Alon’s Blog

Rant about fancy hotels

I have just arrived in Cambridge, MA for a week of consulting for Microsoft Research. They paid for my flight and hotel room so they put me in a fancy $200/night hotel. In this post I will try to explain why in my opinion, in general, the fancier the hotel the worse it is.

I have nothing against hotels as a service. Hotels provide a traveler with a clean place to spend the night, and with basic necessities. Hotels are useful when traveling, or when you need a clean neutral place to have sex. However, fancy hotels do not seem to provide these well, and charge a lot of money to do so.

Compare, for example, the fancy hotel I’m staying at now with a cheap motel for $40/night. The motel included a microwave and fridge, free parking, free wifi, and a free “breakfast”, which, admittedly, is nothing to feast over. However, the fancy hotel includes none of those (or least without caveats galore).

Here is a comparison of the cheap motel and the fancy hotel. I am purposefully omitting hotel names, as this is common for many hotels and motels.

August 10th, 2009 at 04:43 Posted by epsalon | American Culture, US Travel | 8 comments

The strange world of Macs (Part 1)

If you had to name the two most common operating systems, you would most likely say: Windows and Linux. Well, in the US there is a third common operating system. In fact, it’s even more popular than Linux. It’s called MAC OSX. In the Bay Area, not far from Cupertino where Apple Computer is headquartered, Macs are very common. It sometimes feels like more people use Macs than Windows.

Macs are supposed to be easy to use and intuitive, so I tried using one in my local Apple Store in Palo Alto. They have working laptops there than anyone can come and use.One of the first things I’ve noticed was a lack of mouse buttons. We’ve all heard about Macs have only one button, well the new ones don’t even have that. The trackpad is the button, and there is no right or middle button. Dragging requires manual effort to keep the heavy trackpad pressed, and if you’ve reached the end of the pad, you’re out of luck. Can’t just hold the button.

Another thing lacking was a scrollwheel, the standard right-side-of-pad scrolling didn’t work. I  happened to find by chance that you can scroll on a Mac by using two fingers on the trackpad. It’s weird but it works pretty well.

The other input device I was having trouble with was the keyboard. Ctrl combinations don’t seem to work, and there are no PgUp/PgDown keys. I had to ask to know that most Ctrl combinations are replaced with a new key called “command” (it’s similar to Meta), though some things like ctrl-left/right to move a word back and forth is actually with the alt button, which is also labeled “option”. The PgUp/PgDown require yet another modifier key “fn”. The total of five modifier keys leave little space for the space bar, and the most useful one (”option”) is not near the edge of the keyboard as one might expect, but near the spacebar.

One of the first things I tried to do was install FireFox and an IM client called Adium (I googled “mac IM” and that was the first result). Software installation on Macs is different from Linux or Windows. Downloaded files are “Disk Images” (something like an ISO) which you have to mount. Then, (and this is never explained, I had to ask), you need to drag the application icon to a nearby icon of a capital “A”. I tried to attach a screen cap of that but the capture application only saves to TIFF.

Anyway, even after you install the software, it only appears in a secret menu called “Applications” that you need to do the following to reach: Click on the desktop, click on the “Go” menu, click on “Applications”, browse to the application among a whole lot of stuff (like the “Programs” menu in Windows, but not sorted by vendor). The terminal BTW is under another sublevel “Utilities”. No wonder I couldn’t find it.

Now, I tried to look for some tutorial to explain these basic features. I found a help page about transitioning from windows that didn’t explain anything (such as scrolling, or the “command” button, or how to install or uninstall software).

I can talk all day about how non-standard Macs are. The close/minimize/maximize buttons are on the LEFT and are only color coded (red=close, yellow=minimize, green=maximize). Alt-F4 and other common combos don’t work (well, it opens an “Expose Settings” screen). Command-F4 doesn’t work either. It seems the combo is Command-W (I guess W is for Wlose, or they copied it from Firefox’s close tab combo). I tried some of the pre-installed software too, but about that in a future post.

Update: I figured out how to use an image conversion program called “Preview”. It seems Macs copy the awful Windows default of hiding extensions, so I had to guess what version of the image I’m uploading…

February 4th, 2009 at 04:34 Posted by epsalon | Apple, American Culture | 6 comments

Turkey, India, and Thanksgiving

This weekend was Thanksgiving. As always, holidays in the US are designed to create long weekends, and Thanksgiving is no exception. Scheduled on the third Thursday of November, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the winter holiday period. As I did last year, I went to the traditional Stanford Thanksgiving dinner, which was nothing too fancy. I spent black Friday playing boardgames for nine consecutive hours, winning almost all games I’ve played (except Pandemic and Stone Age).

This Thanksgiving, I couldn’t avoid hearing the news about Mumbai, India. I thought to myself this is not the first time Inidans are killed on Thanksgiving, though this time they weren’t native Americans. That also made me think about the traditional Thanksgiving dish — Turkey. In almost all modern language this bird is named after some far away land. Many languages refer to Turkey, many others, including Hebrew and Turkish, refer to India. The interesting this is, the Turkey, like the American Indians, is in fact a native American, a fact most closely reflected in Vietnamese, referring to it as “Western Chicken”. For more information, see Wikipedia.

In exactly one week (and 3:30 hours) my parents will be arriving here for the first time since I moved here. I’ll get to show them my office, my room, and play games. We’re also going to go on a road trip to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon! I’m happy!

For those of you who asked what  I got from Tanga Trash. Here’s your answer: 20 Questions card game, The Fabolous Fifites Shaped Jigsaw Puzzle, and a Space Alien Test Kit, I kid you not.

November 30th, 2008 at 06:29 Posted by epsalon | Stanford, Daily Life, American Culture, Gaming, Family | no comments

Happy Memorial Day!

You may think I’m being inconsiderate, but it seems that the title of this post was actually uttered on radio here in the US. Memorial day, a federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May commemorates the dead of the US civil war and further deaths of US servicepeople. However, due to the long weekend timing at the beginning of summer, it has become an important time for outing, picnics, and other fun activities.

In contrast, memorial day in Israel is not a holiday, and it is a day before independence day. To ensure the correct atmosphere, all entertainment venues are closed by law, and the TV and radio screen sad films and documentaries, in addition to live broadcasts the official ceremonies.

Back to the US, I spent this year’s memorial day weekend at KublaCon, the annual bay area gaming convention. The Convention features all types of non-computer gaming, from miniatures to LARPs, boardgames to RPGs. The convention lasted four days Friday-Monday, but I decided not to go on Monday. It was held in a hotel near San Francisco airport. I registered onsite for $50, and got a badge and a wristband. I spent most of the weekend playing dozens for boardgames with many different players of all ages from 8 to 80.

On the second day of the conference I registered for a Settlers of Catan tournament. After winning two of three games, I broke to the semi-finals that were held the next day. In the semis, in a very close game, I came in tied for second with 9 points (out of 10). Later that day, I have then spent many more hours playing all kinds of boardgames with people I could find, including a very smart 11 year old girl, who managed to play very well and come in second in several games in a row, until finally winning a game of Tsuro. It turns out that her father, who joined us for some of the games, owns a game store nearby and can get me good deals on games.

All in all, KublaCon was lots of fun and well worth the money. Now I have memorial day to rest before going back to work tomorrow.

May 27th, 2008 at 05:09 Posted by epsalon | American Culture, Gaming | 2 comments

Cleanup

Today and yesterday I spent cleaning up my room and car. I’ve dumped all the packaging I have accumulated in the car and room, sorted all the paper, and brought all the bottles and cans in for recycling. Got more than $5 for the bottles (5¢ each).

After recycling, I went to the Toyota dealership where I bought my car for a 6-month service. Because I only drove 2,900 miles, the service included only an oil change and general inspection. However, they took a long time to perform the service, so instead of paying $28, I got the service and materials completely free.

Now I’m back the office. Later today I’ll go to another boardgaming session in San Jose (30min drive from here).

March 29th, 2008 at 02:04 Posted by epsalon | Daily Life, American Culture | one comment