fire alarm
I’m at the airport waiting for a plane that’s been delayed. Trying to get every cent of value out of my $7.95 one-time AT+T charge for wi-fi. (When will they figure out there needs to be free wi-fi everywhere, and stop trying to rob us?)
I was giving the keynote speech yesterday at an event run by NARAS called MusicTech06 at the Experience Music Project in Seattle.
About 5 minutes into it, the loudspeakers blurted out an announcement that there was a fire alarm and everyone was required to evacuate the building.
Now if I make a speech that’s not going well, and the audience starts pelting me with rotten vegetables, my backup plan is to have an accomplice flip the fire alarm button. Making sure of course that my MacBook is under cover in case the sprinklers come on.
On this occasion my talk was going gangbusters, so it was quite upsetting when the fire alarm turned out to be genuine. We stood around outside in the chilly Seattle morning for 45 minutes and watched the fire trucks arrive. It turned out there was a leaking gas main, and it would be hours before we could get back into EMP. I briefly considered asking for a megaphone and a soap box and finishing my talk Hyde Park Corner style.
But the moment passed and 150 of us walked a couple of blocks to a shopping mall and waited. After a bit we heard that a new venue had been provided by the Mayor’s office. I was able to resume my speech but had to skip a few of the less important slides in my presentation (Global Warming, A Cure for Cancer, World Peace etc.) and go right to my usual rant about people with an uncontrollable knee twitch, and greasy record company executives who just have to hug me, costing me a fortune in dry cleaning fees.
Thanks to penmachine for this pic.
November 12th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Can’t help with the fire alarm, but here’s a website for locating free wifi service, searchable by state and country:
http://www.wififreespot.com/
November 12th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
You look so sad in that photo – airports suck all the fun out of us these days, eh? (Or, at least they suck $7.95 + all the overinflated snack bar and TSA-approved bottled water costs out of us…)
Safe journey home – and break a leg in Cerritos this coming week! May the gremlins keep all your tubes and wires exactly where they’re supposed to be. =)
November 12th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
To paraphrase P.J. O’Rourke: If you think wi-fi is expensive now, just wait until it becomes “free”…
November 12th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
They say that travel broadens the mind…….not by the look of your face though..ha ha
November 12th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
Ya know, normally I’d say, “Would a hug help?” But, well…
Peace and a hot cuppa to soothe the Seattle chill out of yer bones,
Kara!
November 12th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
“Free” means you get something you don’t pay for, and somebody else pays for something he doesn’t get. Most likely, that “somebody” would be a taxpayer with less income than you. You know, some of those poor benighted savages don’t even have laptops! But I’m sure it’d give ‘em all a warm feeling, to know they’re doing you a favor.
November 12th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
Sorry, that went completely over my head.
Airports and airlines provide things like moving walkways, water fountains, and TV monitors for the comfort of their customers, and to help people travel in an efficient manner. It’s clear from the number of people that *do* work on laptops, that providing AC outlets and wi-fi would be very popular. Plus there are a lot of wi-fi enabled devices just round the corner, including VOIP phones, music players and portable game units.
November 12th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
“Poor benighted savages”, P90? Who might they be? Say, are
you a Forum member? If so, maybe you can start a nice juicy
thread in the Pub about this, because you seem like an intelligent
person with a point to make, but I’m not sure if this is the right
place to be making it.
——————————————
“Free†means you get something you don’t pay for, and somebody else pays for something he doesn’t get.
——————————————
That’s a capitalist society for you, P90. A few people are very
rich, lots of people are very poor, and most of us are somewhere
in the middle. People with more money also pay more taxes.
That’s all I’m going to say about that here. Thomas, please
pardon me if I’m being rude, but I had an irresistable craving to
communicate with P90. I second what Merujo so warmly said,
without the, uh, leg-breaking, hee hee. Yeah, theatrical
expression, I know.
Peace and intelligent conversations,
Kara
November 13th, 2006 at 12:12 am
Thomas, next time you are in Adelaide Australia (!) – the ISP I work for has popped lots of Cisco 802.11b access points throughout the CBD and airport – all fed with fibre or ADSL2+ backhaul proving excellent broadband speed wireless net acess – for free
https://hotspot.internode.on.net/
November 13th, 2006 at 8:06 am
Ah… forced into the cold, damp night by a fire alarm… brings back memories of college dorm life!
Concerning WiFi: I think universal availablility is inevitable. Accesibility shouldn’t be based on who can afford it and who can’t. I recommend that everybody look at the OneLaptop Project lecture at TMDR’s beloved http://www.Ted.com. Global accesibility to the web is within reach!
Beech
November 13th, 2006 at 8:25 am
Alright, 10 brownie points for the person to tell me where this quote comes from:
“Come my boys: night will fall, the sky is beginning to bruise, and we shall be foced to camp.”
November 13th, 2006 at 8:57 am
Lily Von Shtup from Blazing Saddles
yeah I know it’s wrong but just had to …
; )
November 13th, 2006 at 9:25 am
Karl Smith
November 13th, 2006 at 9:37 am
It’s from Monty in Withnail and I.
November 13th, 2006 at 10:40 am
You mean, UNCLE Monty, right?
November 13th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
It sounds like something from Tennyson’s Ulysses…there was a poem I read a long time ago that sounded somewhat like that. Am I even close? Hot/cold/freezing?
November 13th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Okay, I did some web surfing (cheating) and found out that Funkydolby had it correct.
November 13th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
Ah! Beaten to the punch on the quote! “Withnail & I” came out during my time in London. I got a free pass from “Time Out” and went to see it with a friend (who still quotes it in e-mails to me.) I was stuck in some miserable Russian class production of “The Cherry Orchard” at the time, so I laughed very loud at this line, which has stayed with me: “I loathe those Russian plays. Always full of women staring out of windows, whining about ducks going to Moscow!”
So true.
Have you procured the 20th anniversary DVD just out last month?
November 14th, 2006 at 9:39 am
FunkyDolby has it.
“Followed by yet another anecdote about his tender crimes in a punt with a chap called Norman who had red hair and a volume of poetry stained with the butter drips of crumpets.”
November 14th, 2006 at 11:26 am
oh gosh-should have known…i just bought it & watched it last month : P
saw it in the theatre when i was 20 something and you can’t see Monty’s blue eye shadow very well : (
i always thought Rowling must’ve seen that before creating Dursley!
i love the chicken scene!
November 14th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
In addition to the photos Thomas linked to, I’ve also posted the first of the audio recordings I made, in this case of Microsoft’s J Allard giving his closing talk about the Zune media player (I posted it first because the Zune launched today).
I should have the rest of the sessions, including Thomas’s talk, posted through the week — the audio is a bit frightful because of our quick move to a new venue and my teeny iPod recording setup, so I have to do a bit of post-processing to make it listenable.
November 14th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
“Have you procured the 20th anniversary DVD just out last month?”
Been a few years since seeing it. I don’t have that anniversary edition, but might have to check it out now that you mention it.
November 14th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
In addition to the photos, I’ve posted audio of J Allard as well. More to come, including some from TMDR.
November 15th, 2006 at 10:27 am
Too my great Chagrine I only just now found out you were at the EMP. It just so happens I was at that very place on vacation literally a day before you! I might have been able to meet one of my favorite musicians of all time purely by accident, while on vacation! That would have really been something. first time to go on vacation on my own and first time to go to Washington and first time to meet Thomas Dolby. Oh well maybe next time : )
November 15th, 2006 at 10:32 am
As an adendum I want to clarify that Im sure I wouldnt have been alowed into your lecture for just showing up at the right time, but let there be no mistake that I would not hesitate to capitalize on the whole fire alarm fiasco by awkwardly coming up to you and stuttering monosyllabic cavemanisms until you were thoroughly creeped out and walked away! Maybe you dont want to meet an oddball like me, but hey the way I look at it is: If Im going to have a poster of you shirtless on my wall at home I think that we should at least have met!
November 15th, 2006 at 4:55 pm
[...] The day began with a keynote from Thomas Dolby – yes, the “She Blinded me with Science” guy. He’s quite the musical geek! His presentation was interrupted by a fire alarm, which was caused by the gas-line break. We all met up, in a semi-organized fashion, at a food court in the Children’s Museum a block away – and an hour after the disruption, were redirected to McCaw Hall around the corner at the Seattle Center. Major kudos to the Summit organizers for making sweet lemonade out of lemons. Derek K. Miller took tons of excellent photos! [...]
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:53 am
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