I had an interesting Saturday. Met up with a group of frequent flyers from Flyertalk.com for lunch, then went on an Airside Tarmac Tour of Sydney Airport. The tour was fantastic; I enjoyed getting a close-up view of the maintenance hangers, heading down to the end of the runway while 737s were landing overhead, then moving up to the side of the runway while two 747s and a 727 freighter took off. I think I learnt a lot as well, even if most of it is useless trivia. For example, a 747 needs to be washed every return trip to Europe to remove dirt that would otherwise increase drag.

After the tour we headed up to the Qantas Club to have a drink and a chat. About half of our group was refused entry, and those who made it in were subsequently ejected as Qantas decided to change their access rules for the day. It was quite strange really. Since I had a boarding pass I was able to stay in the lounge and had a good chat with a group of about 10 Flyertalkers who had avoided being ejected. (More about the ejection)

Rental car shenanigans

My credit card has just been charged for a Budget rental car in New Zealand over two months ago. Only problem is they've charged me double what they were meant to. When I called them up I found them to be quite incompetent. They have no record of the reservation number, but were able to track it down from my credit card number. They can't explain why I was overcharged, but said they would immediately refund it. Then they'll charge me the correct amount, which they claim was $320. This is incorrect as well, so now they're calling up their New Zealand office to find out what's going on. Then they will call me back. It has been three hours so far. Idiots.

Hardware problems

I was installing a new power supply for my mum's PC yesterday arvo. It one of those new-fangled P4 power supplies with the extra connector on it. I hooked it all up and left the P4 connector dangling. The thing didn't power up at all, so I called up one of my mates to see if this P4 connector was important. He said it shouldn't be, and told me how to connect two pins on the motherboard connector to check that the power supply was working.

As I went to unplug everything and take the power supply out again, I noticed a little black power switch on the back of the power supply. Oops.