he was getting a poster or whatever, and then we went over, to find they'd packed all the stuff up.

He said he'd been waiting until the band members came out, and I asked what he was talking about, because they'd all be out for like 20 minutes now.

We saw the lead guitarist, he was standing reasonabley close, so we went over to speak to him. He had quite a few posters, and my mate said he'd wanted to buy one, but there were none left.

The guy unrolled one off, and gave it to him, and I noticed that it was signed.

He rolled another couple off, and gave one to my mate and me.

I had a look at it, thinking it was just signed by him, and realised that it was fully signed, by all 3 members of the band.

Wow, they were selling the posters for like $5, and now we've each got on, for free, fully signed.

We stayed chatting to the lead guitarist for a while, my mate, who plays guitar, asking him about the guitars, and stuff like that.

We could have stayed chatting for a while, but apparently the club had been double booked, they were waiting to show some sports event in there, so the bouncers started clearing people out, and we got cleared out last.

We walked back around to the hotel, and we left our posters there, and I got changed out of my green suit, I'm not wandering around the city like that anymore.

We left the hotel, and went back to the street, some guy came up to us, and asked how to get to Central station, we gave him directions, and he took off.

We waited a couple of minutes, and then flagged down a taxi, and we asked the driver to take us to the Rocks, figuring we'd go to the Lowenbrau or something.

We got down there, a $10 cab fare, and found that the Lowenbrau was closed.

The Orient was open (but someone the other day claimed that they never close, jokingly).

We each got drinks, and then we sat down. We took ages, I finished my drink, and so did my mate, but my drummer mate didn't want to finish his beer, so he left half of it, and we left.

We went out, flagged down a taxi, and asked the guy to take us to McDonalds on George St.

He drobve us around there, I'm not sure what the fare of that ride was, not much.

We got out, and went in to McDonalds, we ordered food, and then sat down, and ate.

While we were sitting there, some deaf guy came around, handing out little cards, with sign language on them, and asking for a little bit of money for them. I gave him $2, and my mate gave him some money, and then he left.

We continued eating, and 2 cops came in, and walked straight around behind the counter, and went to the coolroom.

What is this? self serve? A few minutes later, 2 more cops came in, and they too went behind the counter, to the cool room.

The first 2 cops came back out, dragging some guy in a white hooded jumper out with them.

The other 2 cops stayed in the cool room. We finished eating, and then 4 more cops came in to McDonalds. Hmm, something interesting must be going on here.

My mate and I left, before something happened. When we got outside, we saw that there was more cops out there, and there were 4 cop cars, 2 parked on this side of the road, and 2 on the other side, all with their flashing lights on.

There was 8 or 10 cops in McDonalds now. 2 of them were talking to the guy they'd dragged out of the cool room.

My mate and I were waiting, for our other mate to come out, he'd gone missing. I told my mate to wait there, and I'd go and try to find him.

I went back in, and I went to the service area, and found him waiting in a line, to get more food. I went over, and he told me that he wanted to get some chips. I told him that we were waiting outside for him.

I went back outside, and waited. There were all these freaky people waiting outside the theatre a bit down the road, done up in leather, bondage gear etc.

My mate said something about "no leather in McDonalds" to me, to which I replied "except for the hamburgers".

While we waited there, another cop car came down the side alley, and it was followed by a forensics vehicle.

WTF is going on here? Our mate came out, eating his chips, and we wandered off, getting the hell out of there.

We walked back to the hotel, and went back to the room. My mate put the tv on, and our drummer mate setup his bed on the floor, with the spare pillows and blankets.

There was a Mr Bean marathon on ABC, so we watched 2 or 3 episodes, and then I set the alarm (I had to fix the time, because the clock got reset when I was mucking around with the power thing before) so we'd get up in time for breakfast.

We went to sleep at about 3am.

I slept in, I got woken up at midday by the landline ringing.

I couldn't drag myself out of bed, so I ignored it. My mobile rang a couple of minutes later, and I wasn't awake enough to deal with talking to someone, so I ignored that too.

I waited for it to ring again, the message service, with a message from someone, but it didn't.

I got up, and went and sat on the computer, A little while later, the landline rang again. I answered it this time, it was my drummer mate.

He told me that he was on his way to pick me up, so I told him I'd get ready, and I got off the phone.

I had a shower, and I got ready, there was nothing to eat, and I was starving. I sat around for a little while, and then my mate turned up.

I grabbed my guitar, and then I went and got in the car, on the way to our mate's place, I asked if my mate wouldn't mind going to McDonalds on the way.

We went there, and I tried calling our mate, to see if he wanted anything, both on his mobile, and the landline, but he didn't answer.

We couldn't go through the drive through, because my mate's car window was still broken, and he couldn't open it, so we parked the car, went in, and I got some food.

We got back in the car and just as we were leaving, my mate called me back.

I told him that I'd called, to find out if he wanted any McDonalds, but that it was too late now, and that we were on our way. He said he didn't want any, anyway, and would see us soon.

We went to our mate's place, I grabbed my guitar and food out of the car, and we went in. I sat and ate, while the others set up their instruments.

I finished eating, setup my amp, and then we played for a while.

No one was in it today, the playing was crap, no real effort at all. We played for a couple of hours, and then packed up the stuff again.

My mate and I left, on the way home, we went to the supermarket.

We went around, I got some food. When I came out, Dad was there. We wandered out, and I went over to my mate's car, and then I figured I might as well go home with Dad.

I told him I'd just get my guitar, grabbed it out of the car, saw my mate off, and then I went and jumped in Dad's car, and we came home.

I went in, dropped off my food and guitar, and then I went inside, because Dad had been going on about the new kitchen while I was in the car on the way home.

I went in to have a look, there was some mail for me to apparently, but all it was, was a stupid charity house raffle letter.

I am so sick of them sending me these. I bought 1 ticket, about 6 years ago, and now every few months, I get another one.

I don't even open them anymore. It annoys me, I bought the ticket for 2 reasons, the main one was to win the house, but also to donate the money, and the $15 I donated will have been gone by now, with the amount of mail they've sent me in the years.

(rough estimate, stamps were 45c for a while, and now are 50c, that works out to between 30 and 33 letters, and I would have received at least that many in the last 6 years).

Anyway, I didn't bother to open this one either, I just screwed it up and chucked it in the bin.

I had a look at the kitchen, apparently there's still something wrong with it, and has to be fixed.

I came out, and Mum said that there was a parcel for me too, and a notification of some registered mail.

I wasn't sure what it was for, maybe the parcel, but that had been delivered, and it wasn't registered mail.

Dad had to find the parcel, a big box. I opened it, to find my wireless access point I'd bought, and asked the seller to send to me at work, but he obviously hadn't, and it had turned up at home a few days ago.

I had a quick look at it, looks groovy.

I stood and chatted for a while, and then I went back out. I dropped off the access point, grabbed my laptop, and I went back inside.

I sat on the lounge inside, and browded the internet for a while. I was impressed with the signal quality, since the signal had to go through a few walls.

I went to the Australia Post website, and I sent an email asking to have the registered mail diverted to Maitland, like I did with the registered mail that turned up in Brisbane.

I browsed eBay for a while, looking at 2.4GHz video/ir transmitters, since I might get a tv to put in the house at Maitland, and I want a way to watch the tivo downstairs, while I'm upstairs.

They were pretty expensive, one guy was selling a stack of them, and people kept running the price up really high, instead of waiting for the next one.

I played gltron for a while, and then Dad served me some dinner.

I sat and ate, it makes a change from frozen crap, that I live on.

I browsed a bit more, and then I took my laptop back out. I briefly mucked around with the access point, trying to run it as it's own network, but it didn't even seem to show up.

I figured I'd have to connect to it wired, and configure it or something first.

I mucked around with the configuration of the disks in one of my machines again, and then I grabbed the 60gb and the 120gb disks, that used to be in it, before windows crapped on the partition tables.

I used those disks for the second tivo I've got, I tested the script installing on to them, it worked, but I realised that my logic was a bit dumb..

It does an mfsrestore, and automatically adds the second disk, as a result of selecting both drives, and then it adds the second drive to the first, when it already is, which is a function you only need when adding a second disk to an existing unit.

I put the disks in the tivo, putting the proper brackets on them, then I put my ir file on there, for the digital STB I've got, and I installed the logos, and set them up.

I ended up sitting watching tv until 3am, and then I went to bed.

I got up, had a shower, got ready, had breakfast, packed my bag, and then I walked to work. I had to be up a bit earlier this morning, to be at work for 8.30am.

When I got to work, a bit before 8.30am, the royalty manager's kids were sitting in reception. I spoke to them briefly.

Apparently their parents were doing something today, but the royalty manager had left something he needed at work.

I went in, and dropped of my stuff at my desk. I decided to go back and wait in reception, since I hadn't seen anyone working in reception.

I really didn't want the guy turning up, seeing no one at reception, and buggering off again.

I went back and sat in reception, and chatted with the royalty manager's kids, and then the manager came out, and I spoke to him for a minute, before they all left.

I wandered around out in reception a bit, waiting. I had to fart, so I looked around, didn't see anyone, and let rip with a fairly loud fart.

I sat down again for a minute, and then I paced around again, and I realised that there was a chick working in reception, hidden in the corner. Oh d'oh.

I decided to go and wait back at my desk. At about 8.50am, my desk phone rang, it was the chick from reception, telling me that there was someone there to see me.

I went out to reception, and collected the guy, he was carrying a huge box with him, big enough to fit 4 laptops in.

I lead him to my desk, and pointed out my laptop, just sitting on the desk.

He opened up the huge box, it had a tiny keyboard in it.

I let him sit at my desk, and go about taking the laptop apart. He didn't look like he knew what he was doing, and was just basically attacking my laptop with jewellers screwdrivers, trying to pry bits of it off.

He eventually managed to get the plastic panel above the keyboard off, complaining that he didn't like working on new laptops, preferred ones that had been knocked around a bit.

He mentioned that there were less tabs on this model, than the other ones, making it harder to get it apart.

He took the keyboard out, I wasn't paying attention at this point, I was chatting with one of the indexers, over near his desk.

The guy put the new keyboard in, and put the panel back on, and turned my laptop on. Linux booted up, to the login screen, I logged in, ran up a terminal, and then tested every quick on the new keyboard, it all seemed fine.

I signed off on the fix slip, and the guy packed up his stuff. He told me that I could have just had the whole unit replaced (a bit extreme, just for a broken key), but said that I probably wouldn't have wanted that, because I'd got "all my stuff installed on it".

He left, and I sat down, and looked at the laptop. He'd burred up a fair bit of the plastic, digging at it with the screwdrivers, the panel above the keyboard wasn't fitted properly.

I sat there, tried to fix the panel, it wouldn't go back on properly. I ended up grabbing my leatherman out of my backpack, and taking the panel off again.

I then found that the keyboard wasn't installed properly, and was crooked. I fixed that, positioning it properly, and then I put the panel back on, and it went back on properly.

If I'd known this would be the case, I would have had them send me the keyboard, instead of sending some disorganised guy who didn't know what he was doing.

I did a bit of work. The indexer asked me about using the ps/2 barcode readers with the usb keyboards. I told him that I hadn't managed to get the adapters, and I suggested just trying to use it anyway.

We plugged in the ps/2 barcode reader, it didn't work. I rebooted the machine, it still didn't work.

I rebooted the machine, with no keyboard attached, I would have liked to test the barcode reader at that point, but it's a bit hard to send ctl+atl+del with a barcode reader.

I plugged the usb keyboard in, logged in, and found that the barcode reader wouldn't work.

Hmm, crap. Oh well, we're back to adapters, or ps/2 keyboards. In the short term, the indexer got the one usb barcode reader off his machine, and put it on the scanner machine.

I went up to see the email support guy, to find out about getting a lift home today, but he wasn'y there.

I went across the road, and I bought a chocolate bar, and came back to work. I noticed there was a competition on the wrapper, I entered it. (I ended up winning another crappy ringtone, which I didn't even bother to claim, and deleted the sms with the code to get it).

I went to see the email support guy again he was at his desk now, so I arranged to get a lift, that was fine.

I went back to my desk, went to run kismet, and found it complained that I had no wireless device.. Oops, I put a new kernel in, and I haven't built/installed the wireless drivers for it again.

I did that, no dramas, and got the wireless card running again.

I did some work, until the senior DBA, and the guy from royalty came down, and said they were going out to lunch.

I went with them, on the way, the guy from royalty asked if I knew anything about tv aerials.

I asked what he was after, splitting an aerial run, to go to 3 tvs instead of 1, and I suggested he just get a splitter, and use some F connectors on the runs.

We walked to Dick Smith, and went in, to look what they had for doing it.

He only wanted 3 runs, so it was better to get a 3 way splitter, instead of a 4, because there's signal drop that way. We managed to find a 3 way splitter, and some f connectors, that you just screw on to the end of the coax.

The senior DBA noticed some tiny digital cameras in a bargain bin near the counter. I said you had to worry about the resolution, those crappy little cameras are usually less than 1 megapixel, and the guy working behind the counter chimed in they were .3 megapixel (as opposed to 300 kilopixels?).

The royalty guy bought his aerial bits, and we left, and kept walking.

There's a temporary shop setup, selling factory outlet shoes, we went and had a look in there (maybe should have another look in there, since I need some shoes).

We left there, kept going through the mall, went in to the shopping centre, we went to the bakery, and all got pies.

We went and sat outside, and ate our pies, and then we walked back to work.

I hung around upstairs for a little while. The email support guy went off to get some lunch, and a couple of beers.

The senior DBA was working on the little guy from royalty's machine (who wasn't there), just cleaning it up a bit, putting some patches on it, defragging it etc.

While we were doing that, the other guy from royalty, who's rarely there, that sits next to the little guy, over the partition from the senior DBA, complained about his laptop not being configured correctly.

He asked if we could look at it, and we jokingly told him that he'd have to log a helpdesk ticket about it, and he complained that he already had, and showed us a post-it note with the job number written on it.

We had a look at his laptop, he was complaining, that whenever he shut the lid (because he's using a port replicator, and an external screen etc), that the laptop suspends, so he has to leave it half open, in order to use it.

This will be something to do with how the lid switch is configured. I suspect that's a setting in the bios. We rebooted his laptop, went into the bios, and then found that the Acer laptops are crap (well, we already knew that), but that there's bugger all options in there.

I then thought, maybe it's in the power tab in windows, where you set the screensaver etc.

We booted up windows again. For some reason, it took an absolute age for the login box to come up, after the blue background or whatever appeared. It took like 7 minutes.

The guy was complaining, accusing us of busting his laptop, when all we'd done was reboot it. (yeah, we'd gone into the bios, found nothing to change, changed nothing, and exited without saving).

It was a relief when the login box came up. Oh, and the external usb keyboard wouldn't work either, so the senior DBA logged in with the laptop's keyboard.

I then suggested replugging the keyboard, pulled it out of the port replicator, and plugged it in again, and it started working.

We opened up the display settings, screen saver tab, power settings button, and found a screen, with options like "when I close my lid", and a drop down box, with options like "shutdown", "suspend", "do nothing".

We set that to "do nothing". I found it humourous that we had to tell windows to "do nothing", I thought windows had been designed from the ground up, to "do nothing".

I went back to my desk after that, and continued coding. At about 4.30pm, I got a call on my desk phone, from the email support guy, he was leaving.

I packed up my laptop, grabbed my backpack, and went down to the carpark.

The email support guy wasn't out here, I just wandered over near his car, and a couple of minutes later, he came out of the fire stairs.

We got in the car, and started driving, towards the freeway. We didn't get very far, and we got stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, crawling very slowly.

It took us 50 minutes to go about 10 kilometres, to get to the service station, before even getting on the freeway. During this, the email support guy said he should have gone the other way, the back way.

The email support guy got fuel, and I just waited in the car.

I looked across, and on the main road, the cops had busted someone for something, light's going, cop over at the car, writing them a ticket.

The email support guy came back, and we left the service station, went and got back in the crappy traffic.

It took us another 15 minutes or so, to get on the freeway.

This was all caused by a dumb roundabout, all the people coming up the freeway, are then just streaming around the roundabout, to the right, to go up the pacific hwy, and blocking the people going south, who want to go straight through the roundabout, and get on the freeway.

We eventually got through there, got on the freeway, and I got dropped at home. It ended up taking just over 2 hours, to go about 100km. Pathetic.

I got the email support guy's phone number, in case I had to arrange getting a lift from him on Monday morning, and then I came inside.

I sat and watched tv.

I spent a bit of time mucking around with the disks in one of my machines. I bought a 200gb sata disk to put in it, about 4 months ago (when I went to the fair in Newcastle, and my mate bought most of his machine).

I finally got around to putting the disk in, because I wanted to get the 200gb pata disk out again, which I had bought for the tivo, and I want to get that ready to take to Maitland.

Anyway, I put the disk in, and then I tried to use the disk manager in windows to partition it. I wanted a couple of 100gb fat32 partitions.

It wouldn't let me do it, complaining that it's too big. Crap. I have another disk in this machine, with a 120gb fat32 partition on it.

I kept trying to do it, but it refused to let me have any partition bigger than 32gb as a fat32. I googled around to find out why, and apparently Microsoft are trying to force you to use NTFS.

Well, I don't want to use NTFS, because I intend to one day put linux on this machines, and be able to access all my files.

I couldn't find anyway in windows to create the correct partition sizes, that I wanted. I'd downloaded Mepis a couple of days ago, and it was on my laptop, so I used k3b to burn the iso. I booted that up, and used kparted or something (maybe only cfdisk, I don't remember), to partition the disk as I wanted.

While I had Mepis running, I decided to use that copy all the files. I moved everything from the pata disk to the sata disk, back in the partitions where it belonged (I needed 3 partitions, because I'd had 2 disks partition tables go, and 3 partitions).

Once that was done, I rebooted into windows, went in, and assigned the correct drive letters to the partitions on the sata disk, to put them where the 2 pata disks (120gb/60gb) were, before windows crapped on the partition tables, about 6 months ago, and I had to rescue it with "stellar phoenix", on to the pata disk from the tivo, because stellar phoenix would bsod when the sata controller was in the machine.

While I was doing this, I realised that the 200gb pata disk, from the tivo, was only showing up as a 120gb disk.

I decided that I would get the 200gb disk working properly, and leave it in this machine, and I'd put the 120gb and 60gb disks that windows screwed the partition tables on, into the tivo. It's only 20gb difference (not even 10 hours of recording in the tivo), and I won't end up using them otherwise.

I went and confirmed that everything had copied from the pata disk to the sata disk (I was only a couple of files out, but figured they were some crap, like swap files, or temp files or something), and then I deleted everything off it.

I tried to fix the disk/partition size, but nothing I did would make windows recognise it was a 200gb disk.

I booted up mepis again, used kparted, it came up, said there was a 200gb disk in there, with a 120gb partition on it, and 80gb unpartitioned. I just deleted the 120gb partition, created a 200gb partition.

I rebooted, into windows again, and it came up, now seeing a 200gb disk. How retarded you are windows.

I sorted more files out, got everything back where it belonged, and the machine working better, back like it was 6 months ago, before windows crapped on the partition tables, (though not working as well as when I had linux running on it).

After all that, I decided to not leave the 200gb pata disk in the machine. I don't need that much space in the machine now, and I'd be better off getting one of those usb external disk caddies, and putting the 200gb pata disk in it, and using it with my laptop.

I went to bed at 5am.