Dessication Row

The hotel where I stay is nice enough, but is showing signs of wear. The sign atop the building, for example, says, Crow e Plaza Hotel. Not all of the buttons in the elevators light up. The carpet is worn on high-traffic corners. The heating system is pretty much on or off and the air is as dry as the Gobi.

But, they do offer wireless Internet access, free if you're a member of the frequent stayer program. The staff is courteous. I don't know about the restaurant; I've not eaten there. I pick up my meals at the Whole Foods restaurant a block away and dine in my room, watching the mediocre local New York news. You know that the media capital of the world is in trouble when the Fox station offers the best news programming.

Yesterday's meetings were interesting. One of the engineers was presenting information about our new product to the people who would be installing and configuring the software at the customers' sites. Instead of using PowerPoint, the engineer used the documents that I wrote. Pretty cool, I thought, until we discovered a few minor mistakes in the document, things that you might not notice until you put it up on the big screen. So, today, I have to update the docs and deliver them anew.

Looking for an exotic vacation this winter? How about a bus tour of storm-ravaged New Orleans, courtesy of Gray Line New Orleans.

From "The More I Meet People, The More I Like My Dog" department, we learn that nursing home residents with rather spend time with a visiting dog than with each other.