Re: Long way around the barn!
1) Insert keycard in slot beside door to switch on all lights
Ah, well there was my first stumbling point once, many years ago. I got sent abroad to one of a customer's foreign sites - in a place with lots of sun. Got to the hotel, got given a card for the room, went up in the lift and found myself in a corridor darker than the command centre of a submarine in night combat mode. After a few minutes in the gloom, I got enough vision to find my door, and entered the room.
Being a hot and sunny place they had full blackout curtains that were automatically left fully closed by the staff - so the room was even darker than the corridor, especially when the door closed itself behind me. By feel I managed to find what felt like some light switches - but they did nothing but make a quiet clicking noise. I managed to make my way across to the window by following the pinpricks of light that got through the blackout like a starry night and allowed some light into the room.
it was only then that I found this slot thing next to the light switches, and by experiment found that shoving the card into it made the lights work. Yes I know it sounds daft, but I'd never even heard of this sort of "feature" (I'd call it a bug myself) before - I'd always had hotel rooms with ordinary lights, the sort that come on when you switch them on, and go off when you switch them off.
I did however realise the value of the blackout curtains. Some years before that I'd found myself in a hotel in Stockport during some strange season referred to as summer - "what on earth is this hot weather ?" sort of stuff. Each day I got back from the course, I'd find the room doing a fair impression of an oven - with all the windows closed even though I'd purposely left them open. A little bit of exploration found that the only place in the hotel that was air conditioned was the bar - which made a decent excuse I suppose :-)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
