Airports aren't happy places. In fact, they are pretty angry in that they are filled with angry, angry people. People who have lost their luggage, missed their connection, just had a run-in with the humorless security agents who live for any event to break up the monotony after the novelty of "guess the passenger's ailments based on the contents of the carry-on" wears off. And when one travels alone and pays attention, it can provide an endless source of entertainment.

Airplanes themselves are a little less entertaining. The people are generally in a better mood and the conversations you "overhear" are downright banal. Especially when you are leaving someplace tropical and the younger tourists are talking at a volume just slightly louder than normal so they can be sure those immediately around them can hear them talking about how drunk/sunburned/"almost" killed they got on their vacation. I cringe when I think I used to be those people (and very likely, still am).

But those are just general observations that have nothing really to do with DevTeach except that they will set the stage for the next week on this blog-thingy. Like ALT.NET, I'll be focusing more on general impressions and stories than specifics of the technology because there are people more eloquent than I who can cover details. And frankly, tech-writing is boring to write and I don't have the attention span for it most of the time.

My specific flight from NAS to YYV was fairly uneventful. Sat next to someone who was relatively chatty in the YYZ-YYV leg which doesn't bother me too much. He was apparently on his way to Vancouver to see his daughter who was having a hard time because of a recent car accident involving a drunk driver and she'd been laid off because of it and he was supposed to drive but the trailer he was going to use (which was filled with all kinds of valuable belongings including a bunch of old jazz vinyls) had been stolen and he suspected his friend's son but he couldn't tell the police because then the kid would get popped by the drug dealers he likely sold the trailer to pay off.Sheraton internet log-in page

Me: "Golly, that's a bummer....<awkward silence>....so...ummm, my name's Kyle....and....uhhhh....I'm just gonna go back and do my crossword puzzle, mmkay?"

The Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre has made an excellent first impression being nested near both an adult store advertising 25 cent peep shows and a church that celebrates the birth of Jesus old-school: with a dazzling Christmas light display. The room will make an excellent home for the next week despite the fact that it, like all hotels in North America, comes with a coffee maker but no kettle. The only oddity is that the room seems to lack cold water. The temperature ranges from blisteringly hot from the hot tap and slightly warmer than lukewarm from the cold tap.

Internet access, I've been assured, is free, despite the ominous log-in page to the right (click for larger view) which also has another feature that's new to me in that it is very adamant that I ignore the last four fields (each helpfully labelled "Ignore this field"). So I had to wait about forty-five minutes before I could log in because my mind kept wandering back to those fields and I didn't want to break the rules this early into my stay. If they wanted me to ignore them, they shouldn't have called attention to them, instead labelling them something like "Enter your name here to receive spam from our hotel for the next four generations of your family."

'Tis all for now, hillbillies. Time to wander the streets.

Kyle the Nomadic