Misc from PyCon I

Don't stay at the Double Tree (the hotel next to the conference hotel) and if you own their stock sell now. I was impressed when checking in because they gave me a hot cookie (that is not a euphamism). I asked about it and they pointed out the OVEN behind the counter. I thought these people really have their shit together - even thouogh I didn't want a cookie. But the clocks in every room were wrong by an hour. Worse, the clocks are set by a radio signal and have no way to manually set the time. The hotel knows about the problem but isn't trying to fix it. That hour is because congress, in its infinite wisdom, wanted to save us all money at no expense to themselves by screwing with Daylight Savings. Congrats congress: you have cost three hundred million people five minutes of inconvenience a week for a year and counting.

Do stay at the Crown Plaza (the conf hotel). It has some rough spots - the bar doesn't open until 4pm - but has fewer signs of dysfunction than the Double Tree. I left a book in a common area yesterday and today asked a waitress if they had found it and saved it. She told me they had found one book but asked me to describe it instead of showing it to me. It turns out I had used a $20 bill as a bookmark and they wanted to make sure they had the right guy first. Actually I had two book marks in there and the other one was a plane ticket stub. Another employee had left a message for me at the desk. So yeah, the Crown Plaza franchise might be average but the local staff are honest and hard working.