/travel/ireland/Wireless Access
So I'm writing this from my flat, connected to some wireless access point called Eircom147. I called Eircom (the Irish former-telco-monopoly), talked to a reasonably responsive machine, sat on hold, and talked to a person. I asked about the WAPs I could find from my flat. She said it was some kind of system where I had to purchase cards, and forwarded me to their internet division.
The friendly bloke in the internet division didn't seem to understand what a wireless access point was gave me a 33c/min tech support number.
Anyway, I now have free internet access that runs at >80kb/s, so that's pleasing. Faster than what I'm (read: google is) going to be paying for the ADSL.
New Albums from the Gallery
/travel/usa/Leaving California
I'm sipping a glass of spicy V8 juice, gently procrastinating packing up my stuff. I have to check in tomorrow at 09:00 for my flight to Dublin, starting in San Francisco and going via Atlanta. I arrive at about 09:00 Friday, Dublin time. (16 hours travel + 8 hours time difference.)
Packing makes me nostalgic, though I'm surprised my brief stay in Cali and minimal luggage has induced that.
After an unpleasant first few days, and besides certain obvious factors, I've enjoyed myself here. It's not a place I'd want to stay in long, but it has notable benefits.
For the first few days, I was taxiing to and from work. My co-worker leant me a bicycle to ride, and showed me a path to work. I twinned a highway most of the way, but given that it was remarkably pleasant. It reminded me a lot of the Meewasin trail in Saskatoon. It had the same growthy green smell that the Meewasin trail had at the best time of year. I was generally working late, and the ride home at night was very reminiscent of biking home from here or there when I was young.
Despite the fact that I'm headed back here sometime soon for more training, I feel like finally, finally, I'm going back to Dublin to be settled. My stuff has apparently arrived, including my speakers, and I have a laptop and a phoneline, and maybe sometime soon even some broadband.
It took me a couple weeks to get a place. Then it took a week before I took "possession". Then I called to have a phoneline installed, which took a week. Then it's taken nearly two weeks for them to test the (new!) phone line to make sure it's good enough for broadband. Now I have to wait another week or three to get broadband actually installed. And even then, it's high-contention, low-bandwidth, asymmetric, and has bandwidth caps. Ugh. On the other hand, it's also needed for my job, and thus a perk. So I should stop complaining.
Much of this talk of settling is targeted at a particular issue: I've been rather remiss in keeping touch with people. Hopefully phonecalls, emails and IM conversations will all become more frequent.
On an unrelated note, steve has started putting some notes from this summer's cycling trip on my wiki. They probably mean little or nothing to anyone else, but they might be entertaining anyway -- it's hard for me to guess.
So that's where stuff's at.
/travel/usa/In Case Of ...
I just noticed that the sign on my hotel-room door about fires and such has an "In Case Of Earthquake" clause.
I've never seen that before. I've never been in an earthquake, either. I must admit, it sounds interesting.
