G’day Perth!

Touched down in Perth, Western Australia, this afternoon in what is my first visit to the wild wild west.

After quickly (surprised? I was) locating my luggage I was promptly shuttled to the city’s Sheraton hotel and checked into my home for the next few days. It’s a tiny room with a separate bathroom that includes a bathtub. Unfortunately no spa bath or balcony, I do have a pretty good – albeit 60 degree – view of the Swan river and peak of the BankWest tower. Unfortunately there is an ugly beige building blocking the cityscape.

Much to my astonishment, this hotel (well, room) has Ethernet connectivity! Much to my amazement, the instructions on how to hook up a notebook read…

“Important note: This system has been tested with Windows Me/NT/XP/2000/9x, Mac OS 9/X, and Linux…”

My godfathers!

Perhaps the hotel’s new slogan should be “Sheraton: the Linux conscious hotel”. It’s standard DHCP. If that was the pleasant surprise for the afternoon, the cost of the service was the reality check. You have the option of:

$9.90 – Laptop connect 1 hour(s)
$24.95 – Laptop connect 24 hour(s)

Ouch! I think I’ll stick with dial-up. BTW, the person who approved those options needs a grammar lesson.

Other than that, there is a decent size desk with a lamp and a power point conveniently situated just above the desk (don’t you just love when the power point is under the desk near the floor). Also, there’s a good amount of slack with the phone cable (don’t you just love when they’re bolted down).

Anywho, better head down the lobby, dinner and drinkies awaits…

Rodney