Boston whales

2003-07-18

Arrived in Boston the day before yesterday and went straight to the Ramada, which is out near the University. In fact, it's privately owned by very nice people, and it had a regular shuttle to the subway (the "T") and so on, but anyway. Woke up yesterday and finished some stuff for Uncle Seattle, which took me until lunchtime, when I headed in to Boston with the vague goal of finding a wireless Internet hotspot. I then had a bit more work to do, which took place in the shade on the end of a quay at Boston Harbour. Reminds me of the time I told someone I'd sat on the beach at Nice and worked. "Of all the things to do on the beach," the friend said, "you had to work?" I replied, "Of all the places to work..."

I took in Chinatown, the harbour, the shops and the sights - by the way, only go to Cheers bar, if you want to go to a bar anyway. Nothing to see but a bar. On the recommendation of a wireless access service provider (I happened to be walking past the office), eventually I ended up in the News bar, a very plush establishment which boasted wireless Internet access. It happened to be happy hour as well, I didn't take advantage of the free martinis but I did have four starters for 99 cents each. Unfortunately the Internet access wasn't working. I tried everything, and was quite willing to believe that it was my fault, but as I could ping stuff that wasn't my computer I thought not. When I finished my food I headed back round to the office of the chap who installed the thing. The long and the short was I ended up down in the kitchens of the News bar, trying to diagnose issues with power over ethernet, linksys boxes and broadband connections. What fun, but we didn't solve the problem.

This morning I got up a bit earlier and headed for the harbour to do the whale watching thing. I thought I'd missed the boat, but no, here I am on deck typing this up. It's an overcast day, so it?s unlikely I'll get the kinds of pictures you see on posters, indeed we'll probably be lucky to see anything at all but at least its 4 hours of not very much, just what I need. Just had a great idea for an article - "the roadmap conspiracy," which makes out that computer companies have everything all mapped out and are drip feeding new technologies to the users. As if, and the Internet bubble didn't burst either!

2 hours later.

Just seen a whale! Well, several whales - one of which was the best the guy with the mike had seen this year, so he said - it was a humpback sleeping in the water, when we moved alongside it arced its back and flipped its tail out of the water as it dived. Very impressive. Now we?re heading back, then I head to the station to catch a train to Providence. Or maybe I should hire a car. I've got an hour to make my mind up!