I don’t take many vacations, but every now and then I like to get out of town for a little bit of gambling. Each time I hit Vegas, Reno or Tahoe, I usually stay at a different casino – So, I never really know what to expect. Some of the hotels that I’ve stayed at have been great and some have been terrible, but Circus Circus is the first that has lost my business forever.

Normally I’d be bothered by a dirty room or poor customer service but, in this case, it was a big fat sticker prohibiting guests from connecting their own AV gear to the television sets. Five years ago, I wouldn’t have cared but, with the explosion in the number of laptop to TV solutions and video cameras with outputs, this has become an important issue for consumers to consider. What good does it do you to be able to take your PC or camera on the go, if hotels end up freezing you out by neutering their TVs?

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Everybody loves to hate their resident cable/telephone company, but the network operators are stepping it up in San Diego to help people where they can in the fire crisis. According to CableFAX (subscription only), Cox Communications has started providing water, blankets and free phone services at evacuation centers. Verizon is offering free call forwarding for customers affected by the fires and has provided emergency phone lines for evacuees at American Red Cross Shelters.

Meanwhile, all of the local operators are busy evaluating the impact of the fire on their networks. In what sounds like the worst of the network damage, nearly four thousand feet of Charter’s fiber optic cable has burned in the San Bernardino Mountain area.

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