Travel Report

Give or take a monsoon or two, it's all good in northeastern Mass. But there were several days of serious, serious rain, resulting in several losses of electricity at the company I was visiting. And there just isn't much that's done these days without a clean, steady supply of 115 VAC.

And I saw lots and lots of these:



In the little part of New England where I was lurking, you can pretty much stand in the driveway of any Drunken Donuts and hit an easy 6-iron shot into the driveway of the next Drunken Donuts. There must be some sort of regional law that requires the availability of the Ubiquitous Treat at intervals not exceeding 150 meters or so.

As a techno-tourist, I likes me some Boston; the people I worked with are competent, relaxed, and friendly. It is true that some of them talk funny. In fact, I casually overheard a break-room conversation in which one of them failed to understand the other. A lady was describing some sort of rural housing that lacked central heating, and the man, seeking clarification, was asking her (several times), "Did ya have heat?" The way it came out, the did ya have was compressed into a sort of hybrid combined consonant plus the short a, and the nice lady (who herself sounded plenty Boston to me) was very puzzled by her co-worker's repeatedly asking "Jap heat?" I could tell that it seemed rather rude to her. "You mean, 'Japanese?' " Finally, she got a slow enough repetition that all was clear.

It's good to go, and it's good to return. And now, I have some work to do.