New Year greetings to all from one who has rested one BrailleNote for the past 
few days.

I do hope that this intriguing subject line will spare the blushes of Messrs.  
Kevin, Sean, Lew, Dan, Charles, Chris et Al, whoever he may be.   But, gentle 
folk, read on, mark, and learn by my mistakes!!!

I spent Christmas and New Year away from home, and took my BrailleNote with me 
to the hotel.   Right, said the manager, if you dial 9 for an outside line, you 
should have no difficulty sending or receiving e-mail!!!

So there I was, in my hotel bedroom, with my beloved wife, Audrey, BrailleNote 
and telephone plugged in a double-jacked wall socket.   I picked up the 
receiver, and dialled 9.   I then went through the usual procedures for 
checking for new e-mail.   The eleven-digit number dialled away merrily, 
accompanied by an unusual background hiss.   Then a phone started to ring 
within the BrailleNote itself, if you follow me.   After about four rings, it 
stopped, and a garbled, totally unintelligible voice could be heard issuing 
from the BrailleNote's interior!!!

I tried again, this time, for no logical reason, dialling 9 with the phone 
still on the hook.   Again, I was connected, not to my service provider, but to 
the hotel switchboard.

Our stay was adventurous in other ways.   We were woken early on New Year's Day 
by someone telling us that we should ring our daughter, but as we have no 
children, we decided that that was a hoax call from a yob.

Last night, or, to be more precise, between three and ten past four this 
morning, the hotel's washing machine was switched on at full throttle, in the 
laundry room next door to our room.

The hotel tried to charge me fifteen pence (about ten cents) for the failed 
e-mail retrieval attempts, of which there were about four in all.

All comments gratefully accepted.

Warm regards,

Jim Taylor.





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