mmhmm

So, I lasted about 4 hours without internet access. Fortunately, the Woodfin hotel has complimentary net surfing from a pc in their “business center” (a small room with a desk, a printer that’s not hooked up, and a computer with dsl – hey, I’m not dissing ;). Signed myself up for an earthlink dialup accnt that I’ll use this week, and again when I’m down this way in a couple weeks for the Apple training.

This is my first time in CA, and though I haven’t seen much of it at all yet, I like it so far. I’m picking up subtle indications that this is a pretty tech. savvy part of the world… lots of internet ads in the san jose airport, sizable internet section in the phone book, etc. I guess that whole silicone valley thing really *is* about computers, as opposed to, say, the land of bountiful breast augmentation.

Class starts tomorrow morning at 9; complimentary breakfast here at the woodfin, then a complimentary shuttle bus to the training location… I guess there are a bunch of people from the UniTek Cisco bootcamp thing that are staying here. All in all, this woodfin place is pretty swank… there’s a jacuzi, a pool, a decent selection of free VHS movies (VCR + tv + fair channel selection including HBO in my room), free local calls, and free shuttle service to / from the training location and also to / from the airport. The kicker is I’m not even paying for the hotel stay… the UniTek rep quoted me a price that supposedly included the hotel stay, but which actually was the price without the hotel… when he tried to hit me up for the extra whatever it was (hundreds of dollars) for the hotel stay, I was having none of it, but that’s only because I was immediately suspicious of the ol’ bait and switch bamboozelment scheme. In retrospect, I think it’s more likely just an honest mistake on his part – but I still held him to the price quote he gave me.

I bought some mediocre chinese food (with which I managed to lightly scald my tongue… gar!) and some gin and tonic from the “72 liquers” which is just directly across the street. Hopefully we’ll have a distinct lack of drunkards crashing large trucks on this stretch of road, else I might get an abrupt and very short-lived awakening.

I really like traveling. It just feels good to be moving around and doing different stuff. Hopefully I’ll be able to establish a comfortable / reliable routine in Seattle while still managing to get out and kick around the ‘states every now and again.

I’ll probably report back in again later this week with notes on the cisco training. I’ll try to capture the gist of the sessions for any of you who might be interested. That is all :)