They wanted me to pay for internet at a $200 a might hotel. And my employer won't pay for that. Fuckers.

Stay in a cheaper hotel. They all have free internet.

The commenter commented in reply to renowned Unfogged joker Moby Hick.

It was a wedding held at the specific hotel. So, nice to stay onsite. But in general, "La Quinta" is spanish for "high speed internet".

It was a conference held at specific hotel, which is sort of like a wedding but with more alcohol and less cleavage.

Essear is correct. Red Roof Inn: Free internet. Hilton Westin Embassy Suites: $18 a day or the bargain price of $6 an hour.

They often compared specific conferences, noting that they had more alcohol than a wedding but less cleavage, with specific weddings, noting that they had less alcohol than a conference but more cleavage.

Underboob is frowned on at both.

Functional programming conferences frown on sideboob.

What about when functional programmers get married?

Getting married is a fundamentally sideboobful operation.

8 was me, if anybody wondered.

Pretty obvious price discrimination, people staying at more expensive hotels more often have someone else paying the bill so they're willing to pay for internet, cheaper hotels it's a way to attract frugal customers with an extra that doesn't really have much marginal cost to the hotel. I'm surprised Yggles hasn't written a post about it before, this is one of his favorite topics.
My favorite is a couple times I've seen the payment redirect page in a conference room rather than the guest rooms- it's even more ridiculous, I remember one that was $1000 for the first connection for the event (see your coordinator for group discounts!)

That's me- I never knew if you checked then unchecked the remember info box it immediately wipes out your info (I thought just for future visits)

Motel 6 charges for internet.

I like attractive sideboob.

There was no mini-bar at my conference hotel. Did those go out of fashion? I'm really not much of a traveler.

There was at ours. They asked us if we wanted a key when we checked in.

A distractingly self-involved writer says, in the Atlantic, that the decline in minibars is real, although culture and budgeting carry more weight with him than style does.

We only traveled to Austin.

Oh. I mean to include a link.

Blaming the beer I've had tonight for the omission seems overwhelmingly appropriate.

Just remember to thank beer when it helps you.

I only get to go to one wedding this summer. But it's for my old cob-logger, who's having the party at the winery where he's the winemaker, so I think it's gonna be pretty rad. I have no idea where I'm sleeping that night, come to think of it.

I wonder about the net impact of beer and wine on marriage. And if the two differ in that regard.

I have no idea where I'm sleeping that night, come to think of it.

Depends who you meet at the reception, presumably.

25: That seems like a risky plan, unless there's a back-up. Maybe I can borrow a tent.

Because setting up a tent at the end of the night is probably going to happen.

That wedding sounds in tents.

Good thing I'm a Pole.

Yes, how awkward it would be if you were a rain fly instead.

Or a tarp.

It's a tarp.

Formule 1, very cheap French motels, have free wifi. Bed, sink, tv, wifi, that's all you get.

I was laughing at that Dan Brown article on Saturday morning, and C walked into the room also reading and laughing at the same article.

Have you all seen the GeoGuessr game that's making the rounds at the other place? It keeps giving me nondescript photos of trees, but it's an amusing idea.

Oh, wait, you can actually rotate and move around. More than just trees! I kind of missed the point.

What's regarded as a good score on that thing?

33- I'd heard the stereotype about French people not bathing, but no toilet either?

No, it's so cheap the toilets and showers are down the corridor.

Internet at expensive hotels is an inexplicable joke. You can have conversations - indeed, I have - like "Hello, I'd like to rent two large conference halls, two smaller meeting rooms and twenty bedrooms for my conference in June. We'll need catering for 250 guests for all four days."
"Certainly, sir, that will be several tens of thousands of dollars."
"Do you have free wifi that our staff can use? It'll be helpful when we're organising this massive conference."
"No. You must pay extra."
"But I've just agreed to give you enough money to buy a small house."
"No. Wifi is extra. It'll be $50 a day."
"But Dunkin Donuts manages to give wifi away for free with a $2.75 coffee. You're the Marriott Hotel. Come on."
"We didn't get this rich by giving shit away for free."

Without reading thread:
I have been away for a week. Now to catch up - feck, 12 posts and their comments, and comments on the older posts no doubt. I may be some time.

See also breakfast, which is inexplicably expensive and yet shit at four and five star hotels. You're almost always better off finding a greasy spoon around the corner.

38: A sink in the room is pretty much the functional equivalent of a urinal.

The one time I stayed in a Formule 1, somebody broke into my parents' car.

The hotel itself was fine for the price, though, even if the rooms do feel uncannily like prison cells.

36: Highest I've seen anyone post is 17000. Which is quite a bit above what I've been able to get so far.

44: I got in the low 7,000s both tries.

What I have learned about myself: I never remember that Australia exists.

It would be interesting to know how many rounds one typically has to play before seeing a street and thinking "wait, I've been there". For me it was about seven.

I got 10, 647 now. Two pictures that were obviously Africa and two that were obviously southern Europe. One that I screwed up badly.

38- I've stayed in places like that in Europe, they were just called hostels. Usually minus the TV though, and those were pre-wifi days.

46.1: I got Australia right on my first go.

46.2: No streets, but I recognized the northern high plains of North American. Not that it did me any good as I was still hundreds of miles off. It all looks mostly the same.

It showed me a picture of a street in Seoul that I had walked down a couple times. I still was off by 6 km on where the street was in Seoul, though. That got me about 6,000 points. I wonder what the maximum possible points per image are.

I got 10,00 again. I should go back to work.

Texas, Namibia, who can tell?

I feel kind of guilty for playing this, because I told my hosts that the jetlag was overcoming me and I was going to go back to my hotel and rest, and I'm not sure playing games on the internet counts as "rest".

I got one that I was sure was California, because palm trees and Burger King. It turns out that in Spanish, Burger King is still "Burger King" and not "El Rey De Los Hamburguesas."

I think maybe that should be las hamberguesas. Stupid gendered articles.

Renowned author Dan Brown gazed admiringly at the pulchritudinous brunette's blonde tresses, flowing from her head like a stream but made from hair instead of water and without any fish in.

Renowned crustacean Sir Kraab was chuckled by this simile that was like a metaphor but she knew was a simile because of her learning from extremely respected Sidney Lanier middle school located at 3801 Jermantown Road. Excellent American poet Sidney Lanier was like a tree.

11,492. If only I hadn't confused Colorado and Romania....

I just got a repeat image! I guess these aren't chosen totally randomly from all of Google Maps, but from a much smaller subset.

Go buy a lottery ticket, just in case it is random.

And getting improbably random hits isn't random.

Ha, one of my photos featured a bank named "Banco do Brasil". NAILED IT!

38- I've stayed in places like that in Europe, they were just called hostels. Usually minus the TV though, and those were pre-wifi days.

Hostels tend to have communal sleeping areas* as well as shower/toilet facilities. Formule 1 is definitely a hotel rather than a hostel, but it's as bare-bones as you're going to get from a reputable chain.

* These days many hostels have individual rooms as well, but usually not many and at a higher rate.

61: I got one that showed an exit sign on a Georgia highway. Got me within a mile of the right place.

I stayed in about 5 different hostels on a trip in 1998 and only one had a truly communal sleeping area (Switzerland), most of the others were like dorm rooms with 2-4 beds. Given that we were traveling as a group of 3, to me this seemed equivalent to a hotel where you get two double beds. I guess if you were traveling solo you'd end up sharing a room with one to a few strangers.

Getting within a mile, on a world map, is still impressive dexterity.

I sucked on my first attempt but also forgot about how you can rotate pictures. I correctly identified Alaska but the wrong city, which given the distance between cities there means I got relatively few points.

Did anybody else know there is a Madame Tussauds in Amsterdam and that lots of signs in Amsterdam are written in regular language?

Still, 13500 points despite the fact that I was nearly half the world away on my last one.

I guessed right on Northern Alberta, and there weren't even any visible tar sands or moose.

I got 9,000, but partly because two of the pictures had Portuguese in them.

6700 or so. Australia looks very like a lot of other places that are not very close to Australia.

I know now that deserts look pretty much the same the world over. Wasn't expecting that last one to be in South Africa!

I'd like to know how the places are generated. There seem to be predominately from the English speaking world, with a few outliers thrown in.

I stayed in about 5 different hostels on a trip in 1998 and only one had a truly communal sleeping area (Switzerland), most of the others were like dorm rooms with 2-4 beds. Given that we were traveling as a group of 3, to me this seemed equivalent to a hotel where you get two double beds. I guess if you were traveling solo you'd end up sharing a room with one to a few strangers.

Well, yeah. Also, depending on how far in advance you book and how busy they are, even with 2-4 bed dorms you may not get to stay in the same one as a group. Anyway, the point was simply that Formule 1 isn't like that. You're booking a room, not just a bed in a room.

Last time I was at the world championship of thing-I-do, in Paris, we all stayed at an Etape (?).* Super cheap budget accommodation. The rooms did have a shower, but they had odd beds -- a double with a single above in a bunk-bed arrangement -- and were as spartan as any hotel I've seen.

I'm off to Paris tomorrow for work. Not staying in a Formule 1.

* cunningly the organisers put all the countries in there, except France. Who had a much nicer hotel.

A photo of that weird bed arrangement can be found here. I suppose it makes it easy/cheap to accomodate 2-parents-and-a-kid families.

Those beds look so small.

Alternatively: Those pillows look huge.

re: 75

Yup, although we had three adults of (sometimes) mixed genders in each room, which made for moments of awkwardness. The beds in the place we stayed were less robust looking than that. An older/cheaper model, but exactly that style.

I wonder what the maximum possible points per image are.

Data point: I missed the exact spot in Valparaíso, Chile, by 1.4 km, which gave 6361 points.

Yup, although we had three adults of (sometimes) mixed genders in each room, which made for moments of awkwardness.

I noticed the at the conference I went to (n = 2), the Europeans seem to all share rooms (though I've not heard of anybody mixing genders) and none of the Americans do.

I had one where I did amazingly well (one within .05km, several others quite close) but it was before they redid the scoring so I only got 13k or so. Australia and Alaska are tough. I also seem to have trouble with the Great Lakes (mistook northern MN for the PNW, northern LP for New England, and Western Ontario for the maritimes). Perth vs other cities in Australia is the worst. Also the worst: dirt roads with no signs in Alaska.

67: Yup, and have been. They have a trippy giant made out of windmills and whatnot.

re: 80

To be honest, when I go to work conferences I'd never share a room. But for sport things, always. As in the former case, I'm not paying. Also, if the fuckers want to send me to Paris in the spring, they can pay.

75, 76, etc - they are small! But you get a very cheap brief overnight stop for 6 plus dog. And they do a decent 4 euro as much coffee and croissants as you can eat breakfast.

I just realized in geoguessr you can walk up and down the street too. I had one in a city that I found a store name, googled, it, and it hit to within 15 meters.

BAM, 5 meters on I79 in PA. 6479 points.

85, 86: Yes. Two ways to play--just guess from the initial point (you could even not allow spinning about), and the other moving around to find signs etc. Doing the latter I managed to get to a 32377 (all 5 rounds 647x with one 6479). Had to drive down the road in Mississippi a fair ways bit to get any kind of clue but eventually passed a school bus that gave it away.