So my laptop screen died on Thursday, or so I thought. After getting a new screen on Friday, the problem still persisted. Dell were coming back to look at it this morning, looking at replacing the graphics card and motherboard. It’s working very intermittently - until lines or dots cover the screen.

I say Dell were coming back to look at it this morning but there was a massive power outage affecting half of Auckland city thanks to a freak storm taking out a power station’s supply.

Power’s being restored to the city slowly but driving to pick up Regan from the airport was quite scary - over 350 of the city’s traffic lights were out! Thankfully his (turbulent) plane trip was only delayed - other parts of the country are snowed in pretty bad.

So with all these adventures, I’ve been thankful that:

• I recently (finally) made the switch to gmail to handle all my email accounts and make quick backups of recent files I might need.
• I’m using basecamp to handle client projects. I can log in from anywhere and pick things up where they left off.
• I’ve been using Streamload to back up my files online.

Here’s the view out my window this morning during the storm… and no lights on in the city (including the top of the Sky Tower!):