The modern world of networks and firewalls is a real pain.

I am able to connect in to my intranet from the real Internet using a slightly weird SOCKS server which encrypts my traffic and tunnels it through the firewall. This actually works, as I proved not twenty minutes ago while sitting in a conference room at MIT.

And my hotel room (new, improved, and non-smoking) features Ethernet connectivity to the Internet for a mere $10/day. This seems better and probably cheaper in the long run than using the phone line.

I had success on my old laptop running its old operating system at other hotels in combining these two technologies to get high-speed access to my intranet from my hotel room, so I thought I’d do it here.

So here I am on the Internet, but I don’t seem to be able to find the magic words to get me far enough to be challenged for the secret code to let me into the intranet. And various commands are failing when they try to do name resolution. So I’m probably doomed to go back to the phone after all.

Oh, well; it could be worse — it might be raining. Oh…it is.

Time heals all wounds

Or at least it healed my network problems; I guess it was something wrong “out there” somewhere, because I certainly didn’t do anything to fix it other than go out for dinner.

Legal Sea Foods was as good as ever — also as crowded as I’ve ever seen them; we had to wait an hour for a table. I thought about going elsewhere because I was hungry, but there wasn’t an obvious other choice except the hotel bar/restaurant, and going there means admitting defeat. It was worth the wait, but next time I go get on the queue while waiting for my dinner partner!

Or at least my MRI came back as normal, which is good enough for me at this point.

I’m appalled to hear about the vandalism of Diane Reese’s car. It’s not entirely because vandalism is bad — there is some self-interest involved, too, since I park in the same parking lot, and I was wondering why there was a car up on jacks on Wednesday when I came in. We work at a rather isolated facility, so I am afraid that it was a co-worker who did the deed.

Off to Boston….

….and here I am!

Word of advice to all: make sure your travel agent has your current hotel guest numbers in your profile. I didn’t, and they sent the wrong number to Marriott. As a result, my record didn’t get flagged as a frequent guest, and they didn’t hold a non-smoking room for me. I’m lucky, though — I have a room (they were starting to walk people) and, though it’s a smoking room, it’s not horribly smoky.

I have now gotten the travel agent to fix my profile.

Such problems the modern era brings…..