Typical

Today was a packing day. I'm taking one large suitcase and a carry-on travel bag with me to London.

Don't be misled by these things. The suitcase is very large. It can carry two suits (in one of its compartments, two pairs of shoes and I reckon 20 litres of clothes and books. It has a retractable handle and wheels thank goodness.

To think, until about a decade ago suitcases were never designed like this. Over a century of uncomfortable-to-carry travel luggage.

My carry-on is a soft vinyl bag. But although it's allowed onto airplane cabins it's big. In it I'll be taking my laptop (in a bag), my big electronic thing for self-testing blood, a pair of trainers (sneakers) and a few other things.

As well as packing I also found that my Palm no longer receives email. Just when I'm most likely to need that facility.

I tried loads of things then phoned my mobile phone company's support service. They had no idea. Eventually I tried changing my password (over the web, not with their assistance) and it started working. Remember it had worked fine on Wednesday. I reckon they made a configuration change on one of their servers and hadn't informed users or their own support people.

I also set up my Palm to receive AvantGo news feeds. I ran into some error messages. I looked at the support pages and news groups off their site. No help at all. Eventually I looked at my firewall and reconfigured it to let AvantGo work.

In both cases I was disappointed in the ability of the support given by the companies.

Today I applied for no jobs and received no bites. But, hey, it's a Saturday. And I've got a job which starts on Monday.