Hotels are dastardly places. First off they charge ridiculous prices to rent you a room that who knows how many people have walked around naked in, rubbing who knows what on anything they can touch. On top of that they have a restaurant that is the only decent place to eat nearby and over priced. Which causes you to avoid it like the plague and end up eating Chinese food. Even Worse, some of them even charge for “high speed” internet access that is only slightly faster than AOL. But nothing is more evil than hotel televisions. Here’s the idea. Take a TV then remove or disable any inputs on it then install this shady box that allows guest to watch about 10 channels and order all the latest and greatest movies with the simple mis-click of a button.

Being that I practically live in hotels at this point I’ve taken to carrying my Wii with me on my journeys. At first everything was great. The Residence Inn in Cambridge had two pretty nice TVs that were ready and willing to let me waste hours of time on the Godfather: Blackhand Edition.

The Sheraton, Parsippany. Being a Sheraton and paying a crazy amount of money each night to stay in the “Club Level”, I figured I’d have no trouble. Oh boy was I wrong. First there are no inputs on the TV. Alright then I suppose I can just buy an RF adapter and hook it up through that. Nope. They’ve got some metal casing around the coax jack AND there’s no where in walking distance to buy an adapter. Alright I can survive 3 weeks no problem. Besides I just bought a Nintendo DS I can always play that.

Three weeks go by and I’m jonesing for a Wii fix. I head home for the weekend and pick up an RF adapter and Mario Strikers Charged. Next stop the Best Western; Simi Valley, California. Not a bad hotel but again no inputs and metal jacks on the coax connectors. Ok I guess I can wait another week…

After that I move on the the Marriott Courtyard nearby. The Residence was owned by Marriott and they had some big press release about all sorts of connectivity options. So I can’t go wrong, right? I get to the room. I’ve only got a standard CRT TV but low and behold I’ve got inputs. Not only composite but component as well! Hallelujah!

Of course everything is working out way to good. The next night I attempt to connect my Wii. I plug everything in turn it on pick up the remote. “Where’s the input button? Well maybe I can just us the channel buttons to switch to a/v mode…hmmm…maybe a different input will work…” after another 20 minutes of trying just about everything I can think of I call the front desk. “I’m sorry sir the TV is not compatible with the inputs.” Wait WHAT? The TV isn’t compatible with itself? So I hit the net. I discover it’s possible to put the TV into maintenance mode which will allow you to enable the inputs. IF you have a special remote. Of course I’ve only got some crappy “On Command” remote. Eventually someone suggests that I go buy a Universal Remote and use that.

The next day I hit Target and buy a universal remote. I get back to the room, crap I forgot to buy batteries. So after eating dinner (For someone who was never a big fan of Chinese I sure do eat a lot of it these days) I head over to Walmart which is conveniently behind my hotel (I’ve got a lovely view of the sign from my room). I find the batteries and decide I’ll just take a quick peek at the DVDs. On my way out of the electronics section I see a clearance rack. Woot! Among the standard junk I find a Nintendo Wi-Fi USB connector. This little doohickey plugs in to your computer and basically uses your net connection to create a wireless network that a Wii (or DS) can connect to. Neat! I decide to buy it if it costs less than 20 bucks. I wander around looking for a price scanner eventually I go up to some guy and ask. “It’s 15 dollars I can tell” he says, without ever looking at me. I’m a bit skeptical at his psychic powers but I figure if it costs to much at the register I just won’t buy it.

I head to the self checkout line and of course the thing is out of paper so I don’t get a receipt. The good news is it did cost 15 dollars (technically 16.06 or so) Now I know if I walk away without a receipt as soon as I get to the door the alarm is going to go off and that old guy guarding the door isn’t going to believe for a second that I just didn’t happen to get a receipt. So I go to the lady at the front and tell her what happen. She ignores me walks away then comes back and checks the paper in the machine, replaces it and continues to ignore me. “Ummmm if I walk through the door is this going to go off?”

“Just get out of here.” So I hold my breath walk through the door aaaaaaannd no alarm. Hooray! I get back to the room use the universal remote to enable the inputs and install the Wi-Fi connector and suddenly I not only have a Wii that works but it can get online as well! After doing a little celebration dance I boot up Strikers.

Really the whole point I’m trying to make her is that I’m obviously spending my time in beautiful, sunny California wisely.

I keep getting asked what I’ve been doing up here. I’ve been busy(ish). Lots of walking and very little sitting around online. Well less than normal for me at least.
My normal work day involves waking up at 6:30, going to work and sitting in class all day. Afterwards I either go out to eat somewhere with some of the people from class or eat leftover takeout food. When I do return to the hotel I play Godfather: Blackhand Edition or watch the Millennium DVDs I bought over the weekend. (Locke’s in it!) Usually by midnight I’m snoozing in bed.
Of course it isn’t exactly like that every night but that’s a pretty decent overview. Tucked away in between all that is a lot of walking around the city. I love being able to walk everywhere, although it seems to take just as long as it would to drive somewhere in RI. The nice part is it gives me just enough exercise to keep me from feeling to bad about eating out all the time. For the record, Starbucks is my new favorite place to eat lunch. Nothing can beat a grande mocha frappachino and pre-made turkey (or tuna!) sandwich combo.
Last Wednesday I finally got a laptop, network login and email access. The laptop is pretty nice. Waaay better than my old laptop and my home computer, which is pretty sad. Because I’m a dork: IBM Lenovo, Core Duo T2500 (2 GHz) with 2 gigs of ram and an ATI Mobility Radeon 1400. The day everyone got them I get a call from Sumeer a few minutes after getting back from class. “Did you read your email yet?” “Nope” “They scheduled dinner for us; it’s in a half hour” So everyone rushed down to the lobby and we all took a couple of cabs and to the Atlantic Fish. As we get out of the cab we see a ton of people dressed up all fancy. Crap. I’m wearing jeans and a semi-wrinkly shirt, but luckily I’m not the only one. Then we realize that the Atlantic Fish is actually the less swanky but still nice place next door. We had a private room for 15 people and while there I met a bunch of the Practice Leaders at Pega and ate really expensive fish. I’m pretty sure the bill was like 700 bucks easy.
Over the weekend I spent most of my time continuing to wander around the city. This time with John and Colin, who are from England. They seemed amazed that everything wasn’t vandalized and how cheap everything is. Which made me wonder if I really want to visit England someday. We also went on a duck tour. A duck tour is a tour of the city on a World War 2 vehicle that’s a cross between a boat and a truck. A conducktor (get it?), drives you around the city and points out various sights and trivia facts, then they drive into the river and you motor around a bit. It was pretty cool I’d walked to most of the places we went too on the tour already but the background information was neat. While on the water the conDUCKtor (now you get it right?) let a couple of kids drive and some random ~30 year old guy. One of the kids nearly managed to turn the boat around before the driver straightened things out.
One thing I’ve noticed about being here is that it doesn’t seem to matter which way you go, you always end up finding what you’re looking for. Sunday night I got on Google and mapped out directions to a movie theatre. Them I set off to find it.
On the way to the theatre I cut through the park and saw some rather odd things. First, there was a guy outside preaching to a group of homeless people. A few feet away some lady was dressed all in white, face makeup and all wearing a colonial-esque dress stood in front of a white broken TV with out moving a muscle. I also saw a drunken guy who was involved in some sort of drunken fight the day before. Which involved another bleeding drunk guy, the police and paramedics. Interesting stuff no doubt.

Ok back to the movie theatre. So after I get out of the park I see a movie theatre ahead. Wait a minute, this isn’t the right road. I ended up finding a completely different theatre which just happened to be playing Transformers at more convenient time.
Transformers was way better than I expected. I was a bit worried they were going to destroy transformers the way they killed Inspector Gadget. There were tons of inconsistencies and plot holes but they didn’t stop me from being entertained through-out the movie. When will Hollywood realize that a monitor isn’t the computer? Or for that matter learn anything about how computers work? Overall I give it a 76/100.
Today I started round two of class which began by contradicting much of the stuff we learned in the first week. I’ve got a new instructor who is a better teacher and manages to get us out on time but my head was spinning with all the stuff that seems to have changed since last week. I was also informed that I need to get a passport, which makes me wonder where I might be headed in the future. Canada is probably the most likely place. I attempted to visit the post office today to drop off the application but when I walked through the automatic door an alarm went off and everyone on the block looked at me. So I got out of there pretty quickly. Why the door would open if the post office is closed and the alarm active I don’t understand.

~Flashback: Ryan driving~
So I’m driving into Boston last night and the city just kind of appears out of nowhere(maybe I wasn’t paying attention?). Scary I get off at the right exit but I’m in the wrong lane and end up going north instead of south on the road I’m supposed to be on. I go by the Boston Museum of Science (mental note to go back there) and inexplicably wind up exactly where I want to be. Of course by the time I realize that I’ve already missed the turn and have to drive another 10 minutes before I get back there again. I see a Marriott sign, Residence Inn is owned by Marriott, cool there’s my hotel! I get out ask the guy standing there if I’m in the right place. Nope 5 U-turns later I find it. I check in walk up to my room. Niiiice, Kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom, 2 TVs! (pictures!)This is super neat! first thing’s first run around and open all the cupboards and drawers. OK internet time, bust out the laptop plug in the hard wire. connected, disconnected, connected, disconnected, connec…you get the idea. Ok maybe wireless. It’s slow and a little flukey but works. So I shower to get the salt from the beach off of me and unpack. Then I hit the sack.
~end flashback~

I woke up at 6, showered, dressed spent about 20 minutes getting my tie to look right. I realized I had no idea what time I was supposed to be there so I figured 8:30 was a reasonable idea and went does stairs for the free breakfast. Which was pretty generic but free none the less. Luckily while I was there I ran into one of the guys that interviewed the same day as I did. So I ended up eating and talking with with him. He said he was going over at 9 and was going to meet him at 8:30ish and head over. I manage to get distracted and don’t get out there until about 8:30. He’s missing, I knock on his door, not there. Ok then I’ll head out. Walked to work. (a nice change from driving 20 miles a day) I get and we’ve got a book full of powerpoint slides and a lab manual. It’s like school all over again, except for 8.75 hours instead of 2 (9 - 5:45) today. At lunch I went up to HR and talked to this girl about getting a parking pass. I manage to get a free one, for me at least, and then moved my car to a different parking garage. It cost me 20 bucks for one night in the other garage. Tomorrow I’m in class(training) from 9 to 5 and then orientation from 5-7. Whoopie! For now I’m going to change and wander around the city a bit and see what I come across.