June 2008

When I got into the office this morning I found a Dell D630 waiting for me that'd only taken two weeks to arrive due, I'm told, to waiting for a battery. Anyway. The machine had turned up with Vista installed on it. The University is rolling out Vista slowly, but it's by no means well supported yet, and there's still a lot of unknowns with it.

Popping in the XPSP2 CD I'd got ready resulted in the laptop giving me a BSOD, with the helpful error message of STOP: 0x00000007b. I've got an XPSP3 CD which resulted in the installation finding no drives to install to - this was a little more helpful.

To resolve this, pop into the BIOS (hit F2 during startup) and change the SATA operation mode from AHCI to ATA, and also disable the Flash Cache.

Once done, you should be able to install XPSP2 or SP3 as you would normally.

Sioned decided to book a holiday for us a few weeks back through Thomson. We left on 14 June from Manchester, headed to Verona airport, before our final destination of Parc Hotels Italia's Parc Hotel Paradiso hotel. When the booking was made, the following was specified as absolute requirements:
o Kettle in room (for making up Gruffydd's feeds)
o Fridge in room (for keeping said feeds cool)
o Quiet room (such that he can sleep - he's a light sleeper)
o A proper cot (not a travel cot - something for him to sleep in)
o Interweb in the room (taking away a geek's interweb is cruel)

All pretty basic stuff for a 4-star hotel, you'd think. On arrival, we found that the hotel room we'd been given had the following:
o Kettle in room
o Fridge in room
So an overall FAIL so far. We asked at reception about the cot since that would be quite easy to solve. Except it wasn't - the only cot they could offer was a travel cot, the sides on which weren't removable. We're currently at the stage of him only going to sleep if there's no sides on the cot, then putting them on once he's asleep so that he can't roll out. The only solution here was for him to sleep on an open bed next to us and hope for the best.

Saturday night closed in pretty quickly as we'd arrived relatively late, and we found that a wedding that the hotel was holding had their party in the courtyard area outside our room. Our room was 2 rooms away from something called the Grill Bar which was being, unsurprisingly, used as the bar for the event. We spoke to our rep the following morning when he visited the hotel and in turn he spoke to reception about it, who told us that there'd only be noise outside the room at the weekends. We asked if we could take another room as it would likely be noisy on the Friday night before we were due to leave, but were told that the hotel was full. On asking about the rest of the stuff, we were told that there wasn't anything that could be done about it. In true British spirit, we decided to soldier on.

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, the weather was overcast, but still nice and warm. We had a good few days, good food, nice and relaxing (alas no interweb in the room but I managed to find open wireless in the basement of the hotel near one of the restaurants). Wednesday rocked around with blazing sunshine. Again, another nice day. I mentioned above about the Grill Bar. On Wednesday evening I noticed a PA sitting on a trolley in the corner of the Grill Bar. At around 2130, hearing the impressively loud sounds of a drum kit, I realised that the PA was being used. Now.

Anyone who's got, or has had young children will know that they need routine, and also that they tend to go to sleep quite early. Also, this model is a light sleeper. 2200, the usual time for sleep rolled around and the entertainment outside started belting out crap covers of Elton John, U2 et al. We asked at reception about moving to another room but were told non were available. Ok, fine, we can put up with it for one night. Asking if the entertainment would be outside for the forseeable future (ie the next few days) and we find that "If the weather is good, entertainment is outside". That doesn't bode so well.

Thursday rocks around and - yep - blazing sunshine. Sioned isn't too happy when I mentioned that I'd seen the same "musician" from the night before and the same PA (which I'd taken a nosy at - 500W is pretty impressive for a small venue, I feel) being set up. Again, we speak to the reception staff who tell us that no rooms are available (even after we point out we'd seen people checking out during the day). The music finishes just after 2300, with the bar remaining open until just after midnight. It was at this time the staff elected to reset the seating by dragging metal tables across the slabs outside for around 15 minutes.

Net result of this was a baby that was... rather unhappy, and rather disturbed. Sioned was in tears frequently after a distinct lack of sleep due to having to deal with a confused baby.

We saw our rep again on Friday morning and with pressure from him were given an offer of alternative accommodation in a 2-star property. We asked if we could see the property, but, after 90 minutes, the staff were still unable to produce a key to a room there. We also found that if we were to move, we'd be required to sign a disclaimer (in Italian only) that would waive all rights to a refund (in part or in full) and also require us to not make enter into any discussion with Thomson (the tour operator). Needless to say, this offer was declined.

With our options running out, we elected to book a flight home. We managed to get an (expensive) last minute flight from Venice airport (a 2 hour drive away) and also through our rep, Craig, secure a taxi to take us there. To give you an idea of how bad things had become, we were prepared to pay in excess of £500 to travel home a day early.

One advantage of being a pessimistic tech is that I was able to gain the following:
o Audio recordings of the discussions (some might say arguments) with the manager and reception staff
o Audio recordings of a member of staff confirming the times the music and bar would close
o Video recordings showing the location of the room in relation to the PA
o Video recordings showing the time and audio levels

Hopefully we'll find a satisfactory conclusion to this through our tour operator, although this blog posting is primarily Google fodder to try and warn people about the quality of the hotel and their customer service. That said, the rep from our tour operator was immensely helpful and went well beyond the call of duty to try and help to rectify the situation. Certainly Thomson and Craig did what they could to help - the issue is the service that the Parc Hotel Italia staff and specifically the staff at Parc Hotel Paradiso in Peschiera provided during our stay.

As a general question to the masses, are we being unreasonable? Is it ok to expect that a hotel can provide what's requested, and, furthermore, provide a quiet room for a baby?

The Bangor University Summer Ball took place over this weekend, headlined by Athlete, and I was there taking photos. This was a pretty hard going test, primarily on the amount of time I was on my feet, with the camera in my hands - around 9 hours. One of the things I like most about the Nikon bodies is that they just feel so at home in my hands. The D2x isn't light by any measure, but, after that amount of time to still not feel like my wrist is about to snap is pretty impressive. I was also dragging all of my lenses around with me and various other stuff in my Lowepro AW100 bag - again, this caused me no issues at all - no pain in my shoulders or anything. So, all in all, a good night. The processing took me a fair while to do - the results are available at http://photos.garysmith.org.uk/ball08/