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Saturday, July 5, 2003
Shades of Max Headroom 
Incomplete Inconvenience
| | A few years ago, in one of his many books or essays (I forget which), John Updike said we live "in the age of full convenience." Well, some conveniences are more full than others. Indoor plumbing, for example. Paved roads. Electrical service. |
| | "Convenience" sometimes serves as a synonym for toilet. |
| | The Net needs to join the portfolio of full conveniences, in the nature of electical service, plumbing, sinks and toilets. |
| | Internet fees in hotels and other public places needs to become as declassé as pay toilets. Even in ski resort hotels where the idea isn't to be on the Net anyway. We're talking about necessities here. At least for some of us. You know, like wheelchair access or something. |
| | At least that's the way I feel about it at the moment, when I swelter in the hospitality business equivalent of a pay toilet: a locked "Internet Lounge" (Open 24 Hours. Key Access at Front Desk") with two crummy PCs in an unventilated room the size of a bathroom stall. Discredit where due: there's a big noisy box fan on the floor, but it sits behind the door, which you need to leave open, or the room turns into an oven. For this I'm paying $2 for every 15 minutes. |
| | I'm only on because the two PCs are fed the Net via DHCP. Or so I discovered when I jacked the Ethernet cable into my laptop. Can't figure the mail server, though. It won't let me use my own email server. I get 550 errors. Their email is some kind of Microsoft Exchange thing. Can't find the server address. Arg. |
| | Where else can I go? Hmm.... Information comes up negative or incomplete here, here, here, here, here, here and here (no wireless Starbucks at all in Utah?!?)... |
| | I think I'll go on a Wardrive. There's gotta be something... |
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