God bless free WiFi

I'm writing this entry from the increasingly cold Pioneer Plaza in Portland. The free Wifi is actually superior in quality to the $10 a day wifi in the Hilton. (This is the second time I've stayed at a Hilton recently, and it's ironic that the thing that has made me notice what hotel I've been staying at is the number of things they try to charge people for (gym, wifi) after charging expensive nightly rates for rooms that are at best average and have crappy towels and wimpy cable.)

Portland's a cool town. Urban, but certainly not New York. Filled with hipsters. And the smell of pot. And homeless people. Last night we found this cool bar called Tube that was a small bar basically encased in a plastic tube. Cheap drinks, good rock DJ. I haven't really done much sightseeing, but Susanne's accounts of her tour of Shanghai Portland (about how drunkards were kidnapped to work as sailors) added a bit of local flavor. I'm still recovering from a tasty big dinner last night (and an equally good veggie burger for lunch). Oh, and the public transit is free in the city center. And there are signs that tell when the next bus is coming. Does life get any better? Wow.

Getting here was an ordeal. American Airlines was in chaos on Saturday. For the second time in as many trips on American, I had to switch terminals at JFK, which requires walking quite a bit in a hurry and getting through security again. Their fancy phone update service called me several times to let me know my flight was getting kicked around, but they weren't so sophisticated as to actually rebook me when I was going to miss my connection. Instead, I had to call them, but at least I beat the poor saps waiting in the hour long line at the terminal in JFK. Absurd. And there was no meal on the flight, even after the rush and the poor food options in the terminal. Jeez. The highlight of the flight was definitely Spanglish.

Yesterday was the CHI Beyond Threaded Conversation Workshop, which was pretty chaotic. The hope of an emergent organization didn't quite materialize and things got too theoretical for my taste with efforts to frame a "design space." When we finally got into breakout groups, we realized we didn't even agree on things like what the purpose of online debate should be or what was best for readers. There were a lot of interesting people and some old friends in the workshop, and we got a pretty good enumeration of issues to consider in designing discussion interfaces and of sites we all thought were fascinating. The workshop wiki should be public soon.

What else? I went for a long run today and got lost several times. There are some very pretty and very slummy areas in Portland. Sadly the Rose Garden was not in bloom. I went to the Doc Martens store, but even they don't make the shoes I liked in my size. Seriously, some day somebody is going to get rich using technology to make custom clothing for guys who are sick of stores that cater to tall and fat people. I hurt my neck doing situps. Am I getting old?

Gotta run.