Phew. Finally recovering, catching up on sleep and frantically packing my room. The View Developer 2008 as always was both hard work and fun - lots of new folks, lots of interesting content. Last night, Roy and I were just too tired to go barhopping in Boston, and just sat in the hotel bar, chatting. Should you think this is wasted time, important HADSL stuff got resolved and computing infrastructure was sorted out. Okay, so we did a *little* bit of work, whilst sipping beer and watching the folks head to the MIT graduation ball in the hotel. Scary. Sort of 'Nerd Herd' in Tuxedos.

A very nice thing happened last night. Some of you may be familiar with 'The Jacket' - this is a very old, very battered thin leather jacket that I wear whilst on adventures. Its been around the world with me, and sometimes gets bored of my tasteless banter and heads off to do stuff by itself. When I met The Turtle in Vegas, for instance, it went backstage for a behind the scenes look at the Mirage casino. When I interviewed for Standard Life, it had a wee stay in the Apex hotel in Edinburgh. And on Friday, when we went to the Cactus club, it absconded again. (Confusion reigned, as I lent 'The Jacket' to Susan to keep her warm, and forgot about it in my 'tired and emotional' state).

Enquiries lasted all day Saturday, but no - I couldnt find it in the normal places. Hotel lost propery, the bar, down the side of the road between the Cactus club and the Sheraton. In any of my presentation rooms. I was resigned to it finally leaving me forever. Sigh.

But no, another attendee for The View conference bumped into me last night and filled me in on some of the stuff that I was up to on Friday night, and (after apologising to the poor lady), I established that my jacket had actually been lost in the Hotel Bar! One phone call later (and a bizarre Russian security guard and his russian/irish girlfriend story - god, can I pick em!), Jacket and I were reunited. Awww. A nice happy ending.. And even better (after checking the pockets), nothing nasty or illegal in there.

Bouyed by my Homing Jacket success, I went to the room and selected an in-room movie. No, dear reader - nothing seedy. But the rather blacker-than-black comedy - 'In Bruges'. Hilarious. The younger of two irish gangsters (Colin Farrel - left) somewhat resembled Mr Mooney (On the right), and the older one somewhat resembled me in a few years time. And the accents all resembled Father Ted. One line:

"This is what its came to - two Manky Whores and a Racist Dwarf. I'll be off!"

will stay with me for some time..

And finally. You all expected it, I expected it - so here it is. Was I able to use the KLM internet check-in today ? Ah. No.

• After much scambling around, I managed to point an Internet Expoder 7 on XP client at the KLM website. I'm still stung that Neil thinks that anything other than XP and Internet Exploder deserves to fail.
• Rummaged around, got my flight information, plugged it in... And..
• A new check-in screen! 'Please go to partner site'.. Okay.. Encouraging..
• A Northwest check-in screen appears, PRE-POPULATED with my CORRECT information!. My Expectations, like the national debt, is rising..
• Clicked on the 'Check-in' button and........
• Like a exploding zepplin, my hope and dreams lay scattered across the hotel room floor (rather like my underwear). No. 'Reservation Cannot be found'.