you'd need a lot of chips

I spent a couple of hours last night trying to bring my old PC back from the dead. "Operating Sytem Not Found" is not a message that inspires confidence. Tried to rebuild and did well until asked for the admin password. It was not any of my stock passwords. Bugger. I took a punt that none of the pics and personal stuff on the box would be in the winnt folder and reinstalled. To find that I had saved the pictures but they are all rubbish. Well, maybe one or two are worth keeping, but mainly rubbish. The box is the size of a small car with the power of a small wrist watch. Ah well, there was nothing on the tele we don't have and it made me think for a while. As it happens I found, with the software disks, a disk of pictures of my Great White Shark trip pics from May 2002. Not actually a lot of shark shots because for 5 days there were no sharks, and then when they did arrive I missed most shots due to shutter lag on an early generation digital camera. Well, more due to my under developed skills with said camera. A few nice pics of Port Lincoln and around the Neptune Islands and good memoy joging stuff. I flickrd (like that's a verb!) a bunch (like that is the collective!) of pictures and went to bed.

Today I look like I should be in a pub and it should be Satuday night. Faded jeans, long pointy Hush Puppy Black Label (I kid you not) shoes and a shirt with a supernatural absence of creases. I do not look like a DBA and that pleases me. And maybe it is why the guy who is doing stuff with our IP phones simply unplugged me from the network. Yep, he simply unplugged my network cable. Just like that. Very odd. I look after the databases of a system the bnk reckons is worth over (Dr. Evil voice) one billion dollars. Mind still boggling from that. Our security processes are such that Peter, the guy next to me, has been over waiting two weeks for access to the servers he is being paid to work on. He is curently being paid to (re)read manuals. Ripping cables out of people's PCs though? That seems to be OK! FFS!

The rest of the day was standardish. Went out at lunch to get the final cheque for our house and therefore wipe out all of our savings. But we have a nice house. The way home from work was via Clifton Gardens, a very nice part of Sydney where the stupidly wealthy live and some of us go diving. Today it was to pick up a skiny wheeled 12 yr old mountain bike that will be my new commuter. It really is a thing of beauty and got the JCJ thumbs up when I went to show it off to him on my way home. It cost me, on eBay, as much as his handlebars cost him. It rides very well and provided me with an opportunity to sit down after running from Martin Place in the City to collect it, a distance of around 9.5km according to www.whereis.com.au. Not sure I beileive that as it took me around 40mins, with a backpack on and up and down some savage hills. To my shame I did take a brief breather where Union Street meets Bradley's Head Road after coming up the might-as-well-have-been-vertical hill from Prince Albert Steet. A good run though, and a fairly easy make it up as you go along ride home. Oh yeah, best bit; I have now run over the bridge. I like that.

Upon getting home I find that Sal has gone completely mad. She has developed and obsession with chrome kitchen stuff and was full of questions about what sort of bin we should get. Pedal or tap the top? Single or dual? Has to be fingerprint free. Some cost as much as three hundred dollars! I tried and failed to give the impression that I gave a toss.