Airport Wifi – closer to home
Salt Lake City International Airport has WiFi access – powered by Sprint.
It kinda sucks right now – it needs Internet Explorer to sign in. Firefox just barfs.
Rip off Britain – London Heathrow Marriott
Hotels are expensive; hotel room minibars are the worst of the lot.
However charging UKP2.50 for a standard can of Pepsi does seem excessive. Way over 400% markup. For US readers that’s a $5 can of Pepsi.
Most US Marriott hotels have 24 hour vending; I can go get a can of Pepsi for maybe $0.75.
The London Heathrow Marriott gets this trips award for the biggest ripoff.
WM 2006 (World Cup 2006)
Germany has gone football mad. (That’s soccer for those that don’t understand the subleties of the game).
I’ve been in half a dozen cities this week – and everywhere is wall to wall World Cup merchandise and memorabilia. I got a nice world cup shirt in Trier today.
I was listening to BFBS during my drive today – and heard a truly dreadful, yet stunningly simple England world cup song. The Tonedef Allstars are soon to release a single “Who do you think you are kidding Juergen Klinnsmann’. You have to be English to understand the genius at work here. Listen here.
So many people have already blogged on this, it’s also been written up in all manner of media from The Sun to The Telegraph – it must be the ‘unofficial hit’ – just wait until England v Germany in the quarter finals; you’ll hear this on the terraces.
For record – here are the World Cup songs – from this year and prior years. New Order’s ‘World in Motion’ is still the one to beat. I can’t believe that Stan Boardman has “the Germans bombed our Chippie” as a song.
“This tastes just like Miller Lite”
I am in a bar in the hotel in Duesseldorf.
Three American gents drinking at the next table. They look at their small glasses of pils – and “This tastes just like Miller Lite”.
Me and my big mouth, I got to use another legendary line: “Did they serve you a glass of chilled piss by mistake then?” We’re debating the merits of American “Beer” vs. German Beer.
United Airlines and customer service
I travel a lot. I travel on United Airlines and the Star Alliance whenever possible. I think loyalty is mutual – both United Airlines and Star Alliance are Novell customers; they look after me well.
I’m currently stuck in Salt Lake City Airport – fog in San Francisco. I’ve missed my connecting flight to London. United has already transfered my itinery to the later flight; and I had a phone call from United Easy Update to let me know this.
I’ll be late arriving in Düsseldorf – but I should be there relaxed and in one piece.
Wifi on the road
I’ve blogged before about the various airports offering ‘free WiFi’ to customers – this is generally a great service.
Chicago O’Hare is rolling out a new wireless service in the public concourses – run by Concourse Communications this is billed as ‘Wifi Zone – A Concourse Network’ – and the all important word ‘BETA’.
I’m in the United terminal; near gate C5 waiting to wait list to an earlier flight to Salt Lake City.
I’ve got ‘good’ signal on my wireless NIC; but the service sucks. It’s slow, unreliable, disconnects – I get better throughput via GPRS on my cellphone.
City of Chicago – while this is beta make sure it’s free! Concourse Communications – fix it – this is truly the worst public WiFi I’ve had to use in a long long time. I can’t believe people pay money for this. I’m certainly asking for a refund.
[As an aside – I’ve not had problems with T-Mobile Hotspots in the United Red Carpet Club lounges]
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