Fudge - WILL YOU PEOPLE JUST STICK TO A STANDARD ALREADY

It looks like Dell have changed the power socket on the new XPS sufficiently enough that my Kensington global adapter kit won't work with it yet.  It might just be they don't have the tip ready.  Targus are selling one, but only for their replacement adapter and that's a piece of junk. I actually have one as an emergency supply in the office.

The Dell is shipping to me with the 9 Cell extended battery which *should* give me 6-7 hours of use, which is enough for a long haul flight, or at least enough of a long haul flight that I'd be prepared to work for.  I'm moving over to watching movies on my iPod and at least that I can recharge from the inseat power using the Kensington.  It's just another brick to have in my laptop backpack.

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Ugh...

I hate it when you've put in a 7 hour work day at lunch time.

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Know your Europe

It was a first go, not all that bad but some of the rounds are just bloody hard.

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In Other News

The new laptop has been picked up from San Diego and is winging its way up here.  Fingers are crossed and all that.  The Outlook settings and mailbox have been imported, Office 2007 is installed and it's due for 10.30am tomorrow.

Then I need to get Skype, a couple of messaging clients, Flock and a couple of other bits of work and non-work software onto it.  Get the data drive and PSTs imported and I should be good to go.

I need to get my favourites onto it, but that's relatively straight forward too.

I'm also waiting for the new phone to arrive which is pretty much in the nick of time given the old one is really really misbehaving badly.  It's another Samsung Blackjack - a new one with the 2MegaPixel camera and various bits and bobs.  Sadly, it's crippled by the AT&T UI guidelines.

Anyway, it's fun to have access to new toys, even if it means saying goodbye to an old and trusted laptop.

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Ashes to Ashes...

Through the miracle of the interweb I have seen and... hmm... it was ok. 

There were some bits that didn't quite work for me. 

As I've mentioned elsewhere, in 1981, when I was... er... 12/13, my father had just been promoted to Commander of SCD4 (as it is now, I think it was just C4 then) having previously been head of the Hendon training school and, for some reason, flood emergency coordinator for London.  My older sister had recently graduated from Hendon and was stationed in Stoke Newington where she spent a chunk of the summer sitting in minibuses waiting to be called for reinforcement if needed in Brixton.

We spent a fair amount of time in the company of senior coppers which was the first problem, which Ray pretty much had straight.  Senior female officers (a) weren't 31 and (b) didn't look like that.  There was a female Commander at that time and a fairly scary woman in her mid 50s was how I remember her. 

Another problem with her as DI was she seemed too young, making DI for any officer at 30 was pretty fast going back then, which was also a slight loop hole for me in Life on Mars.

The sound track was fun and I'll be heading for iTunes and my music library to see what I have and don't have from the selection.

I'm not sure that Inspectors would have had a machine on the desk, it certainly wouldn't have had a hard drive in it.  Do you know how much a Hard Drive cost in 1981?  I know what they cost in 1984 and the police couldn't afford that for terminals.  It would have possibly been connected to the PNC, but I had seen inside Scotland Yard in 1981 and computers were not a big feature even though fingerprint branch had a mainframe.  Besides, I doubt a 30 year old from 2008 would stand a hope in hell of working a 1981 computer.  Hell, I'd struggle to remember enough DOS to get by on a 1987 vintage PC and I've forgotten all the mainframe stuff I used to do in the late 80s.

Still, it's an interesting set up.  There is potential for plot there and she does have a reason to go home.

I'll be "tuning" in next week.

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