Road Games
So, as soon as I settle on a new theme, I leave town again. This is the Milwaukee edition of my Seattle blog. As noted below, I usually stay in a Residence Inn here. However, the client has been on-again, off-again about doing an Atlanta side trip, so I did not reserve Monday & Tuesday at the RI, and, sure enough, the ATL jaunt is off, and RI had no availability. Man, what happened to the war, SARS and the fear of travelling?
Meanwhile, I kept hearing that Holiday Inn Express had free WiFi for their guests, so I decided to check it out. Wow, it’s painless, and really fast, at least from where I’m sitting, propped up in bed blasting away. I didn’t really miss cooking, at least tonight. Had a sub from Quizno’s (sorry, Leah. It had that manufactured chicken stuff they use in tenders, an alfredo sauce of some kind festooned with bacon. Prototypical road food.).
Will Amazon deliver there?
Meanwhile, back in Seattle, another barrier to the wired life is under siege. The simplicity of the binary world of number 1, number 2 is about to become a lot more complex. Microsoft is proposing to roll out the MSN iLoo, a porta-potty with a web interface:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/120677_iloo06.html
It reads like an Onion article or, except for the absence of animal life, something from Pesky the Rat. I’m taking it seriously, however, as I’m aware of no tradition of Cinco de Mayo Fool tricks. So now you can log on while dropping logs. I really like the bit about printing urls on the toilet paper. Gives a new meaning to banner advertising. Some of the urls may lead to popups, as well.
Actually, there’s a fraudulent aspect to my apparent surprise here. Since going WiFi with my home network, I have more than once taken my laptop into the can to continue reading something. Maybe it was the newspaper, or maybe it was your very own blog, dear reader! I don’t really feel so weird about that, but then no one has espied me either going in or coming out, either. It’s between us, OK? I am truly ashamed to admit, however, that I have answered my cell phone in public restrooms at least twice. Once was between planes in an airport, and I must have felt a deep sense of urgency about the call.
Blue Mischief
Another fascinating (in the way that a car crash is fascinating) news thread is the awful murder-suicide by the Tacoma police chief committed on his wife. It seems every day brings another revelation of nasty behavior by the chief, and coverup by those around him. I’ll let professionals do the reporting this time (there’s something about writing from bed that makes one ever so devil-may-care):
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/120502_robert05.html
We’ve all, perhaps, been around couples when something, some incident or comment, rings some warning bell. If you’re like me, you blink, then let it pass because a) your meddling might be unwelcome to either party, and b) once you interfere, the victim has to be extricated in the fastest manner possible. You wonder, too, if there isn’t some reciprocity involved between the couple. And the impetus to control and subservience is the central staple of more than one major religion.
I have no expertise in these matters, so I’m certainly not going to pontificate. But I know I will be less reticent the next time one of those little bells goes off, and at least observe sharply and listen closely.
