My first paid work in Australia

"Jobs are for losers" has been my motto ever since I decided that I wasn’t ready to look for work in Brisbane. But if you’re getting paid in free beer and free food then I would say that a little work still fits in with my job-avoidance philosophy.

The hotel in Tully had one computer that staff and guests could use to access the internet, but for some time it hadn’t been able to access secure sites – things like online banking, hotmail, amazon etc. I was talking to the barmaid, Sinead, the previous evening and I happened to mention my formidable IT experience and enviable skillset, so she said she’d sort me out with a load of beers if I took a look at it.

My private thoughts were that I’d have it working within 5 minutes by tweaking some settings in Internet Explorer, so I was rather keen to get my hands on a few bottles of Cascade, particularly after the 8 hour mountain climb earlier on in the day. But things didn’t prove that easy, and three hours later, after tweaking, downloading, registry hacking and finally banging the case of the computer, I’d got it from the stage where they couldn’t access secure sites to the stage where they couldn’t access the internet at all. It was at this point that I returned (now very drunk) to the room where the girls were in bed, turned on the light and said "pack your bags, we’re leaving!"

But we didn’t leave, and after a few deep breaths I went back to the problem and, from a backup I’d taken in a more sober moment, restored 95% the registry keys I’d deleted. Miraculously the internet was back in all it’s glory, including the secure sites. (It was some old VPN software that hadn’t been removed entirely and left some dodgy IPSEC settings if anyone’s interested…). I went back to the bar, declared it fixed, and then blinded them with some techno-babble as to the nature of the problem. Naturally everyone was thrilled and thought I was a god, so they wrote off our accommodation, food and bar tabs and I left with the warm glowing feeling that you can always compensate for a lack of ability if you’re a lucky son of a bitch.