BOFHJournal - January 2004

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30/01/2004 [12:00] Been very busy with MyDoom this morning. NAI released another DAT update so I've been making sure all the machines are up to date again. I'm glad I slept well last night because otherwise I'd have been even more tired this morning. As it was I had a damned good shave (smooth as a baby's bum now) and a shower. I really need to replace the shower with an electric one to get a bit more heat in it. Mixer showers suck. Most of the ice and snow has gone from the roads here but the pavements are treacherous. The PFY's just left after coming briefly to make sure everything was OK. She thought I wasn't coming in today. Had her child with her who is now toddling around and learning at a tremendous rate.

29/01/2004 [28/01/2004 - 11:30] It was nice not to have to get up early this morning. I did get up around 09:00 though and tided a bit of the house, did some washing up and decided to vacuum bedroom 1 (what's going to be the 'master bedroom' when I eventually get a bed. After a few minutes (the carpet was in a terrible state) the vacuum cleaner (a Dyson DC01) was full and I headed down with the cylinder to empty it. At the front door I paused. Were the bins in the garage still? I wandered through the kitchen and unlocked the internal door and looked. Nope, they were outside. I closed the door. There was snow on the ground so I pulled some shoes on over bare feet and wandered out. Intending to simply pull the door to to stop keep the heat in I actually closed it. Shit. My keys were in my shorts. I was in jeans today for a change. All my keys were inside. My mobile phone was inside. I was in shorts and there was snow on the ground. To cap it all I still had an NTL engineer and a fridge freezer delivery before 12:00. I was locked out. I went to the garage door, locked obviously. There was no way I was getting under the door either. I pondered. The next door neighbour to my left was sweeping the snow from his driveway so I asked him if I could borrow something in the name of getting into my house (I'm obviously not going to tell you the details). He provided and I spent an industrious few minutes seeing what I could do. No luck. Being worried about people arriving I borrowed the phone of my neighbour to ring a locksmith who agreed to be there in ten minutes for £40 + VAT. I bit my lip and agreed but went back out to try again. After a few minutes... success! Hoping against hope I checked the door from the garage to the house. Unlocked! I rushed back and cancelled the callout and went back to my house. Won't be doing that again, I hope. About thirty minutes later the NTL guy arrived and livened up my phone, data and TV points. As he was leaving my fridge freezer was delivered and I quickly moved all my food from one to the other and closed the door. Half an hour or so later (according to the manual) I turned it on and set it to superchill. Given what I'd done that morning I felt fairly superchilled myself. Cormac wandered over about an hour later and we drive in to town to do some shopping. We also wandered over to work to pick up some spare kit to put in the kitchen as well as a wonderfully compact purpose-built 19" rack for my patch panel. When we got back we had a DVD called "Happy Tree Friends". It's amusing in a sick sick way. In the evening a few more people came over and we had the first Thursday: in the new house. They stayed late and I ended up going to bed long past midnight as I uploaded the new photos. I now have the ability to use the laptop from the lounge and also have a PC in the kitchen all connected up too. Now all I need is the whiteboard up on the wall and I can start writing down major jobs to do.

28/01/2004 [11:15] I don't think the last few days' worth of entries is a complete and faithful account of how the move went. Frankly much of it is a blur and I don't really have the time or the ability to give you a blow-by-blow account. This morning I'm dealing with the backlog of email I have, working out why some of my machines didn't upgrade to a DAT which protects against MyDoom, install some RAM and then get on with the normal day-to-day stuff I have to do here. I'm off work tomorrow to have NTL come and install some services as well as having my damaged fridge freezer removed and a spanky new one installed. While I can't turn it on for an hour or so (to let the coolant settle) I can move all the food into it so at least it's insulated. [15:55] Erm, it's snowing again. Only a lot. Lots and lots. And here's me at work wearing shorts and T-shirt. I've done a lot of stuff today but there's still loads to do. [17:00] Right, it's dark, it's snowing, it's icy and I'm wearing shorts. Time to go home.

27/01/2004 [28/01/2004 - 11:00] Tuesday morning was really busy. First of all my dad drove me to the old place to pick up the last of my stuff (my router, the fridge and freezer food) and then home again. We arrived a few minutes before the fridge freezer arrived. Only it was bady dented and had no manual. I'd ordered a reduced-price one because it was a return but there was nothing physically wrong with it. I called the shop and told them I'd take it but I wanted either the door replaced or a new one. The place I bought it from has a really good policy on customer serivces and they called me back a few minutes later to say I'd get a brand new one for a little more (but £70 less than the original price). This one'll come packaged and with a manual, I hope! That gets delivered on Thursday (which I have off). So anyway, we started assembling the single futon my brother had donated as well as the IKEA stuff I'd ordered through my parents. All in a nice beech finish and looking rather nice. After a few minutes I realised my parents needed to be back in Leeds by 18:00 to drop off the van so my dad drove Elaine and I over to Tesco to fill up the fridge freezer. I ended up doing a mad dash around and spent over £100 in less than twenty minutes. I think I have some nice food to be starting off with. While my mum packed the appliance I started work on more of the IKEA stuff to make sure it was all present and correct before they left. Elaine and my dad took a quick trip to get the laptop posted and then we made them a quick lunch and bade them farewell. Elaine had come down with the most stinking sinus infection which reduced her to sleeping on the futon in the lounge while I hammered tacks into the bookcases I had to make. Unfortunately, even though neither of us wanted her to leave and she could barely stand, let alone travel, we got on a bus to the station and on a train back to Sheffield so she could attend training on Wednesday. I went home and spent some time unboxing all my books and DVDs, assembling the DVD rack (realising I needed at least another two) and then going to bed. I also ate a whole giant pork pie. I wish I'd had more. Oh, I plugged in some of my computer kit and it looks like I could have fired up my cable modem and stuff straight away, there's a signal. I checked everything was OK at work and then shut everything down and then went to bed.

26/01/2004 [28/01/2004 - 10:40] Monday was a very busy day. I cycled to work to pick up a cardboard box to post the laptop to Scotland and then went back over to the old place to go through the inventory and deal with the utilities with the landlady. Cheque for deposit etc. For the rest of the day Elaine and I put some order to the kitchen in preparation for my parents arriving for a flying visit. I don't really have a clear recollection of the last few days but I do know that they arrived late at night with a Transit van full of stuff which we partially unloaded so we all had something to sleep on. Oh yes, just as I was arriving home after being out in the morning the washing machine was delivered and we had some fun getting it installed and doing the first wash in it.

25/01/2004 [28/01/2004 - 10:20] Sunday we went back to the house and finished off the last of the cleaning as well as going to the hardware store for some things like brooms, radiator keys and the like. Once we'd done everything we could we took a quick shower each and headed home in time to meet Shaun, Tom and Linda who'd come over to see house. Linda was impressed with the house (even the slightly undulating floors) and Tom was totally taken with the laces in my shoes. So that was good. Once they'd gone we grabbed some food and then crashed out again. This moving thing is really tiring.

24/01/2004 [28/01/2004 - 10:10] Saturday we went back to the old house, via the shops to get some cleaning equipment, and began cleaning. While I installed Elaine's new and old laptops (one to go to her Dad in Scotland) I cleaned the bathroom while she took the kitchen, again. It's nice to find someone who's as obsessive about cleanliness as I am. Or maybe I'm big on tidy and she's big on clean. "Together they fight crime!" Anyway, by the end of Saturday we were mostly done, but unable to to any more so we cycled home with a few more things and had a quiet night in with a DVD.

23/01/2004 [28/01/2004 - 09:30] So Elaine arrived last night and we spent the night surrounded by boxes and stuff. In the morning I popped out at 09:00 for the keys to the new house and got back a few minutes before Shaun who arrived right on 10:00, with Cormac about an hour later. We started packing the cars (a Cavalier and a Saab estate) and after some bacon and egg bagels made by Elaine we began to make trips to the house, unloading into the garage at the far end. For most of the day we made packing/unpacking driving trips across town (only three in all, but it takes a while to do these things) while Elaine cleaned the disgusting crap out of all the cupboards in the kitchen and made an attempt on the horror that was the gas cooker before we all collapsed and decided to go for Japanese food. I paid the bill as thanks for a great job well done by everyone concerned and we headed back to the house. Elaine and I decided after some debating to sleep at the new house because although there were proper beds at the old place all the expensive stuff was at the new one. We ended up on the futon in the lounge and had a hard time getting to sleep in a new house with new noises. It turns out that the dividing wall between my house and the next one is a little too thin and the boxing in the corner that hides the waste pipe from the toilet is also next door's as well. So when he flushes his loo I hear it. Still, not too problematic.

22/01/2004 [13:10] Well the server looks stable this morning. [13:35] Called Crucial and got the order sorted out properly. Hopefully the machine'll be fine until I get back to work next week (I'm not in tomorrow, Monday or Tuesday, more on that later). I'll down it and stick the new 1GB in and put the spare modules elsewhere. We swapped the CPUs in two of those odd machines this morning. Thus far it looks like the CPU is what's at fault as the machine which had a problem now seems to be fine and I think the other machine has already crashdumped twice. Still not sure if it's an overheat issue or something else. [15:40] Just had a phonecall from my solicitor's secretary. Apparently all the monies went through a few minutes ago. As soon as the other solicitors say the money's there the estate agents will release the keys and, hey-presto, I'll own a house. How weird is that? Still this means that there's no restriction on moving tomorrow as I may be able to pick them up this afternoon. Even if I don't I can get them at about 08:30 tomorrow morning (before my friendly moving buddies turn up) so we can get things done during daylight hours. [15:50] Yes, it must seem fairly obvious to those of you who read this thing regularlyish that I've been in the process of buying a house. It's a three bedroom plus box room type affair with a huge kitchen and a reasonably sized lounge. There's a 1.5-sized garage with access from the kitchen and a section of hardstanding (not that I even own a car, but it's nice for guests). The stairs are in the lounge, which isn't as bad as you might think and lead to a pretty respectable landing. The bedrooms are of a pretty good size although I'm not one for mirrors and bedroom one has fitted wardrobes with mirrored doors. Not sure what to do about that yet. The bathroom is small but servicable although the colour of the suite is something I'm really going to have to change. The other bedrooms are perfectly good, one has windows on two walls. The box room is small but perfectly adequate for a PC or two and, get this, is where the cat-5 patch panel is. Yup, the house is wired for Cat-5 with two sockets in every room. That, coupled with the replacement of my wireless LAN box when a friend comes back from the States is going to mean that I have a very well connected house. When I have any money again. The kitchen is huge. While the work surfaces and the units need a bit of attention, and the cooker is in need of replacement, the place is really cool and is the perfect 'party kitchen'. Some decoration, some rugs on the floor and a bit of paint about the place and I think it'll be somewhere I can really feel at home in. I think that's something I've been looking for in the last year or so; a feeling of non-transitoryness (another made up word). With luck I can throw myself into this and really settle down into something. I bought white goods last weekend. A BOSCH washing machine and fridgefreezer. They arrive on Monday and Tuesday of next week. NTL reconnection is scheduled for Thursday so I have Monday, Tuesday and Thursday off next week as I mentioned before. I'll tell you something else; everyone has been so bloody generous with their time, spare stuff and things like that that I'm feeling very happy and extremely beholden to some people. Just hope I can repay their kindness in time. I'm off now to do the last of the packing, panic utterly and make sure the camera batteries are charged so I can document the whole exciting process tomorrow. I may do entries over the weekend if I have time, otherwise I'll let you know how it went on Wednesday, with back entries if I have time to get them down.

21/01/2004 [13:10] Spent the morning doing some tidy-up on antivirus levels around the place. Arrived to find that the two new LCD projectors we ordered have already arrived. Talk about fast turn around. Fixed the pathes on the analog images (web stats reporting) which may have been buggered for months without anyone noticing. Rang a few more people this morning to sort out address changes and such, then realised I left my tape measure somewhere yesterday. I think it'll be fine. Parents are loading up with some stuff to bring down, house is already cleared, whiteboard for kitchen found and reserved. Things are looking... well I won't say it in case something happens. Off to do some more stuff to make things go according to plan. [17:00] Got a few more addresses changed, including the council tax, Inland Revenue and my employers. Kind of makes it real when you deal with the people who control your money. Set up the two new LCD projectors, they've got a wonderfully bright image, monster throw and are whisper quiet. Light too. Tonight I will be doing some more packing, although there's not that much to do any more. [17:30] Trying to sell an Allied Telesis CentreCOM 3624TRS 24-port 10Mb/sec hub/repeater for £15 at the moment. Not really holding out much hope I'll get anywhere, but it's better than it taking up space here when we have them coming out of our ears. 3Com ones that is. [18:55] Rebooting a server to make sure the SCSI bus has reset correctly for running the tape drive I noticed a vaguely disturbing error which said "Single bit memory error previously detected." I've placed an emergency RAM order at Crucial and hope they accept the order as I've not ordered from them before. With luck the RAM should arrive before anything goes wrong, if it's going to. If it's not then I've got a gig of RAM to put in at my leisure which'll bring both PowerEdge 2300 machines to 1GB. All I need then is some more for the PowerEdge 2400 and we'll be laughing.

20/01/2004 [12:00] Busy morning. Went to get some address stuff changed. In work we've had a user who needs to get some things typed up and printed out only their machine doesn't recognise its floppy disk any more, plus it's Windows 98 with no CD drive so we can't install any printer drivers so she can connect a USB printer and print from the hard disk. Some of the money back stuff I'm hoping to get (in 2005) has foundered on the fact that the company went into receivership a few years ago. On top of that the three machines I've been soaktesting here have begun to show some really odd behaviour and it's annoying me. Still, I'm off this afternoon to do some fun things with tape measures, etc. [12:40] Hmmm, antivirus stuff didn't update last night. Getting the machines to do something early this afternoon. It's only Bagle, but you never know.

19/01/2004 [11:50] Well this morning's been quite busy. I spend from 09:30 to 10:45 in a meeting getting things sorted for the coming year in terms of what we'll be doing here and how the PFY'll be getting some professional development. I've got some LCD projectors and speakers to order and have been dealing with some legal issues both in terms of the house/insurance and a project I'm involved with. I need to order those projectors, and then get to the bank soon. [12:50] Bloody hell, it's £10 to do a bank transfer. This sucks. Still, off to do that, deliver some port and get a postal redirection form. Then I've got a meeting this afternoon. Still no word from the insurance people.

16/01/2004 [12:00] Oddly things seem to be going my way this morning, almost. I got in late this morning but had a good shave for once. Don't ask. No-one's bothered me this morning which is a good start. I opened my postal mail this morning and... [12:45] Spent some time doing essential tasks. Where was I? Oh yes, opened my mail and had a reply from the people who surveyed the property I'm buying saying basically that the survey wasn't great and do I want half of the money I paid back? I think that's easily the best offer I'm going to get, so I've gone with it. Additionally I've got my old contents insurance to expire at the end of the month and the new buildings and contents insurance to start on the day I take possession of the new property, which is nice. The premium's a bit steep and I'll be looking into moving to someone else in a few months once things have settled down. I've spoken to my solicitor to make some final arrangements, spoken to NTL about installations and found out that Elaine's being given some money to buy a replacement sofa for the shocking one that's broken in her rental property. Other than that everyone's pulling together here and there to help me (especially my mum who seems to be more excited than me) and frankly even I'm beginning to think about feeling happy about everything. There's no way I'm going to say things are going well until I'm in, things are settled and I can think clearly about things. As it is I have furniture to pick, white goods to select and the worry that one of my insurance policies doesn't seem to want to activate as it's waiting for more information. I'm also getting my hair cut this evening and Elaine's due tonight to help me do some more packing and generally relax and have a nice weekend. On the whole things seem to be pretty good. Backups are fine, machines seem to be stable with this new patch and the letters I've written to people are ready to be posted. Oh, and my current account has never had so much money in it (and probably won't for a long time, until I move again), but I can't spend any of it until I've had a monster banker's draft taken out and paid for the remainder of the house. Not as much as the deposit, but what's five grand between friends? [16:05] Grrr, still no reply from my insurance people as to whether I have life insurance yet. I think the question is whether my climbing means I'm going to have to pay some kind of monster premium or not, which sucks. I'm off to get my hair cut.

15/01/2004 [09:55] Joy of joys I got a full and uninterrupted night's sleep last night. Just some minor bouts of body-racking coughing before bed and then I was out like a light. I won't tell you how tired I've been lately, you're all sysadmins (or know someone who is) so you know how things can get. I've been packing some more and replacing my kitchen stuff with the house's stuff I put in to storage back in October 2002. Was it then? It seems like a long time ago and at the same time as if just a few months have gone by. [10:35] Another item from the I Have No Use For It But I Want One Department. [15:25] Great. Not only is that machine still crashing, one of the LCD projectors appears to have gone horribly wrong. And I have to go at 16:30 to do some things, and I haven't sorted the house insurance yet. [16:10] Projector model sorted (Mitsubishi XD300U), email asking for the cash sent, now to tidy up before I head off for the afternoon. Shame about the projector. Basically it's got even vertical lines of dead pixels spaced across the image. It looks like stripy wallpaper.

14/01/2004 [11:30] One patch this month from Microsoft and not a terribly bad one at that. Still, time to roll out to all the machines and reboot them. One of the new machines insists on crashing all of the time (actual BSoD). It's identical to the other two in terms of installation and use so it has to be a hardware issue. The problem is that we've had these ones a long, long time and owing to one thing and another they're probably out of free replacement/repair. Personally I'm going with some kind of stupid overheat issue. [13:00] Oh, there's a meeting this afternoon. Off in a bit. Scheduling the patch to run overnight on some machines.

13/01/2004 [12/01/2004 - 16:10] Sorry I didn't actually do the entry at work today and you're seeing it a day late. I felt so ill after about 11:00 yesterday morning I just went home at lunch time. Still, it allowed me to take a frightening amount of money out of my ISA and deliver it to my solicitor as the deposit, put the rest into my current account (I'm sure I'm going to need it) and start packing for my upcoming move. I ended up going to bed quite early but still had broken sleep due to not being able to breath through my nose. My head's aching and I'm forgetting things. Now I think about it the last time I was ill was this time last year. Things have certainly changed since I wrote about that 51 weeks ago. This morning I got a call from my solicitor. I/we've exchanged contracts. Pretty much everything is set in stone now. The completion date will be coming up soon and I've got lots of things to try and juggle. With luck I can get things like building insurance, etc. sorted out in the next few days. Then activate my life and mortgage insurance. I've been packing for most of the day at home, stopping occasionally to sneeze repeatedly and check/send email. I'm going to have to go in to work tomorrow because the PFY isn't there on Wednesdays. Still it'll give me a chance to get the buildings insurance in place. I think the easiest thing to do will be to take a completely new policy with the new house and get building and contents on the same policy and then just cancel the old one (contents only). That way I can have them running at the same time. For a few days at least. I should do a bit more packing before I lose the ability to move around, then get an early night.

12/01/2004 [11:00] I went to see the estate agent this morning. I'm ready to exchange contracts. The only thing we need to get sore... Heh, speak of the devil and he shall appear. I've just had a call from the estate agent who had a really long talk with the vendor this morning. He's agreed to pay the cost of the quote for the garage re-roofing (which was going to bury me financially) less the cost of the cooker, which is fine. He'll be giving me a personal cheque for the amount to make things simpler all round. Contingent on this deal was a rapid contract exchange date, which suits me down to the ground. I've contacted Elaine to tell her the news and am just about to ring my solicitor to get things in motion there. Oh, and I feel like death warmed up at the moment. I have a stinking cold.

09/01/2004 [12:10] Been setting up some bastardly restrictive settings for the new W2K desktops this morning. I've still not figured out which GPO setting is making the non-locked down machines stop from allowing people to right-click on the Taskbar to get the context menu. I've tried the obvious User Configuration -> Adminstrative Templates -> Start Menu & Taskbar -> Disable context menus for the Taskbar, but that doesn't seem to have worked. Unless it's not taken effect yet. Other than that I've got that solicitors meeting this afternoon, need to buy some bike lubrication, defrost some mince, go to the shops for food for the weekend and put a load of dark washing on. Domestic biss. Still, Elaine arrives tonight to help me throw things out, patch up the house and generally make us both feel nice. [13:00] I've reported the stolen speakers to my line manager and gained approval to buy a replacement set (plus mounting brackets). I'll try to remember to do it on Monday. We had some basic Kef Cresta 1 boxes which I'll be replacing with the Cresta 10 model which seems to be around the same size and stuff. I've got another hour here and then I'm off for the weekend. I was hoping to get my hair cut today (I look a bit yeti-like at the moment) but unfortunately the place I usually go is booked up. I'll get it done next week.

08/01/2004 [11:40] A few things have happened this morning. First off I've edited my journal for content for the first time in a long, long time. I'm not happy about it, but it was probably a good idea. Secondly I've had a phone call from the other people who were doing a quote for the repair/replacement of my (hopefully) new house's garage roof. He'll be letting me know the damage (as it were) some time this afternoon, with a written quote coming in the post soon afterwards. This means I have two quotes to take to my solicitor when I meet him tomorrow afternoon. Whch is nice. Someone's also nicked a pair of speakers that were attached to the wall downstairs. Given that while I bought them I haven't had anything to do with them for months no-one else seems to know when they actually went. This means I have to buy some more and then try and get someone to fix them up again. I hope they still do the same type. Why the other pair in the same room didn't also get taken I don't know. Maybe the thief didn't have a screwdriver and didn't fancy taking on screws in ferroconcrete. Bastard. On top of this while I got to bed at 22:00 and only ready until 23:00 I had the hardest time getting up this morning. I'm absolutely knackered. I had a great meal last night though, which was nice. I've been spending the morning trying to get an amp/DVD/speakers setup working again (hence how I noticed that a pair of speakers was missing) which had stopped for no good reason. In the end I just started hoping the DVD player's digital co-axial was broken then I could get the place a new one and buy that one for not-very-much-money. It started working after I'd swapped everything over I could with the identical setup elsewhere (which continued to work). Go figure.

07/01/2004 [12:10] There's a chance a friend will be giving birth some time in the next few hours. I certainly hope so for her sake, the baby was due on the third! I've arranged an appointment with my solicitor for Friday at 14:30 to do The Discussion over my house purchase. Going over the paperwork, things like that. I'm still waiting for a second quote on how much the garage roof is going to be to get it replaced/repaired. According to the survey I had done (which is a whole other story I'll deal with at a later date) it has 'failed' and needs fixing. As I'm going to be storing a lot of stuff in there and this is the rainy season for this part of the country I think it's fairly essential I get this done quite quickly. I'm hoping to get the cost/quote taken off the deposit for the house because quite frankly I'm strapped for cash and the purchase as it is is going to clean me out. Then there's the white goods, the furniture and the new insurance costs (all of which come from living in rented accommodation until now), plus moving money. I've been mildy stressed about things for the past few weeks and losing out on that laptop (Dell changed the promotion some time between yestrday evening and this morning) and various other stuff I'm beginning to feel a bit frazzled. [17:20] This afternoon I've mainly been doing and redoing Ghost images because of niggling little things you don't think of until it's too late. Still once this one's done I think I'll have it all in the bag. At least for today. I spent lunch with Shaun who had some helpful comments on the upcoming move and has offered his services kindly in driving the van I'm going to be hiring. Other things keep coming back to bother me today. In fact now I think about it, it's been a bitch of a day for running into things I didn't think I would. I read someone's journal today and was reminded just how much I've lost contact with a few of the people I consider friends... [I removed the remainder of this entry because it wasn't worth keeping.]

06/01/2004 [09:20] OK some of you might have noticed that the index page went through a few changes last night. I copied the wrong one into place when I was redoing the copyright notice and stuff. I think it's all fixed now though. I was so tired when I was woken up this morning by the radio. I swear I was in bed by just after midnight and asleep by at least 00:45. Yet come 08:30 this morning I was shocked out of a doze by the radio clicking off. I really need an early night tonight. [16:20] Well I've got three machines set up and ready to lock down, I should register the names so that they're ready to be allocated tomorrow. [17:35] I've been looking at laptops for Elaine with the idea of buying something soonish. Does a Dell Inspiron 1100, 256MB DDR-266 RAM, P4-M 2.4GHz CPU, 30GB HDD, DVD/CD-RW, 15" LCD - £534.63 all in sound good? I know it's a Dell, but we've not really had any problems with desktops or laptops here. [18:45] Home time anyway. I think I've done enough for today.

05/01/2004 [13:30] Finally got round to updating the HTML for 2004 this afternoon. I've been busy with getting machines unportblocked, working out that someone plugged a laptop in and stole an IP briefly (this is in hand), getting the PFY to fix the slight mess she made of the backup routine and trying to get the process of buying a house back in motion. I'm still hoping to move in before the beginning of February but can't say whether it'll happen or not yet when my mortgage application went to a solicitors I've never heard of, rather than the people I'm using. Still, one quote for the replacing of the garage roof has come in and I've got about three letters to write to try and get my money back for the shocking survey report I had done. Other than that I've got emails to catch up on, machines to patch, stuff to upgrade and some sleep to catch up on. I woke up this morning tireder than the day I left work for Christmas. Surely this can't be a good thing? [13:50] Just updated everything with 2004 notices, let me know if I've missed anything. [15:40] Meeting at the moment. Working out what we're going to tell the bigwigs at the meeting later on this month. Also working out what we actually want to do with the first half of 2004. [17:40] Right, four letters written, franked and ready for posting on the way home to get tomorrow's first collection. I don't think I'll get one this evening unfortunately. I'm not particularly happy with all the chasing I'm having to do to try and get some money back from the surveyors, but damnit I need that money. I need anything I can claw back at the moment as this house is going to fair strip me down to the bare bones. This garage roof thing is just another worry and another cost that's causing me stress. Still, it's all got to be done.

02/01/2004 [05/01/2004 - 13:25] To be frank I'm drawing a blank on what we did today. I know we went out again, and went in to a few shops, but that's about it. We didn't get up before midday again. Slackers. I think I spent some of the day getting the logs for BOFHcam sorted out so they ended at midnight on the first of the month. Sorry guys, it's been too busy since then to remember what's been happening.

01/01/2004 [05/01/2004 - 13:20] The day was quiet to be honest. Most of it was spent sleeping (we didn't get up until gone midday). As far as I can remember we went for a walk to see what we could find in the shops but returned mostly empty-handed owing to poverty, etc. I can't remember much more, I think we watched some television, maybe a DVD. Scintinating reading this, isn't it?