Flying visit to Melbourne (work)Author: jawapro
Date: Thu 27/03/2008 06:28 PM
Well - that was exhausting...
I set 3 or 4 alarms to wake up in time to catch my plane to Melbourne yesterday. Would have been plenty - but some unknown person decided to ring my landline up half an hour before my alarms were due, and hung up after the first ring (which was enough to wake me up).
I go up, had a shower, got dressed and went to meet my boss for a lift to the airport for my 6:30 flight.
The tickets say to arrive 45 minutes early for security, but Devonport airport dosnt have any security, so apparently you can arrive only a few minutes before you need to take off.
Getting out of my bosses car, I had another brief shower, as it was raining cats and dogs.
We sat around in the terminal until boarding was due to start. Before they let us board, they wheeled a disabled passenger out in a wheelchair to the bottom of the plane (they gave her an umbrella first) and then back inside again because the captain had decided it was too wet to allow boarding. The rumour going around the terminal was that he didnt want to get his hat wet (not sure where that came from).
After a few minutes the rain eased, and we were let on the plane.
I've only ever flown a handfull of times - and I dont remember being on a plane this small before (although I might have been when I was little). I scored a window seat, which happens to be under the wing. The other planes I've flown in have all had seats above the wing, so this was a little different.
Very cool spot to watch the landing gear fold down and touch the ground in Melbourne though.
We arrived in Melbourne, and went through security (apparently they dont care if you hijack a plane from Tassie, but they are worried about Tasmanians hijacking the Melbourne Terminal).
We found a cab who took us to the Pier in Melbourne (where the ship docks). The cab almost didnt make it. We were part the way there when it made a huge back (like the sound of the engine falling out) and then died. We coasted to the side of the road, and the cabbie eventually got it going again. It was idleing very roughly from then on though.
We got to the Melbourne office, and spent the day working on network stuff, setting up a conference phone, and various other bits and pieces. We managed to remove a hub from the centre of our network in Melbourne. All traffic between Melbourne and Devonport (and the internet) was going through both a rack mounted hub and a little home-network style switch. We managed to get rid of both, and are now useing the rack mounted switches properly. Much more reliable. (note for non-geeks: Hubs are bad, switches are good).
After working right up until 7, I caught the ship home. It was a slightly rough sailing. It wasnt too bad - but if I'd had a car on board, I would have been rather worried each time I heard a bang from below.
I was woken up once by a rather large wave, and again by the loudspeaker telling everyone to get up because we were comming into Devonport.
I crusied home from some breakfast, and then back to work for another day. And after all the stuff that happened today (see next post), I'm rather exhausted...
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