Hotel Wireless
Why is it that when you check into a hotel - and your first question is “Do you have a room available” and your second is “Do you have wi-fi to your hotel rooms” - they put you in one of the three rooms in the hotel without any actual wireless coverage?
Did they think I was asking just to make conversation? Is it a polite conversation starter, along the lines of “Isn’t the weather great?” and “How about those Mariners?” (The answer to the latter is “Just about as wonderful as your wireless coverage!)
Three nights out of four on this trip our hotel wireless has utterly sucked. It’s been either nonexistent, one out of four bars, or so congested we can’t stay connected. As an IT geek who needs to manage work and personal email during a trip, this has been very annoying.
BlackBerry GPRS Internet access is just not sufficient. I’m not set up to moblog (blog from my handheld - I don’t think it’s secure) and browsing is annoyingly slow.
Must… have… Internet. Going… through… withdrawals. I guess that’s what a vacation is for! Fresh air, pine trees, hiking trails and all that Outward Bound type of stuff.
I heard on the radio this week that Chrysler is coming out with a 2009 car that provides mobile, in-vehicle wi-fi access. I like it. 
Miles covered: 583
Road reading: In the Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
June 28th, 2008
Brief low-bandwidth comment:
HI!
June 28th, 2008
Hotel wireless tends to be pretty spotty in my limited experience. A lot of places who say, “We have free wireless!” really mean to say, “Somewhere in the building there is a wireless router which possibly sends a signal on days with low solar activity to the three rooms not effectively insulated by the construction materials used when this building was erected in a pre-wireless, pre-cellular world; also you will have to deal with a whole bunch of obnoxious gateway pages and check off on a usage agreement that (if you read it) technically says you’re only supposed to use our wireless service to look at the gateway page and log off.”
How are you enjoying the Rothfuss? I haven’t finished it yet, but I found the first few chapters were really painful and clumsy and then suddenly–around the third or fourth chapter, maybe–it started to get really, really good. If I didn’t have this bad habit of starting other books before I was finished with one, I’d probably have wiped out Wind by now. Unfortunately, with the pages I have left (not to mention the “Volume One Of The Kingkiller Chronicles” caption on the cover), it looks like it will have to end with some kind of cliffhanger or with much unresolved. Considering I’m one of the hordes angrily hoping George R.R. Martin won’t die and that Naomi Novik kind of suckered me in, I’m mildly annoyed to have been dragged into a third ongoing saga. Still: enjoying it, bottom line.
Travel safe!
June 28th, 2008
Michelle - hi back! The cool thing about comments is that they come to me via email on my blackberry - so I don’t need actual browser access to see them.
Eric - totally agree with you on the wireless. Would it be churlish to insist on an RF signal strength spot check before accepting the hotel room offered, do you think?
Hmmm… Rothfuss. I’m not a voluminous series fan. Jordan well and truly turned me off THAT. I didn’t notice it was first in a series until I got the book back to the hotel room and that was a first strike against it.
I actually finished it, I’m a fast reader and long, long days on the road gave me huge amounts of reading time. It was good, but not great. The author has moments where he’s quite good, and moments where his prose limps and drags. It’s certainly no threat to LOTR, in spite of what the cover blurbs say, but it’s a darn good first published novel.
I found some of it derivative - but really, how many ways can you tell fantasy? There are only so many tropes available to the genre.
I gave up on Martin - he kept killing off all my favorite characters. I’m still reading Novik although I feel like her quality is declining. I *highly* recommend Elizabeth Bear’s Blood and Iron - best fantasy novel I’ve read in many, many years. I’m not a fan of urban fantasy, and the cover blurb made me think that was where she was going, but it’s not, at all. And, of course, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Chalion books rock.
There is so much fantasy/sword and sorcery being written, and so much of it is excessively romantic and, well, derivative, I have a hard time getting excited about much of it. I tend to get cranky that it’s stealing shelf space from SF, but occasionally do enjoy reading the good stuff.
June 29th, 2008
Coincidentally, I ended up finishing the Rothfuss yesterday. Took it up to Boudreaux’s and read the last chunk over lunch (shrimp po’boy with cajun mayeux… mmmm).
I agree he’s a mixed bag. When he’s good, he’s very good. When he’s not, he’s mediocre. My copy doesn’t have the Tolkien comparisons; I’m not sure why anyone would do that to a fantasy-writer’s first novel unless it was obviously as good as Susanna Clarke’s first (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell), since claiming any new book is as good as the number-one classic in it’s genre is inviting everyone to notice how it doesn’t match up. With all the “magician-in-training” stuff, I’d be more likely to compare Rothfuss to Rowling, and even there he doesn’t always measure up. Overall, I’m happy I read it–as you say, overall it’s fairly good.
I also agree that Novik has been steadily declining. Not sure what’s going on there, but I was pretty disappointed by Empire Of Ivory. She seems to be treading water, and some of the characters’ charming traits are less so the fourth time around.
You’re not the only person I know who’s given up on Martin for that very reason. Perversely, that’s sort of why I’m sticking with him: although you can go too far with it, it takes a certain amount of ballsiness in genre lit to brutally wipe out a beloved or heroic character without compromise (”Ha, I’m not really dead!”; “And that’s how we can bring her back to life with (magic/technology/a dumb plot device)!”; “I’m his twin who is just like him in every way except for one letter in my name!”; ad nauseum). Martin is, as they say, “keeping it real,” a trick few fantasy writers have the stomach for. I just wish he’d actually publish on the schedule he’s set for himself, tho’ I guess it’s alright to take his time if the writing remains good. (No! Publish, you bastard! What’s taking you so damn long!)
I don’t think the RF check would be churlish, but the hotel manager might think you’re some kind of terrorist or something when you pull out a little blippy thing with an LED on it. Or argue with you. “There’s no signal in our room.” “All of our rooms have wireless access.” “No, I tested it, we have no signal.” “All of our rooms have wireless access.” “No, see, I took this RF detector and it shows there’s no bars in my room.” “The bar is on the first floor, just off the lobby, past the elevators.” “I’m talking about wireless internet access, you moron!” “All of our rooms have wireless access.” [Whereupon Jeri leaps across the counter and attempts to throttle the manager; chaos ensues, fade to black.]