Ok, so there ARE other aircraft flight status reports, but I like this one as it is graphical.

It does require Adobe Flash Player to be installed, which is a problem for some people.

Melbourne Airport – Live Flight Radar

Sometimes, peoples’ lack of maths skills amaze me.

I was at the airport the other night, buying some stuff.

Total cost $41.35.

Gave the old bloke $60 (3 x $20).

I received $28.65 change, a “bonus” of $10.

Spent the next five minutes arguing with the old bloke, that he was short-changing himself $10.

Now some people might say “… serves him right, keep the extra $10.” 

But the thought of the poor bloke having to make up cash from his wage stopped me doing that.

Andy Blume, over at Spatula City,  wrote about something similar in his post: It’s French For ""Go away"".

Travelled on Tiger Airways recently, and the service wasn’t too bad.

Sure, Terminal 4 at Tullamarine Airport is a converted shed, and the baggage pickup area IS A shed, but you do expect that for such cheap fares, eh?

The downside is that Tiger fly Airbus A320* aircraft.

I don’t like them.  They make strange sounds.  They tend to crash.

From a 2001 news article:

The French have also blamed the pilots in every major fatal crash of the Airbus aircraft, built by a four-nation consortium whose headquarters are at Toulouse in France. In one of the crashes, the aircraft was being flown by the most senior aviator in his field: Airbus’s chief test pilot, the Englishman Nick Warner.

As with Concorde, the Airbus is fly-by-wire, which means that computers act as intermediaries between the pilots and the flying controls. Unlike Boeing’s “fly-by-wire” systems, which give pilots the ultimate control of the aircraft’s operations, the Airbus designers have a view that planes can be made safer if, in certain circumstances, software imposes “hard limits” on what the pilots can and cannot do.

One thing to note.

When Tiger Airlines say that “Check-in desks close strictly 45 minutes before scheduled departure time.”, you should believe them.  Even if the aircraft is 2 hours late, and is the last flight of the night.

* – macabrely known as the “John Wayne” aircraft.  It climbs mountains, knocks down trees & kills Indians.

“Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity, or neglect.”

1. Power board and travel power plug adapter.
2. Laptop power supply supply.
   With all my devices being chargeable via USB cable, I don’t need to pack separate phone/PDA/headset chargers.
3. PDA & BlackBerry.
4. Plenty of Audio Books.
   For something to listen  to when I can’t do anything else.
5. USB memory sticks.
   For transferring data between PC’s.  Ensure they are on lanyards.
6. Portable hard drive for backups.
7. Boot recovery CDs.
8. Torch.
9. Tape.
10. Leatherman Tool.

Lotus Notes client didn’t work at the Frensham Pond Hotel, when I stayed there.

Long story short

• Ports 80/443 worked, so I was able to “surf” the web.
• Port 1352 blocked

How did I know?

• I used nPing.exe, and this is what a failure looks like
  
• A successful nPing looks like this:
  
  (and your Lotus Notes client should work)

The fix?

• None, unfortunately.  The Hotel’s ISP blocked everything except ports 80 & 443.

nPing is part of the NotesConnect toolset and can be found via this weblink:
Testing TCP/IP connections with NotesCONNECT

Something you can say about the USA is that things are so much bigger.

Ever wondered where unclaimed baggage goes to?

In the USA, it can end up in the Unclaimed Baggage Centre.

Amazing. If I ever get back to the USA, I’m going to check it out.

The website is here, and the street address/phone is:
509 West Willow Street, Scottsboro, Alabama 35768.
256-259-1525.

There’s not a Qantas counter at Heathrow departures. You line up at the British Airways counter.

It was good to start the journey home. Had a quick look though the duty free shops. It’s all junk, trust me. Stocked up on water. BA airline club was jammed packed. Had a shower to wash all the grime off.

Onto the aircraft, another aisle seat, but it was a centre aisle seat which meant that the couple next to me could exit out the other side.

Dial up the A/C vent, strap myself in, and watch the safety presentation. That’s the last I remember until waking up 3 hours later, feeling hot and bothered.

The A/C vent was off, not sure how it happened, but I do feel awful.

Get up for a stretch and walk. Get back, turn the A/C vent back on, and start reading Churchill’s Bodyguard.

A/C goes off, as the woman two seats over closes my vent.

“Excuse me, but what do you think you are doing?”
‘It’s cold’
“It can be adjusted, you should have asked first”
(thinking to myself, ah so this is the phantom vent closer).

Singapore
The British Airways/Qantas club at Singapore has metal knives. Amazing. Metal knives are considered too dangerous to have at airline clubs in Australia, but here’s a selection of them in Singapore. good thing I’m not a terrorist ain’t it.

The “free” telephones don’t have a dial tone. Spent 25 mins trying to find a work phone. Found one in the business PC area.

Singapore to Melbourne
Back on the aircraft, Mervyn has swapped seats with his wife, the phantom vent closer. Turn A/C vent up full and belt in.

Finish Churchill’s Bodyguard, and arrived into Melbourne.
The landing? That’ll will be the pilot’s three “touch and go’s” for the year.

Queued up for customs – Answered YES to two questions on the customs form

Been to a rural area? Any foodstuffs?

Which guarantees being sent down the “something to declare” line. The customs guy asked where I’d been (rural England) and what I had (BBQ sauce), and after a bit of a conversation, said “Fair enough, off you go”

Melbourne airport to home
The taxi driver was an Aussie!, not a new Australian.
Dropped my work gear at work, and travelled home.

The dogs were happy to see me. Slept.

Reference(s):
Cabin photo pinched from here.

Oh I wish, don’t think that’ll happen while my bottom is pointing to the ground.
 
But the first thing I did was drop my bag at Heathrow. There is a bag storage service, all of £8 it cost I think. Well worth it compared to dragging a suitcase around the city.

Not to mention that some places won’t let you take a large bag in.

Each of the four airport terminals has a train station, which makes it really easy to get into London City (about a 40 min journey).

The Station Assistant noticed I looked puzzled, and suggested I buy an all day off-peak ticket, saving about £10.

Now you can aimlessly wander around London like I did for an hour, or you could get wise and catch a tour bus like "The Big Bus Company"
(that reminds me, I wonder how Cassie’s bus is going …).
For £22, they will drive you around 30 different sights, with commentary. See here for a list. I gather that they aren’t the best employer though…

Memorable things
Hard Rock Cafe
First started in London in 1971, by a couple of Americans’ who couldn’t get a decent burger. Some people in the past have said, "the foods crap these days, but it’s worth a look at the memorabilia".
I didn’t.

Downing Street
Home of the British Prime Minister, and lots of heavily armed police, who take a dim view of photographs.

Cabinet War Room
This is where Churchill direct The War from. Only actually slept there three nights.

At the end of the war, the lights were switched off and people went home.

Some of the more memorable sights, the sign telling people what the weather was like above ground, the map room with the "beauties" still there and the Churchill Museum.
Things I purchased: set of cufflinks and the book "Churchill’s Bodyguard".

London Eye
World’s largest observation wheel. With 2 hour long queues. £14.50. No thanks.
If I had more time, I would have.

Field Marshall Slim
Governor-General of Australia, 1953 -> 1960.
There is a story about Slim when he was our GG.

He was returning from an official function, and glanced at his NSW Police Motorcycle Escort several times.
As is customary, at the end of the trip, he was asked to review the escort. On his particular day his war wounds had been giving him heck:
"When I looked at your uniforms, I thought you used them to clean your motorcycles.
Now that I’ve looked at your motorcycles, I see that I was wrong."

Royal National Theatre
As one person said, it’s "a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting".
It looks horrid. The most notable thing are the statues on top of the buildings. Even after having a search of the internet, I still can’t work out – why?

And lots of other things, which I’m not going to bore you with.
The London Underground train system is impressive, but grubby
Tipping, yes some places expect you to tip. Dang curse of the Americans.

References:
Heathrow Luggage Storage
Event Horizon
The Cabinet War Rooms
Hard Rock Cafe London
London Eye
10 Downing Street
Field Marshal The Viscount Slim

Monday Night – The Nelson Arms, Surrey

A typical English Pub, except I didn’t see any warm beer. It was established in the 1700’s.

It’s claimed the wooden ceiling beams are timbers from an old sailing ship.

I had the Beef Chilli Burger (9 GBP) and several T.E.A. beers.

Lovely!

Tuesday Night – Meal at the hotel.

Nothing to see here, move along

Wednesday Night – Ghurkha Raj Doot, Aldershot

Want some traditional Ghurkha food, then this is the place.

The decor is mid 70’s Chinese kitchen table style.

Glad to say I was able to have the hottest dish in the place, and didn’t break out into (much) of a sweat.

Cost, about 15 GBP.

Thursday Night – Zizzi Farnham

An Italian restaurant chain, but still a great feed.

The garlic bread for ""starters"" was a meal in itself. I would recommend not have it as starters if you’re going to have something else.

Such as the Diavola Pizza, which had Pepperoni, Chillies, Mozzarella and Tomato.

Total cost: 20 GBP, including drinks.

(Zizzi photo pinched from here: http://freespace.virgin.net/p.millson/farnham/)

Next post: a day in London …

Next morning
It’s a bit of a lurk on the company’s behalf. That is, if the hotel throws in breakfast as part of the accommodation deal, in means a 20% reduction in the Travel Allowance rate

Travel allowance is supposed to cover "out of pocket" living expenses, meals and such like.  20% is a large amount, trust me. Especially in a expensive country like England

Now you COULD lie when you submit your travel claim form, but as issues around cash is one of the three things in life that can get you into trouble … so you don’t.

So off to breakfast, breakfast consisted of cereal, toast, cold meat or bread rolls.

The team consisted of three poms, an American and a Canadian. (sounds like the start of a joke doesn’t it)

All seemed good blokes. All wearing suits. So glad I didn’t wear a bluey, stubbies and thongs to breakfast, cobber.

To the office
The office was about 30 mins from the hotel. The poms had their cars, so we were chauffeured by a couple of them.

The office is HUGE. We even have a "greeter", which is the sort of thing you see in some stores (WalMart). And a cute receptionist, sexist but true.

What can I tell you about my work, it was boring, oh there were some funny moments.
Like when I said, "I’ve just been shifted on the ""org"" chart, and no-one told me"
So, the joke became "Dale will be doing that, unless he’s been shifted again."

The social aspect of the trip was much more interesting, and I’ll cover them in the next post.