Back from Vienna--this was one of those trips where despite nice weather and a beautiful city, I barely left the hotel. I at least had a little time in the afternoon to walk to the Stephansdom (where I lit a candle and said a prayer for Gretchen's mom even though I'm not Catholic...I hope I didn't violate some sort of Catholic law in doing that) and to the Albertina, where I quickly browsed exhibitions on Pop-Art and Rembrandt.
The real fun was when I arrived on Wednesday. As is so often the case, I had procrastinated and not finished my speech for Thursday AM. Luckily I got on a roll at the airport and on the plane and got a bunch of it cranked out on my laptop. So far, so good. Then I got to my hotel and tried to plug my laptop in but discovered that Austria uses 2-pronged plugs and my laptop has three prongs. I, being an idiot, had consciously left my plug adapter in Basel because I didn't want to take up more space and besides, Austria and Switzerland have to use the same plugs, right? So I figured I could just go down to the business center and finish it up there, only to discover that my laptop doesn't have a floppy disk drive--which, being an idiot, I hadn't actually checked before leaving (I went out of my way to remember a floppy, so I don't know why I didn't actually look at my laptop first). So I decided to use battery power and dial in and email it to one of my personal accounts, only to find that I couldn't access either yahoo or hotmail, and it turns out my work email system was down. I was ready to break things at this point, but luckily I called one of our admins back in Basel, who could access an earlier draft of the speech from our network drive, and who suggested seeing if I could plug my laptop into a computer in the business center to print out what I'd done on the plane. (Are you following all this?) So, I was able to print out what I had worked on, then re-type it into the document our admin was able to send to my yahoo account. Re-typing was a hassle, but at least a nervous breakdown was narrowly averted, and a valuable lesson was learned (at least until the next time around...).
The real fun was when I arrived on Wednesday. As is so often the case, I had procrastinated and not finished my speech for Thursday AM. Luckily I got on a roll at the airport and on the plane and got a bunch of it cranked out on my laptop. So far, so good. Then I got to my hotel and tried to plug my laptop in but discovered that Austria uses 2-pronged plugs and my laptop has three prongs. I, being an idiot, had consciously left my plug adapter in Basel because I didn't want to take up more space and besides, Austria and Switzerland have to use the same plugs, right? So I figured I could just go down to the business center and finish it up there, only to discover that my laptop doesn't have a floppy disk drive--which, being an idiot, I hadn't actually checked before leaving (I went out of my way to remember a floppy, so I don't know why I didn't actually look at my laptop first). So I decided to use battery power and dial in and email it to one of my personal accounts, only to find that I couldn't access either yahoo or hotmail, and it turns out my work email system was down. I was ready to break things at this point, but luckily I called one of our admins back in Basel, who could access an earlier draft of the speech from our network drive, and who suggested seeing if I could plug my laptop into a computer in the business center to print out what I'd done on the plane. (Are you following all this?) So, I was able to print out what I had worked on, then re-type it into the document our admin was able to send to my yahoo account. Re-typing was a hassle, but at least a nervous breakdown was narrowly averted, and a valuable lesson was learned (at least until the next time around...).
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