jr conlin's ink stained banana

Today, my intertubes got backed up. i'm not quite sure what the reason was or who was responsible, but things went from my normal reasonably high speed (well, US high speed) to something akin to taping TCP packets on snails and letting them fight for pole position on a salt flat. At one point, i turned on a packet sniffer and saw i was getting a mighty 60 bits a minute. That's a single zero or one per second, on average, as a packet would trickle in every few minutes or so.

Technically i was connected, but obviously, not really.

i also learned that "Due to the popularity of SBC/Yahoo internet, tech support was handling a higher than normal volume of calls." This was probably the most creative and positive way of telling me "Yeah, something's screwed up and we're being flooded by people bitching about it. Get in line." Having other things to do today (no, really) i instead decided to grab my archos and see how many times i'd encounter a free wireless connection. Heck, maybe i'd hit an AT&T connection and i could use my SBC account for something today.

So, REI to look at a Timbuktu bag that was 60% off? Nothing. (and the bag was too big to fit under an airline seat, so i'm sticking with the one i've got.) At the bank? Nope. Near Race St. Seafood? Nada. Carwash? No love there. Grocery store? Nothing. Pretty much everywhere i went today with one notable exception, i was out of luck getting on line. The notable exception? Anne Marie and i headed over to Netflix and got on line to check mail, pay bills and a few other things.

This, of course, was something i completely expected.

In spite of the allure low power network boxes, i can't help but think of what a really, honestly bad idea that happens to be. Sure, they're great at home or work or at starbucks, but then, so's having a full on laptop. i'll even grant that what makes an iPhone more appealing is that it has something other than wifi. (Otherwise i'd bet that there would be a lot more iPod Touches out there.)

Then i remember that i live in Silicon Valley. One of the few areas of the planet where if there was to be a ubiquitous wireless network, it would exist*.

So, no, inspite of whatever geekery hyperventilation you may encounter of the wonders of living disconnected from your data, i'd strongly recommend you not do that. The problem is that treading the web like oxygen works great, until you happen to run out of it.

*This, of course, is horse poo. The Santa Clara valley, in spite of being the home of the internet, has about as much network as the outskirts of Topeka.