After an energy-packed cooked breakfast, Danielle and I got in her van and headed up to the Blue Mountains. The old Starwagon complained a bit about the hills, but eventually we made it through Katoomba
to a place called Echo Point.

Upon my initial view of the mountains proper from the van, I think I may have uttered some eloquent and poignant words such as "Holy shit!" The view was absolutely spectacular, and it got even better after we parked the van and strolled down to the main touristy lookout. It reminded me of the Grand Canyon, to be honest - the kind of natural formation of trees, mountains, cliffs, that you can’t really do justice to in a photo. I’ll try though.

View of the Three Sisters, from Echo Point in the Blue Mountains

We set off down the very steep steps to the bottom of the valley. They weren’t quite as steep as ship ladders, but they probably weren’t far off it. Not only was it severely wheelchair unfriendly, it was pretty bloody able-person-with-two-working-legs unfriendly too. After a few hundred steps, it became apparent that for most people, the human body isn’t used to this kind of behaviour. Sure, I was probably getting fit, but some muscles in my legs were complaining bitterly about the imposition.

Erm… just resting my ankle for a moment. No no, it doesn’t hurt too badly, honest.

Danielle expresses her views on being photographed.

More bloody steps…

Down at the bottom, we decided to head towards the Leura Falls, since a sign at the top had said that the path the other way was blocked by a landslide. After a few minutes, my natural ability to succumb to minor foot injuries kicked in, and I stumbled on what I can only presume was a rock placed there by natural forces to inconvenience careless walkers like me.

I sat down rather rapidly (though Danielle would probably claim I simply fell, and she might be right). My ankle ached like hell for a minute or two, though naturally I tried to be heroic and manly and not sob too much. After a little while it seemed okay and we carried on, with me taking much more care to look where I was going.

We reached the falls, which were lovely. After a short rest and drink we started clambering up the steps back out of the canyon. The steps followed the water for quite a way up, and there were more falls, and other interesting arrangements of rocks, water, trees, and all that stuff.

There seemed to be more and more and more and more steps, but there were frequent spots to stop and sit, of which we made good use. Knowing that eventually we would get back to civilisation and be able to have an ice-cream kept us motivated to keep going.

We got to the top, and found a lookout with a bench and an Austrian guy on it taking in the sun. We sat down with him, had a chat, rested for quite a while, and checked our mobile phone messages (oh, this cursed age of technology). A very loud old man and his friends and/or family came along, and were pretty entertaining for a few minutes.

Then, thinking of the ice-cream, and I think missing the previous tranquillity, we headed along another track back towards Echo Point. It wasn’t superbly signposted, and we took a wrong turning or two, before getting onto the right path.

This one went mostly along the cliff, with some great views over the mountains. I managed to tread on another rock, which made me wobble a bit, Danielle quickly grabbling me to stop me plummeting over the side to my death. That would have put a real dampener on the weekend, after all. We made it back to Echo Point and civilisation, thoroughly worn out and hungry.

We got food on the way back to Danielle’s, and though it was only about 4:30, we were both totally zonked, spending the evening watching amusing
videos, interspersed with bits of the Wizard of Oz, which was on Channel 7 at the time.

And we never did get that ice-cream.

I trudged into work in the city with a big bag of stuff for my Sydney weekend, hanging over my shoulder. I realised after I left the house, that in a shirt and tie, and carrying a sportsy-type back of stuff, that I looked like one of those young door-to-door blokes who sells shirts and stuff, except that I probably have too much grey hair. (30 and I’m getting grey hair… oh well, better than losing it.)

Last time I went to Sydney (with Iris in November) we tried to get to the airport in rush hour and found it almost impossible to get a cab. So this time I had worked out a way to get there by conventional public transport, which can be done if you plan ahead carefully, and was probably faster than waiting for a taxi or traipsing over to Spencer Street to catch the airport bus. At $4.40, it was definitely cheaper.

I strolled into the Ansett terminal and tried out the nifty E-check-in thing. You just pop in a credit card into this machine so they can identify you, and it pops up with something like "Hello Mr Daniel F Bowen, howareya matey!" and your flight details. If you don’t like the seat you’ve been given, you can look at a seat map and choose a different one. Then it prints your boarding pass and you’re set!

Great stuff. The only catch being that you then need to queue up anyway to check-in any baggage you have. That was pretty painless though - it was a separate queue, which moved much faster than the normal check-in queue.

The flight was great - on time, and with an edible meal. There was even a spare seat next to me, which made eating easier. It didn’t take too long to find my bag on the carousel, and I moseyed on out of the terminal in Sydney to ring for my lift.

My lift and host for the weekend, the charming and superbly named Danielle, was running a bit late, which is fair enough when you’ve just heard your dog has drowned. But she got there soon afterwards and we had an interesting time trying to navigate our way back through the Sydney night to her place. On the way, as only parents can do, we would on occasion burst into the Bob The Builder catchcry of “Can we fix it?" "Yes we can!" "Uhh… I think so…". It’s a worry, really it is.

Well I’m happy to say the stuff I’m working on seems to work. I slaved away most of the weekend getting it all running though. I’d tell you more about it, but I think it would probably send the average person to sleep. I know I could do with some.

At least next weekend should be more relaxing, I’ll be taking a break and going to Sydney. And my boss hasn’t demanded I take the laptop with me. Yet…

A couple of months ago my boss (I work for what could be described as a consulting company; though most of us spit on the term "consultant") drops by, and says "how would we go about solving [problem X]?"

Then he gets a phone call, and while he’s jabbering into his mobile, I have a think, and scribble a diagram on a piece of scrap paper. He gets off the phone. Only half expecting him to bid for the job, and certainly not expecting him to get it, I show him the diagram: "Well, one way would be to do this…"

Fast forward to this week. I’m getting an inkling as to where this scribble has gone. Suddenly I’m part of a team of about 15 people, according to the phone list I’m "lead analyst programmer", the first bits of some $100,000 worth of hardware has just arrived, and we’re building a thing that pretty much follows what I scribbled on that bit of scrap paper.

Shit, I hope it works…

Telemarketers are starting to piss me off. They seem to be masters of ringing at precisely the wrong moment, though when I think about it, there is no right moment to be interrupted from what you’re doing to answer the phone because someone you don’t know wants to sell you something.

Some of them, of course, don’t want to sell you anything. They just want you to give money to whatever charity they happen to be working for. It certainly seems some charities are no longer happy for you to have given money once - they want to badger you for more cash at any opportunity. Some of them also have no qualms about handing your details out to other charities, in the hope that you’ll hand over what’s left of your money to them as well.

In my case, the worst offender seems to be Vision Australia. Now, being somebody who is very nearly half blind, I am sympathetic to the cause of the blind. But their charity operations are an absolute pain in the arse. They send me heaps of mail, they phone me up every few months… and it happened again last week. Just about to sit down and eat dinner. Bastards.

This time, in the few seconds of the woman on the phone introducing herself, I managed to think about my reply, and I successfully managed to say it in one breath, not giving her a chance to interrupt or put the phone down (like last time):

"My donations go to other charities, can you please remove me from your phone list?" Pause to allow her to acknowledge. "Thank you, goodbye." <click>

Vision Australia are not getting another cent from me. I will continue to give money to the Guide Dogs’ Association instead, by anonymously feeding my spare coins to the big plastic dog in the supermarket. And to various other charities who don’t bug me.

Greenpeace rang me up once to talk about my donations. It was a complete contrast to Vision Australia. I was actually able to have a meaningful conversation with the woman on the phone. She wasn’t following a script. She appeared to be intelligent, and I was so damn impressed by their efforts that I increased my regular donation amount.

But back to the calls of last week. The next day, it was some survey thing. I knew this was a telemarketer, because she began by saying "Is that Mr Bowden?" Anybody who says this is obviously a telemarketer, because they’ve read my misprinted name in the phone book. This woman seemed very keen to emphasise that she wasn’t selling anything. No, no, she was just hoping to waste some of my time with a quick survey. My reply this time was the shorter and less specific, but again said very quickly giving no chance for an interruption: "Not interested, thank you, goodbye" <click>

Thinking about it later, I realised what I should have said was something more like: "Certainly. My fee for doing surveys is $10 a minute, with a minimum of five minutes, payable in advance."

But I don’t know if I’d really do it. I don’t want to be rude to these people. They’re only doing a job, probably a poorly paid job. It still pisses me off though.

There was a third call last week, and before I describe it, a brief technical interlude is in order.

Telemarketing is big business. Hundreds of people might be working on a marketing campaign, annoying thousands upon thousands of people trying to enjoy their dinner. And to maximise their productivity and annoy as many people as possible, the big call centres have a piece of technology called a predictive dialler.

The predictive dialler is given a list of phone numbers, and is told how many telemarketers are ready to make calls. It automatically starts ringing the phone numbers, and rings more than the telemarketers can handle, because it estimates how many calls are going to result in nobody answering, or an engaged signal, or a fax machine or answering machine or voicemail. When an actual human answers, it puts the call through to a telemarketer, perhaps along with some details of the victim onto the telemarketer’s computer screen.

Occasionally the dialler will underestimate how many people will answer their phones, and a call is placed in limbo. Sometimes this poor unfortunate person will actually be placed on hold - this is by the company calling them mind you - and will hear a recorded message, much the same as a normal hold message, assuring them how important it is that they stay on the line, even suggesting that a valuable conversation is about to begin, or whatever bollocks the marketing geniuses have come up with that week.

There’s only one thing more annoying than being put on hold when you’re ringing up a big company, and that’s being put on hold when you’re being rung upby a big company. So if they decide they don’t want to risk pissing people off too much, they might give you a phone ringing tone instead, in the hopes that you won’t hang up before someone can talk to you.

How do I know all this? Because <guilty pause> I used to work for a telemarketing centre. I helped write some of the computer systems that they use for this kind of thing. Actually it was a fun job, and before you go pinning the blame on me for your dinner being interrupted, keep reading.

So, I’m standing in my kitchen. The phone rang, and since I was standing right next to it, I picked it up straight away. All I could hear was a ringing tone. With my knowledge of how these things work, I thought it was probably a telemarketing call. So I hung up straight away. And if that happens to you, remember what I’ve said. Do the same. Unless you really want to have some marketing spiel coming at you, don’t give the gits a foot in the door.

• My mate Josh’s alternative strategy to surveys: Demanding chocolate biscuits

I was going to write a lengthy diary entry tonight. Something deep from the heart. Something that would break the mould of all previous diary entries. Something thought provoking, stimulating, earth-shattering. A wake-up call to people everywhere. Something that could rock the foundations of western society. Something that could properly mark the beginning of the 21st century with thoughts and ideas so revolutionary that the human race could make a great leap forward.

But I can’t think of anything that clever.

Another weekend has vanished into nothingness. My time seems to be like my money at the moment - I don’t know where it all goes. But maybe that’s the point of the weekend: to rest from the rigours of the week.

At least my toes have almost recovered from last weeks’ bumping, although I managed to hit them against the very same piece of door frame on Friday. I must be getting clumsy. Or perhaps the house needs remodelling.

On Sunday I did manage to get into the city for a couple of hours to enjoy the sunshine. The last time I ventured into the city on my lonesome, I ran into my old friend and ex-colleague Mick. This time, I didn’t. I did see thousands of other people, but to my knowledge I didn’t know any of them. Ah well.

Well honestly, Ron Walker is such amoney-hungry callous insensitive plonker.

Why doesn’t my spell checker know the word plonker?

7:55am. I don’t know how the hell I did this, but last night in a moment of extreme unco-ordination, I bashed my right foot into a door frame. I hopped to bed shouting "fuck fuck fuck!" The worrying thing is that almost 8 hours later it still hurts. Sharp pain when I move two of my toes. D’oh! I think I’d better hobble to the doctor and go get an X-ray. Lucky for me there’s a hospital that does them merely two doors away, though the doctor is a further five minutes walk. Ummm… five minutes on a normal day, that is.

12:15pm. Well the doctor there’s not much that can be done. No point in irradiating my foot at this stage, since it wouldn’t affect the treatment. He put some tape around one toe and the next one along, as a kind of splint, but basically it’s just a waiting game.