Tonight I go to work, turn on the sound system, lighting rig and fire up the laptop, the laptop refuses to boot, so I try again, same result, I try a third time and it boots, but as soon as I try to open the start menu the laptop shuts itself down again and does it a further three more times after that. Eventually I got the laptop to boot into Windows and seems to be stable until I try to use the keyboard, and nothing, not a single key worked. Suddenly the penny dropped, I realised that the idiots that were DJ’ing last night had spilt vodka and coke all over my laptop and obviously tried to cover their tracks by wiping it off, but it still stinks of vodka. I should have worked it out last night when I noticed a few drops of spilt drink around the laptop and when one of them suddenly said out of nowhere, it’s OK, it wasn’t spilt on the laptop. I also noted that the lid was just open as opposed to closed and locked as I left it. So now I have a laptop that isn’t much use for DJ’ing anymore and will need to get a USB keyboard for the timebeing as I can’t afford to spend out a load of cash on getting it fixed, I know it won’t be a cheap job. And I can’t afford to not do the DJ night as that is £100 less I earn each month, so I am damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I am going to ask if I can watch through the CCTV footage from the night and get conclusive proof of who did it, I know damn well they won’t own up! OK fair enough I accept accidents happen, but to deny that it was spilt over the laptop completely is a cowards way out, which is what pisses me off more than anything. As far as I am concerned now when I get it fixed, I will NOT be taking it to Voodoo except from Wednesday nights, they’ll have to provide their own music between bands instead of me providing the music for the night! If I can’t leave the laptop in a supposedly safe area like the DJ box then I am not risking damaging it again! I am going to leave the machine on for a few days in the vain hope that it’ll dry out and start working again, if not by Wednesday afternoon I am going to have to buy an external keyboard. Obviously this didn’t get my night off to a good start, but then more annoyances. Security ID’ed the first band on, and wasn’t going to let them in until I sorted that out, then there were loads of people sneaking in, which I had to sort out, then later I had bands having a go at me for not paying them. I spoke to Phil and he said he hadn’t agreed to pay them anything. But I agreed to pay them £20 towards their travel costs, which they weren’t happy with, they wanted £80, we barely made £80, and they had also played at the White Rabbit on the same night, so didn’t even make a special journey to Voodoo, so all that considered they should be happy with getting anything. If bands want paying, they should agree it with the promoter in advance, that’s common practice, you don’t demand payment that hasn’t been agreed on the night! At this point I was very stressed, very pissed off and felt like getting very drunk, but I didn’t I just came home, getting drunk would have been a bad idea in my frame of mind! So now I am trying to wind down and relax a bit, I need to be up relatively early (for me) tomorrow to go have Sunday roast at my dads place, do I really want to keep doing this job, I’m a sound engineer, not a promoter, security or negotiator, my stress levels went through the roof earlier, if someone had said the wrong thing when I found out about the laptop, god help them, I wasn’t in a good mood, I probably swore more in the first half hour at Voodoo tonight than I have for months, I try not to swear! Anyway, I am glad this night is over, but I know I won’t be able to sleep as those angry thoughts are still going through my head and I don’t think those feelings will dissipate easily!