Wireless Woes

I once again seem to have an intermittent wireless signal here. Maybe it is my computer -- but it worked just fine at home! Also, the wired connection continues to refuse to work, and when I call their tech support line, it wants me to leave a voice mail. I can't spend all day waiting for them to call me back!

Later today, I'll try connecting from other places in the hotel and see if that makes a difference, or if maybe it just loses the signal when it "warms up."

Another Network Update

The center of this hotel is a five-story atrium, which is the convention's social space. I took my computer there and it connected by wireless, initially strongly, but now weakly. If it follows the form it has been, the connection my drop complete eventually.

Regarding the wired connection, I finally got through to tech support, which informed me that their network has a known incompatibility with the Broadcom ethernet cards such as are on my Dell Inspiron, and that there isn't a whole lot they can do about it.

Wonky Wireless

I came down to the lobby and tried connecting here. There seems to be a stronger and more stable connection here, but it's sufficiently fragile that people walking up to the table where I'm sitting made the connection drop. That's pretty stupid.

Under Way

Lisa and I went for a walk shortly after noon, on the grounds that there will be no time for exercise later. We walked through the convention center first, noting things like the Cheerleader Festival that I guess must be tomorrow. Then we swung past the North Market and down to the river, walked along it a ways to the Federal Building, then walked back to the North Market and picked up a couple of pasta lunches and took them back to the hotel, where we ate them in the con suite. My internet connectivity seems to be holding up for now. We'll see if it continues.

Now that we're fed and walked, and now that convention registration is open in the hotel lobby, I guess we'll go register. SMOFCon is pretty low-key -- it's not like there are Security Guards keeping people out of the con suite (the five-story central atrium).

The atrium is a nice social space in some ways, but it has one fault of being a huge echo chamber. I wonder what the non-convention guests are going to make of our people late at night.