Booking rooms to stay in that provide "actual" high speed Internet is challenging. Being able to do what you need to do when not at the home office can be a challenge. I guess just about everything is challenging when you are outside your element.
I'm here at the Day's Inn on 4th street in San Jose...about 10 minutes from the airport. No elevators, no coffee pot in the room and extreemly week wireless signals. Room is clean and they have at least the Sci-Fi channel on the TV. Great view of Highway 880 from the front door. Oh and no alarm clock!
My first challenge to overcome was getting the Internet working properly so I have all my tools working. My job does require VPN access. There are 2 routers here to sellect from. One assigns ip adresses like 192.168.0.100 and the other 10.10.10.100. The XP VPN gives me and ip address in the 192 dot range and the Cisco client in the10 dot range.
I could get both to work but when connected I lost the ability to surf...another requirement. My other option was to remote connect to my desktop and connect to the VPN from my home office. This means all my emails and stuff go directly to the desktop system. So basically all I have to do is connect to the Internet from the room, fire up the remote client, and get the job done...albiet much slower, get the job done.
After driving all over creation to find a small cheap coffee pot to my arsenal of things to bring, I also have coffee in the room now. Since I'm normally an early riser I can forgo the alarm clock. I have one on my laptop anyway that can work in a pinch.
An extention cord is another asset. The nearest outlet is behind the TV! Including my laptop, I need to power my little printer I have to bring with me.
With every trip, I seem to need more and more just to be able to work. This time, my supervisor called me and wanted me to use MY credit card to book a room for another tech they had brought in from Sacramento who didn't have one. I told her that I didn't have any sqiggle room. Not my problem anyway whether I get reimbursed or not. Not sure what happened on that. You would think that they could get the techs a credit card that they can pre-load funds on to book rooms and cars when out of town. The only thing they seem to be able to do is pre-pay airfare when that is needed.