From the B&B

Wow.. this is a fantastic old place, full of character.. reminds me of the shared academic house I stayed at when I visited Dani in Ithaca — varnished hardwood floors, high ceilings, intricately edged windows, beautiful carpets, antique dressers, stained glass, wooden staircases, giant shared areas with wicker furniture. The only complaint I have is that the walls are a little thin, so I can hear my neighbour chatting away on his phone. But I’m sure that’ll be over soon enough. The owner met up with us as we arrived at 8:20pm, and her son (no older than 13) helped us upstairs with our luggage! Crazy. Breakfast is usually somewhere between 7-7:30ish, but can vary depending on our schedule. Neat. There is only one shower and one bath to the six rooms up here on the second floor, so it’s going to be something of a scramble in the morning. There’s also a shower downstairs, so perhaps I’ll saunter down there in the house-provided robe. I dunno, I’ll work that out when I get to it 🙂 Also, the owner didn’t know the terminology, but yes, there’s in-room internet by way of ethernet jacks (supply your own cable). I “accidentally” saw the house’s network closet in a kitchen closet, and it would be a pretty straightforward thing for them to offer wireless internet access by replacing their current hub with one that broadcasts 802.11. The only moderately tricky part would be the authentication such that non-guests don’t leech the signal, but I think a “good-enough” scheme would be to hand out a password that changes periodically.
Hmm. Police sirens. Kind of puts a damper on the mood. But not too much. Now to find out how the bed is 🙂
PS: I’ve included a little rant I wrote on the way from Sarasota to Atlanta this morning — click that “Continue reading” link for more info..

Written 11am EST, en route to Atlanta:
My flight experience this morning went smoothly enough, until I got on Delta’s jet:
• I was in Zone 9, meaning I got on the plane last
• I was in seat 15C. When I checked which side of the plane “C” was on, it was on my left, aisle side. So when I got to row 15 and saw someone on the left, I said, “Excuse me, I think you’re in my seat”, and when I saw his confused look, I looked up again and to my surprise saw he was in 15D – “C” had switched the the right aisle side. Grumble.
• Because I got on so late, there was no space in the overhead bins for my courier bag, so under my seat it went.
• Being tired from needing to get on such an early flight, I wanted to get some sleep. But because my bag was under the seat in front of me, I only had about half a footlength of spare room for my feet, so I put my foot three inches into the aisle (just on the other side of the luggage guard) and closed my eyes.
• My eyes were opened about a minute later when a flight attendant tripped over my foot.
• The video during the aircraft safety message was too quiet to hear.
• The pre-flight video was impossible to see, since our TV monitors were set to what looked like ultra-high contrast mode, and only things in pure white were visible. I would have thought this was just the video signal, but there were other monitors showing the correct video.
• Speaking of the seat in front of me, the armrest on that chair was completely missing, and the stub where it used to be was covered with what looked like white nylon fabric tape (it said “Permacel”)
• The person sitting in said seat complained to the flight attendant, who got him a feedback form and asked him to fill it out.
• It was nearly impossible to get my laptop out of my bag to write this.