Category: The Bit Bucket

Something a little off topic… Traveling

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:bitbucket-category ]I recently took a trip to Vegas for a quick vacation and three things kind of stuck out for me:

  1. My phone
  2. Hotel WiFi
  3. The rental car

My Phone

I used off airport parking and dropped my car off in lots of time, I then grabbed the shuttle to the airport, checked in and went to US Customs.  At which point I realized I’d left my phone in my car!

It’s amazing how dependent on our phones we’ve become and as I’d gotten to the airport with lots of time to spare, I had enough time to go back to my car and get it.

But it could certainly been a very different story.  I don’t know if I’d have survived without it for almost a week 🙂

Hotel WiFi

Staying on the Vegas strip in a major hotel chain provides certain advantages, Internet access being one of them.

On previous trips to this hotel there two options for Internet access, WiFi and wired.  I’d normally used the wired connection and brought a mini router with me to share it out to my other devices.

This time, the wired connection was gone and WiFi was all that was left.

The WiFi signal was strong but was limited to two devices, which was a little annoying, but not a show stopper.

The real problem was whatever proxy they had set up was messing with the HTTP headers and half the sites I’d visited seemed to think I was running IE on XP and warning me to upgrade.

A quick test by connecting to my VPN at home proved this out as browsing was fine after that.

One day we won’t have to deal with that kind of crappy access, but it seems a long way off every time I take a trip.

The Rental Car

I picked up a rental car and decided to upgrade to a Dodge Challenger.  The looks of the car are amazing but sitting in it really felt tight, almost claustrophobic.  I’m not a tall person and I hit my head several times getting in and out of it.

And visibility out of it was atrocious.

If really shows how a design can look great but not be particularly user-friendly.

 

Something a little off topic…

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:bitbucket-category ]So this weeks post is a little off the beaten path for my normal topics, but none the less here it goes.

I was on vacation recently in Europe, I was in Berlin at the parliament building (the Reichstag) waiting to go up to the rooftop observation area when I overheard a conversation.  It was two grandparents with their grandson (English-speaking, sounded slightly southern US, but not certain) touring the city.  It went something like this:

Grandfather: “So do you want to wait to go up?”

Grandson: “I don’t know, it says the dome is closed and theirs no photography allow…”

Grandmother: “It doesn’t sound like it’s worth the wait.”

Grandson: “Yea.”

Grandmother: “I just don’t want to have brought you all this way and then you regret not going up when we get home.”

Grandson: “No, that’s ok let’s just take some pictures of the outside.”

The thought that came to me was “If you don’t have a photo to show off to your friends is an experience worth it?”

It seemed this group certainly thought so.  The experience wasn’t complete for them without some way to show others they had done it.

And I guess that’s what I don’t get about travel photo’s.  For me the experience is what I go for.  I don’t care if anyone else knows, I know and that’s more than enough.

Of course once I went up the view was great and you could take photo’s (you were only not allowed to take photo’s in the security area’s).  And I did take a few but the experience would have been well worth it even if  had to leave my camera with security (and when I say camera, I mean phone 😉

A man in a field and a balloonist…

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:bitbucket-category ]A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts, “Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?”

The man below says, “Yes. You’re in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field.”

“You must work in information technology” says the balloonist.

“I do,” replies the man, “How did you know?”

“Well,” says the balloonist, “Everything you have told me is technically correct, but it’s of no use to anyone.”

The man below says, “You must work in business.”

“I do,” replies the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” says the man, “You don’t know where you are, or where you’re going, but you expect me to be able to help. You’re in the same position you were before we met, but now it’s my fault.”

Source:  AskMen Joke of the Day – Nov 1, 2011