Have a Dell or Apple laptop? You're not using it on a Virgin flight

I can't blame 'em, they've had incidents where they've had battery fires in the cargo holds of planes and that ain't good. If the flight has power outlets in the seat, supposedly they'll provide you with an adapter, but you'll have to remove your battery from your laptop regardless.

The amusing thing is that IBM Thinkpads also use the Sony batteries that have been bursting into flame of late, but they're not named. I've got a Thinkpad, so does my wife, and I don't know exactly when the "energetic" Sony batteries came into play, I ought to check into that. It'd be cool if we could get my wife's battery replaced for free, it's fried. Mine is holding up just fine, it's almost (or over) two years old, but it also gets discharged on a regular basis and doesn't live on a charger for all its operating life. (I don't think it'll happen, the article says it is for T42s, mine is a T23 and Russet's is even older).

I don't fly nearly as much as I used to post-9/11, it's more a matter of opportunity and need than any fear. But I've always been annoyed that the airlines that I fly never have those outlets in the seat. Personally, I want my airline seat to have a katana holder like in the Kill Bill movies. That would take care of the terrorist threat really quickly. ;-)

http://techfreep.com/virgin-atlantic-bans-dell-apple-laptops.htm



http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/09/16/2236256.shtml

Our dog has such impeccable taste!

There was a going away party tonight at Sunspot, the National Solar Observatory about two miles down the road from my wife's observatory, one of the workers on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope is returning to Poland to teach. Anyway, VERY good spread, including some good veggies. We brought Celeste into the party for a little while and plied her with veggies. I'd never seen her eat cauliflower, so I offered it and she quite readily accepted. Then I offered her a mushroom -- SHE TURNED HER NOSE UP AT IT! Gave it a tentative sniff, then turned away!

MY DOG HAS GREAT TASTE!

(For the record, pretty much at the top of my Most Despised Food Items list is mushrooms and olives.)