28 | April | 2005 | Perfect Path

So I’m staying at the Chelsea Village Hotel tonight for an awayday that I’m running.

In the room is a card about the high speed internet access. At the bottom is a logo saying canovawireless and on the wall is a cable router/wireless access point thing.

The points on the card are:

1) Ensure your room key is inserted in the wall socket so that your room power is switched on.

Now this is the first thing – I didn’t read this bit at all, or at least I didn’t realise the implications – I’ve popped out of the room a couple of times and left my laptop on to charge after I’ve been using it on the go today. Each time, when I’ve come back my laptops gone into snooze mode and I’m starting to think there’s something wrong, but now I see that when I leave the room, the power goes off. Is it me or is that worthy of a “Durrrrr”?

2) Check that the wall modem is showing a steady light.

3) Locate the ethernet cable on your desk

4) Plug the ethernet cable into your laptop

5) Open your web browser on your laptop

6) On the screen that appears either login or sign up for an account.

You are now ready to use the high speed connection.

OK. So I think, well this is obviously old information as there’s a wireless point here now – but actually, the wireless doesn’t go on until after you’ve gone through the login by plugging in the ethernet. Again, “Durrrr!” Why do I have to plug my laptop in and login in order to then be able to unplug the ethernet use wireless (presumably so that I can carry my laptop over into bed with me, or something).

I see so many blogposts like this about clueless access providers in hotels – when are they going to ask people what they want and then give it to them, instead of this crazy mish-mash of services that are difficult to use, even for the technically (kinda) competent.

Too tired for tags.

I’m in the middle of running an awayday for a team in a large Government department and suddenly the subject of conversation over dinner is blogs!

“What are they?” “Ooooh, do you have one” “I think I should have one.” “We should use them for sharing things that we’ve seen instead of photocopying one for everyone” “So you have to really like writing” “Do you sometimes pull back after writing a post and think nobody’s going to be interested in this” “What if nobody reads it?”

All questions I’ve heard reported by other people, but never actually experienced, especially when dining with clients – this is an important first for me (how sad).

tags:civil service & blogs