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The morning news ... from traveler. Rambles of little note and little notes.
As much as I like travel by train I was not happy to leave North Station last night to be beset by panhandlers who'd appartently been attracted to the Fleetwood Mac concert crowd. By bowling straight through at speed we got to the street without reaching into pockets and became short term wards of a very Boston taxi driver who remarked at pace on the crowds, the “punks” demanding money, the roadwork with no visible police presence and why commercial flaggers would be cheaper and more useful, and on the proper way to navigate Boston as a cabbie. So, now we know. I note that we seemed to drive in circles at the start ... a comment about which drew the navigation lesson.
To the Westin and .... a quick snack, we thought . But the easy snack-and-sign turned into a nice meal with an annoyance at the end when we discovered that we couldn't just sign the chicken fingers and glass of wine to the room ...and then more annoyance when suddenly “the computer is down” and the staffer offered to just copy our information and put it through later ... we declined and waited for the computer to come back up. Which, gee, it did fairly quickly*.
Then, after advertently asking a front desk person when the buffet opened in the morning, we arrived at Sauciety before 7 AM to discover that – when there is not a convention in, the buffet happens on week ends. And oh, the advertised convenient South Station shuttle – that's an evening thing... all this meaning we could have easily stayed at a less expensive and equally inconvenient hotel that gave us freee waffles. Well, learn by doing, I guess. I will certainly mention these minor things when my SPG comment form pops up in email.
It turns out that if we were on a commuter train within Boston we might have WIFI bit at this juncture the “regular” Northeast Corridor trains -- this regular train – does not. I'll see if the Acela provides it as a matter of course ... we do get v spoiled. One of the reasons I was asking about the G1 is that I understand a tethered G1 can act as a celluar modem on its own, if one wished not to type on the G1 itself.
*While computers do go down, sometimes they are merely being ignored. I was in a Dunkin Donuts in Reisterstown Maryland a few years ago where the computers were up or down depending on who was taking the money. One staffer seemed to be leaving transactions on top the register and they would disappear when another staffer came by. Very odd.
The taxi ride to South Station was a liitle more straightforward than the ride to the Westin and we arrived in good time and good order, both of us grabbing lunch-to-go on the fly from Au Bon Pain. I checked the little bookstore at South Station ... and they had neither Duainfey or Longeye, which was a great disappointment. Still, there were Baen books on the shelves, so there's hope for us.
... and we've had our breakfast Friday morning, snarfing up a replacement ethernet cable since the hotel lobby-onlyWIFI really doesn't reach our floor. Stuff later....
As much as I like travel by train I was not happy to leave North Station last night to be beset by panhandlers who'd appartently been attracted to the Fleetwood Mac concert crowd. By bowling straight through at speed we got to the street without reaching into pockets and became short term wards of a very Boston taxi driver who remarked at pace on the crowds, the “punks” demanding money, the roadwork with no visible police presence and why commercial flaggers would be cheaper and more useful, and on the proper way to navigate Boston as a cabbie. So, now we know. I note that we seemed to drive in circles at the start ... a comment about which drew the navigation lesson.
To the Westin and .... a quick snack, we thought . But the easy snack-and-sign turned into a nice meal with an annoyance at the end when we discovered that we couldn't just sign the chicken fingers and glass of wine to the room ...and then more annoyance when suddenly “the computer is down” and the staffer offered to just copy our information and put it through later ... we declined and waited for the computer to come back up. Which, gee, it did fairly quickly*.
Then, after advertently asking a front desk person when the buffet opened in the morning, we arrived at Sauciety before 7 AM to discover that – when there is not a convention in, the buffet happens on week ends. And oh, the advertised convenient South Station shuttle – that's an evening thing... all this meaning we could have easily stayed at a less expensive and equally inconvenient hotel that gave us freee waffles. Well, learn by doing, I guess. I will certainly mention these minor things when my SPG comment form pops up in email.
It turns out that if we were on a commuter train within Boston we might have WIFI bit at this juncture the “regular” Northeast Corridor trains -- this regular train – does not. I'll see if the Acela provides it as a matter of course ... we do get v spoiled. One of the reasons I was asking about the G1 is that I understand a tethered G1 can act as a celluar modem on its own, if one wished not to type on the G1 itself.
*While computers do go down, sometimes they are merely being ignored. I was in a Dunkin Donuts in Reisterstown Maryland a few years ago where the computers were up or down depending on who was taking the money. One staffer seemed to be leaving transactions on top the register and they would disappear when another staffer came by. Very odd.
The taxi ride to South Station was a liitle more straightforward than the ride to the Westin and we arrived in good time and good order, both of us grabbing lunch-to-go on the fly from Au Bon Pain. I checked the little bookstore at South Station ... and they had neither Duainfey or Longeye, which was a great disappointment. Still, there were Baen books on the shelves, so there's hope for us.
... and we've had our breakfast Friday morning, snarfing up a replacement ethernet cable since the hotel lobby-onlyWIFI really doesn't reach our floor. Stuff later....
