Stereotypes in action!

On Sunday evening (a little before midnight - the Amtrak train got in really late), I arrived at my accommodations for the next 3 weeks - the Pacific Inn in Bellevue. Checking in, the person at the desk asked me for my passport or driver's license so he could take a copy of it. I gave him my passport, which he took to another room to photocopy.

I waited for him to return. And waited. And waited. About 5 minutes after he left, he came back in, without my passport or a copy, and said "You're a software guy, right?".

I'm sure you can see what's coming. He was unable to operate the photocopier. He asked me to take a look. I pressed the '+' button to increase the number of copies from 0 to 1, then pressed the copy button. It copied.

What amuses me here isn't that he was unable to operate the photocopier - any photocopier that defaults to 0 copies (and returns to that when all its copies are made) is particularaly badly designed, and it's not surprising he had trouble if he hadn't used it before. What amuses me is how incredibly stereotypical it is. Geek arrives in a hotel, and is immediately called on to help fix something that's preventing him from being able to check in.

Anyway, the apartments are nice. I have a small loft apartment, with a kitchenette, a lounge area (with a desk and proper office chair - yaay!) and a bathroom, then a short flight of stairs up to an area with my bed. It's small (or should I say 'compact'?), but quite nice. Definitely an improvement over the American Extended Stay I was in last time. Internet is provided via Ethernet cable, which I have hooked up to a newly purchased Airport Express so I can have wireless (two levels of NAT, though - yuck). Access is, unfortunately, rather slow. Also, random ports - 993 for SSL IMAP, 9898 for my IRC proxy - seem to be blocked. It might be the Airport Express, but I doubt it.

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