When I have an early weekday flight from Heathrow, I often stay at one of the nearby Hiltons the night before. It’s convenient, not outrageously expensive (especially with points), means I don’t have to get up at 4am to drive up the M3, and I can get a good breakfast in the lounge before going over to the terminals.
So I was doing that last night, checked in, went to check my email, and the laptop power supply went “pop”. No charging possible. I tried a new cable in case it was the fuse, tried different sockets, but it was clear that something was broken. Not a good thing to happen when you’re about to be away for a week with no real hardware support.
While I could organise a replacement power supply to be available in Las Vegas, my real worry was that the Thinkpad might now be broken – not just the adapter. It’s an essential piece of equipment when presenting at events like this. So I decided to drive all the way back home, pick up my personal laptop, also go into Hursley and take a W520 power supply, and then get back to the Hilton. All of which meant I missed the free nibbles and drinks in the lounge.
So all of that was the bad news.
Good news was that by the end of the evening I did at least have two working machines and the failure had occurred (just) early enough that I could do something about it, even if it was inconvenient.,
Then I did have time for the free breakfast this morning. The flight to the US was very easy, calm, no turbulence, on time. And the best bit was despite the dire warnings about delays due to reduced staffing levels, there was an completely empty immigration hall when I arrived. So I was through that and out to the connecting shuttle in minutes.
So now we’re all ready for Impact – lots of MQ sessions, lectures, labs, meetings…Diaries are very full…
I know there are some companies that will not let employees go to any event in Vegas “because they might enjoy themselves”. I can assure them that there’s not much playing going on here. We’re on duty from breakfast until bedtime all week.
But I hope to get the chance to see you all there!