Some pictures from Simi Valley…
(more…)

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 decided to start this post with a few good things about New Jersey.

1. The weather has been nice, except for one crazy thunderstorm that took out the power on Saturday but that was just cool.
2. I’m getting a lot of exercise while I’m here.
3. Gas is cheaper than in Rhode Island.
4. There’s lots of rabbits around.
5. I’m getting paid.

There I feel better about being here already. Not much exciting has happened. I walked roughly 10-15 miles this week end. I didn’t accomplish much more than seeing Underdog and buying some milk. Underdog was a good movie, not great but entertaining and I didn’t feel ripped off afterwards. Maybe I’ve just got a soft spot for Disney movies. 6.5/10. The milk was excellent. I don’t have a fridge in my room so it’s currently sitting in my sink surrounded by ice and covered with a towel. I have to add more ice every 3-4 hours which is a pain but milk is worth it. I also managed to get the rest of the pictures from Boston and the Museum of Science posted as well as some new ones from Parsippany.

The good news is that the hotel feeds me breakfast and dinner. By dinner I mean appetizers but if you eat a lot of appetizers then it’s a lot like dinner. I walked about 3 miles yesterday and all I found was a Chinese restaurant, a half built Dunkin’ Donuts and about 50 million rabbits. I also found another hotel which is about as expensive as this one but has free internet, a kitchen and is probably the one I should have stayed in. Took my laptop over to the other hotel and sat outside trying to hijack an internet connection. I managed to get on but they wanted you to register with a room number and agree to stuff. All of which can easily be faked but I decided I didn’t really want to have someone else get charged for me checking my email. (At that point I didn’t know it was free at that hotel.)

Conscience: 1
1337 Hacker: 0

Afterwards I paid the 10 bucks for 24 hours of internet access at my hotel. It was wicked slow, the connection kept dropping because the cable was broken and I couldn’t access randomfool.net. Basically a complete rip off. So after screwing with it for a few minutes I went down to the front desk. I told the guy there that the internet here is a useless rip off and asked for my money back. He didn’t seem to understand what I meant by the internet so I tried to explain it again.” You know the cable…In the room…you plug it in, pay some money and get internet.” At that point he finally understands and looks up my account. Then he tells me I’ve been on for an hour. I’ve been on for a little over a half hour at best and besides its really crappy access. Apparently realizing I’m somewhat agitated he quickly says “It’s all set, you’re all set” and clicks a bunch of stuff. I assume this mean no charge and head back up to my room. Sure enough, I’ve still got internet access. I make one last attempt to check my email which fails and then decide to clean the room up. If I end up getting charged for that crap I’m going to be very unhappy. Maybe I’m just cheap.

As for work it’s going pretty well but I forgot how slow working in an office feels.

Well, Boston is over, if I think of it I’ll add a post later about that.

New Jersey is pretty lame so far. My flight was canceled last night, which I found out after my Uncle dropped me off at the airport. I rescheduled for this morning at 6am and called my Uncle. He forgot his cell so he drove all the way home and then had to turn around to get me. As a consolation, I went out and bought a Nintendo DS, Mario Kart and Brain Age. (Both of which are lots of fun.)

I got dropped off at about 3:30 in the morning because the guy at the counter said it was going to be really busy because of all the canceled flights. I show up and hardly anyone is in the airport. So I grabbed a coffee and started playing Mario Kart and doing Sudoku on Brain Age. My flight ending up being delayed for 2 hours because the pilot got redirected to Boston last night. After the shortest flight ever I arrived in NJ. I collected my bags no problem and I got some shady guy to drive me to the hotel. Which is big and fancy looking on the outside but I liked the Residence Inn better. When I tried to access my email to get my boss’s cell I found out they want 10 bucks a day to access the internet at the hotel. That’s on top of the 240 bucks a night it costs to sleep there. Bastards. I’m too cheap to pay for it unless I have too so I’m giving up the internet unless I find a rogue access point.After taking a looking at the TV I discovered I can’t hook my Wii up to it. (No RCA). So there goes the rest of my entertainment for the week. At least I have a DS to partially entertain me. On top of all that, there’s apparently nothing within walking distance. GAH!