Dial up... Wow, it still works
I truly can't remember the last time I actually used a modem. I'm pretty sure it was also in Spain, but regardless, it's been quite a long time. But my "3 star" hotel in Barcelona is devoid of broadband, so after a few days of being disconnected, I was forced to root around my Y! laptop and find a corporate dialer, called the helpdesk back in Sunnyvale and asked for a password. Their response was similar to mine: "Dial up password? Huh?" and after a few minutes while he checked dusty knowledge base and asked some grey beards in the back about the topic, I got a shiny new password and am actually using that other jack in the back of my PC. (The small one that the Ethernet cable doesn't fit into. You remember.)
Actually, I did use Bluetooth to connect to my mobile phone (using GPRS and then later 3G) at first, but there was a cloud of PURE FEAR about data roaming charges that kept on creeping into my conciousness... Each session to check email, etc. was like 2-3MB x 3 cents a kilobyte (if I'm lucky, maybe a lot more)? Yeah, even the insane Hotel phone call fees won't be nearly as expensive. Yes, I'll be able to expense the charges, but not if they're unreasonable. Christian will just tell me to suck it up. ;-) There is some intermittant WiFi at the 3GSM conference, but it's not like I'm going to get a lot done in that chaos (sooo many people).
Anyways, this isn't an update from the show - I doubt I'll be able to write that up until later (if ever). It's definitely cool. Barcelona is nice (it's like Madrid with a coastline and funny street names, mostly). So far everything has been crazy busy, and between the show and jet lag (lights out whether I want to or not at 8:00 p.m.) I'm days behind my news. I've got literally 3000+ unread items in Bloglines.
Anyways, another day at the show (morning's just underway here) and then I'm off to London tomorrow, and hopefully I'll be in a hotel with broadband and time to digest and write up some thoughts. I think Flickr's working now, so I'll take some more pics of the show today as well. (Pray for my cellular data bill will you? Thanks.)
-Russ