It’s 5:47AM and two things woke me up.

The dogs at the dairy next door. Like clockwork except driven by the sun and not adjusted for human convenience. Rumour has it that no “foreign” non-Homo sapien has ever made it half way down the drive-way. It may have no scientific data to back it up, but I take it is a fact.

The other is a heifer mowing grass three feet from the bedroom window. A beautiful animal, but get the fuck of my lawn! The 2-wire electric fence must have shorted due to a fallen branch and they have waltzed right into the house paddock.

I command the sleeping Blue Heeler.

KADIE! GET IN TO ‘EM!

I should have known the ensuing chaos would wake the whole family. Doesn’t matter…it’s a school day.

There is so much data to check and record. First the rain gauge, humidity sensor and wind speed average for the night. The thermometer backs up the fact that we are a having a cool summer. The chicken output remains a steady one egg per chicken per day. Experience says that any variation from that rate usually brings bad news. The Access database that manages these data sets has performed flawlessly for 8 years. If it ain’t broke…

Making my way to the network, I discover that 2 computers have rebooted during a power spike/surge. The UPS has protected the main development machine and backup server. Maybe next payday I will buy another UPS.

The spam idiots are relentless. Opera always does a great job filtering the crap but I check for false positives and find a perfect score. No sign of any problems from clients. The day just got a little brighter.

“Eat your breakfast…get dressed…your shoes are outside…where is your hat?...Hurry up or we will miss the bus!” The morning ritual is completed and we start the 15km drive down the dirt road to the bus stop.

I like this time of the day. With the radio playing mindless garbage, it gives me time to contemplate the day ahead and to try and model various database and code problems. With the kids safely on the bus, I turn for home. Nothing brilliant comes from my mind during the trip.

2 shots of locally grown coffee are consumed quick smart and I make my way towards the office. I have 4 different projects that I am currently working on. Two of them are in the .NET space while the others are a LAMP stack and a legacy VB6 data warehousing project. I find myself confusing language syntaxes each time I switch between projects. The equality and assignment operators always screw me.

I classify the programming task I am working on into one of three realms. I call them the “B” worlds. Bits for low level programming, Bytes for general programming and Boolean for the SQL work. Thankfully, the closest I have come to Bits programming in these projects is interfacing with USB devices.

The contrast between the B world and R (real) world is vital for my sanity. I like to finish the day doing something on the farm. Today I have a choice of 2 tasks. Fix the slave cylinder on the ute or turn the blood and bone fertiliser compost heap. I don’t feel like working upside down at the moment so I select the later task.

Walking back to the house brings a smile to my face as I realise that tomorrow is more of the same.