Stuck

So, the bad news is that the plane I should have taken out of New Orleans is broken, and the replacement won’t be here for another hour and a half. The even worse news is that there are actually lots of flights from Denver to San Francisco, so I will probably get re-booked on a flight getting me home in the early hours of the morning. At least the roads should be nice and quiet at that time.

OTOH, there is good public wi-fi at MSY so I have been able to catch up with blog reading and email. The time hasn’t entirely been wasted, and I’m not going to miss anything due to the delay. I can sleep in Sunday morning.

If I have any updates I will post them to Twitter.

Back to Normal

Well, that’s another conference over. Sorry it has been so quiet here, but I have been busy on my company blog and I haven’t had much time for anything else.

The conference was a lot of fun, and reminded me quite a bit of ICFA (as opposed to other work conferences I’ve been to which have been either all-business or heavily theoretical). I think I might go to more of these, though they do need to do less of the mandatory formal banqueting and cut the cost. I mean, what’s the point of going to New Orleans and then forcing everyone to eat hotel food?

This evening we had a reception in the Cabildo, which is the big building at the far end of Jackson Square from Cafe du Monde. It was very nice. Good food, and there’s a museum in the building with a lot of local history. Obviously it has a lot about the good people of New Orleans seeing off the evil British, but I’m used to that sort of thing. Kevin would have loved it.

By the time that was over I just about had enough energy to stagger across the square for hot chocolate and beignets. Now I am going to bed and not putting the alarm on. If I get up in time I’m going to Two Sisters for brunch, and maybe doing some shopping. I’ll be home later tomorrow. Normal service will be resumed on Sunday.

N’Awlins – Day 1

The trip went very well. I was a bit worried about the fog this morning, but SFO ran like clockwork. A colleague of mine who flew out of OAK said he was an hour late leaving. I think I was very lucky. There were flurries of snow in Denver, but it wasn’t settling.

I took Gene Wolfe’s An Evil Guest with me to read. It is a lot of fun. I would have finished it if I hadn’t slept much of the way.

I’m staying in the Sheraton on Canal Street which, if I remember my history correctly, was one of the main hotels of NolaCon. I hope this is not an omen. Thankfully this is a business/academic event with only around 250 attendees so there isn’t much that can go wrong.

We went to Galatoire’s for dinner, and I have to say that I was not impressed. The turtle soup was OK, and the mushroom side dish was lovely, but the rest of my meal was poor. Two of my three fellow diners were also unimpressed. Our waiter explained afterward that they have a lot of older clients who don’t like food to taste of anything much so you have to ask for flavor if you order a dish that is supposed to be spicy. Not recommended.

Bourbon Street is fairly quiet on a Wednesday in December, but that’s only relative. There were lots of people, but several of the sex clubs were closed and there was no band at Maison Bourbon. Preservation Hall was closed too, but that was because Pat O’Brien’s, an Irish pub, had much of St.Peter’s Street packed solid for a block party with a live band actually in the street. The jazz boys wisely decided not to compete. I did find some interesting live music in one of the Irish pubs on Decatur, but I didn’t have time to investigate.

7:00am breakfast meeting tomorrow. Urgh.

About Next Week

One of the reasons I decided to go for Twitter is that next week I will have an ideal excuse to test it – I am off to N’Awlins for a business conference. That means I’ll be detached from my laptop for a fair amount of time Wednesday thru Saturday, but I will have my phone. Therefore, if I feel the need to say something like, “You are at SMOFcon in Columbus where it is probably snowing, but I am in Cafe du Mode eating beignets” then I can do so.

Not that the actual conference I’m at will be any more entertaining than SMOFcon, but it is in N’Awlins and it does have a couple of evening functions. Having not been to one of these things before, I inquired of a colleague about the dress code. This is what he said:

my suggestion is to err on the side of being over-dressed and not the other way around

He’s clearly never seen my wardrobe. 🙂

But I might just take something utterly speccy. I shall explain why later.

Meanwhile…

No, I haven’t disappeared, nor am I spending the entire weekend watching rugby. I am, however, being domesticated. Normal service will resume as soon as possible.

Travel Report

OK, time to try to catch up on things…

I should start at SFO, because the United terminal has a wonderful new exhibit celebrating the influence of science fiction on American culture. The walls are lined with posters made from the covers of pulp magazines, and there are lots of exhibits of SF-related toys. I was particularly pleased to see a large model of dear old XL5.

Chicago has been a bit of a whirl, resulting in last night’s Gaiman-esque post. It has, however, been very useful, and a lot of fun too. I spent a lot of time yesterday hanging out with Gary Wolfe. One of the things we did was go looking for a copy of Zahra the Windseeker. B&N and Borders both drew a blank, so Gary drove me down to the university bookstore. They had a large sign in the window saying something along the lines of, “we congratulate our regular customer, Barack Obama, on being elected President of the United States of America.” (More on that story from Publishers Weekly.) Would such a store have Nnedi’s book? Of course they did. What is more, the guy on the checkout was reading an ARC of Kelly Link’s new book, Pretty Monsters. We figured this was someone we could talk to, and as Nnedi lives in Chicago we did a bit of PR. Hopefully there will be an event as a result. (Hey, and maybe Mr. Obama would like a copy of the book for his daughters.)

Nearby is a fine antiquarian bookstore called O’Gara and Wilson. It is apparently a favorite of Mr. Clute, and I can see why. It has the best SF section of any antiquarian bookstore I have visited.

Kevin joined us in the evening and we had dinner in the very splendid Grand Lux Cafe, where they make the best beignets I have ever eaten (sorry N’awlins). I was also rather taken by the appetizer of kobe beef hot dogs.

End of the Road

One of the more “interesting” aspects of the USA’s visa waiver scheme is that entry is not guaranteed. Even if you have done nothing wrong according to the posted rules of the scheme, any immigration official can turn you back for any reason whatsoever. Indeed, no reason need be given, and there is to recourse. That’s just the way it is. You can probably guess what is coming.
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Hooray for Mobile Broadband

Yeah, OK, so I am paying $8/day. But I can connect from anywhere I can get a mobile phone signal.

So, last night and this morning from Chez Clute, currently from Heathrow Terminal 1. I have just under an hour before the flight boards, so I can get the email answered (or perhaps more accurately the spam cleaned out).

All I need now is a wearable computer…

Where’s She Been?

Yes, I have been a bit quiet. I have been out all day. In Cardiff, actually. Maybe more about that some other time, but I did get to walk around the place a bit, worship at the Millennium Stadium, and be generally touristy. For the benefit of Mr. Garcia I have taken a photo of the River TAFF. I have also taken photos of a number of things that I am assured will be instantly recognized by people who watch Doctor Who and Torchwood. I’ll let you know when they are online.

Long Day

Well, I’m back, and I have waded through all of the email and blog postings that accumulated during the day. Now I need sleep.

I spent much of the day in Bath, which was full of tourists as usual. Somehow I managed to dodge all of the rain. Looking out of the train window on the way there, I saw a fox ambling across a field. It is nice to know we still have them in the wild. Mind you, the cows were making a determined effort to see him off. I haven’t seen cows looking so purposeful in a long time.

I did pop briefly into Waterstones. I picked up George Mann’s novel, The Affinity Bridge, because he’s a friend, and A Darkness Forged in Fire, book one of a new fantasy series called My Elves Are Different The Iron Elves by Chris Evans because it had a rave blurb by Karen Traviss on the front. As they were both on a 3 for 2 offer I picked up an Orhan Pamuk as well because people have been telling me good things about him.

The shop was a little busy, and I eventually worked out that there was a signing due. Stephen Fry was due in about 10 minutes. I didn’t stick around. But I did wonder why there were only 30 or so people in line. All you authors out there who have had bad signing days take note – Stephen Fry doesn’t get Neil Gaiman-sized queues either.

N’awlins Memories

While the 49ers have been getting pulverized in Superdome, I have been cheering myself up by finally getting around to processing the photos from the trip that Kevin and I took to New Orleans last month. They are now uploaded to Picasa.

[shashin type=”album” id=”16″ size=”medium”]

Which Country Am I In?

It was raining in the Bay Area when I left. When I got to Heathrow the weather was like California only about 10 degrees colder. I am confused.

I had a really smooth trip. The flight went fine. Passport control and baggage claim were very smooth – the move to Terminal 1 seems to have been good for United from that point of view. And then I just walked on and off trains in sequence managing the whole journey back to Darkest Somerset in a little over 3 hours from touchdown.

Settling back in has not been so smooth. My wireless modem may have given up the ghost. Fortunately I have a (non-wireless) backup so I could still get online. I’m mostly caught up, but I can’t go through my blog feeds because Google’s UK site appears to be offline. I always log into google.com as a matter of course, but when I’m in the UK that automatically redirects to google.co.uk, and that site is down. Or at least I can’t get to it. Very odd.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Got that? Good. That will be all for today. Much as I enjoy piratical high jinks, I don’t think it wise to indulge in them when you are embarking on international travel. The TSA has no sense of humor. And it will be tomorrow by the time I get to London.

Further N’awlins Reflections

1. Weight gain only 4 pounds. Should be manageable.

2. It is wonderful to be back somewhere that is pleasantly hot but where going outside does not involve entering a sauna. (This also saves a lot on laundry.)

3. Need sleep, lots of sleep.

Saying Goodbye to NOLA

Kevin and I are in New Orleans airport where there is free public wi-fi. We are, as usual, here ridiculously early, because you never know when there might be a huge backup at check-in or terrorization, so we have some time before we have to board. There follows a few reflections on my first visit to New Orleans.
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Lucked Out

Today it rained. Fortunately we were in a restaurant having breakfast when it did the Queensland thing, but we still got quite damp on our way back to the hotel. I made use of the umbrella, but it was a bit small for two so Kevin has been making us of the hotel hair drier. Time to pack up and head to the airport now.

Emotibomb Test Redux

The original test of the Lush emotibomb fizzled rather because it Kevin developed his eye problem, which kind of put a dampner on the whole “sex in the shower” thing. However, yesterday we found the local Lush shop, and this morning we tested the “up you gets” emotibomb. Despite our having spent a very busy weekend in New Orleans, it managed to revive us. So we went back and bought several more. I figure we’ll need one tomorrow after the flight home.