Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2014-03-06 13:45:02 - Graham Ellis
There's something about my stays in Borehamwood - earlier this week - something always seems to go wrong. Three nights in my hotel there, and on the first night I was awoken by the file alarm at 23:30 and staff noisily starting work in the next room to mine soon after 05:00. The first picture shows that room, thoughtfully left with the door open.
During the second night, I awoke to find that our dedicated server was offline ... and waking with THAT gets me awake very quickly indeed. A panic followed as I got in touch with the hosting house where we rend the dedicated server and - good on them - we were back (ish) in about 50 minutes, and mostly in 80. Turned out that the power supply unit on the computer had blown. A couple of issues with IP addresses, and that left a remenant problem with the mail system which was identified and sorted out 24 hours later.
The third night I slept well, and thought I would take advantage of the mouth watering breakfast pictured on the advertising hoarding, and at a good price. But it turns out that breakfast dosen't start until 09:00 - prior to that you can pay a fiver and get a boxed snack, or two pounds extra if you want instant porridge too. Tired hotel, but a short walk from where I was working.
When I looked back, it's 6th of 6 there on Trip Advisor, the only high rating being for the staff. I had, I think, about eight words out of the guy who checked me in - "address" and "two one three - first floor over there" so I can't judge. No-one at recpetion of visible at other times. Perhaps they were busy catching up on a backlog of cleaning
and maintenance
Happy to have moved on now ... and happier to be home Friday night - where our team is so good that I don't even need to worry about too many issues like these!
