On the way home from San Francisco last night I witnessed a moment of warmth and generosity between two laptop-using passengers.
One sighed and closed his laptop, and the other turned around and asked, "HP?". The other guy responded, "HP!". The original guy said, "ah, HP!"
He then handed over his United-to-HP power-cable and the original guy thanked him profusely and plugged his HP laptop into the power-jack in his seat.
I had no such luck — I made the discovery last night that aircraft have a powerjack all of their own… arrrghh, why don't they tell you this in advance. Still, I managed to trot out some articles I needed to finish before my PowerBook's battery died.
Unfortunately some dunce in the "Green – nothing to declare" line at customs pulled his bag off the x-ray conveyer belt and caught my backpack with it. It fell straight down onto the tile floor of customs and when I checked my PowerBook in the cab, yep, one corner of it is dented and bent out of shape. I am praying to KP up there somewhere that ACP's travel insurance policy covers it.
ALSO: we flew through "wind shear" last night, which according to this NASA website "has been blamed for the loss of hundreds of lives in airplane crashes."
Indeed, the plane was going up and down like a rollercoaster and for a while there I felt like I was in a milkshake maker… (in fact I remember saying that to the guy next to me in a half-asleep state… now that I think about it, milk shake makers whip rather than shake so it doesn't make sense…)
Fortunately we arrived safely in Sydney.
- World's best spaghetti bolognese recipe
- Why no late movie sessions in Sydney?
- Hello from SFO
- I'm now the proud owner of a Honda Civic
- Mmm… five star luxury
#1 by Stoo on March 16, 2006 - 10:52 am
Hi Dan,
Not sure if you have your choice of airline when flying with work, but if you fly Qantas, power sockets on some of their aircraft are compatable with aussie plugs:
http://www.qantas.com.au/info/.....unications
I am not sure if the connectors differ between Boeing and Airbus, but Targus have a range of adapters that utilise the 'standard' Boeing power connector. They also have a universal "even makes me coffee in the morning" adapter for Apple equipment that might interest you:
http://www.targus.com/AU/produ.....ku=APM14AU
Stu.
#2 by danwarne on March 16, 2006 - 2:42 pm
Hi Stu,
I did have a choice of airline on this trip but unfortunately United is the ONLY airline flying Sydney to San Francisco direct at the moment. Qantas starts the route on March 29th… so I was a bit early. If I'd flown Qantas I would have had to fly via LAX which ends up adding at least three or four hours. However, thank goodness Qantas saw the utility of including Australian sockets… I will certainly try to fly them in the future! (probably a wise move since I'm now writing for Qantas Mag :-)