On my second day in Maui, I got a serious case of Information Anxiety.
\nI wonder how much email I got? Is there anything important happening in
\nthe news? What’s YHOO at? Since we apparently have the only cable
\nsystem on the planet that doesn’t have the weather channel, what’s the
\nweather going to be like here for the next few days?<\/p>\n
My plan to connect my Treo to my laptop using WirelessModem didn’t
\nwork. For some reason, the Treo couldn’t talk to the laptop. I would
\nhave tried it at home, but it was demoware and I didn’t want to install
\nit and then have it expire halfway through the trip.<\/p>\n
I popped in my wifi card and got a few blips, but nothing I could
\nconnect to from inside the condo. So I opened the door and started
\nwandering around through the condos in the dark, scanning for networks.
\nI got a few, but I couldn’t connect to them. Finally – gold! – a
\nnetwork named ‘default’ meaning someone took their wireless router out
\nof the box, plugged it in, and did nothing to it. It was wide open,
\ngave me an IP address, and I was connected. <\/p>\n
The only problem was that I was now standing in the middle of a road in
\nthe dark. There wasn’t really anywhere to sit down, so I just stood
\nthere. The glow of my laptop must have made me really stand out. Cars
\nwent by and I got buzzed by the community security guy on his golf cart
\nas I downloaded my email. Another guy on a bike laughed as he went by
\nand asked me if I was “pirating an internet connection.” <\/p>\n
I was standing in front of a trash dumpster with the laptop on top when
\nthe security guy made his third pass and stopped to ask me what was up.
\nI told him what I was doing and he seemed satisfied and took off.<\/p>\n
It felt good to get current again, even though I’m supposed to be on
\nvacation. I didn’t check my work email or anything, so it’s not like I
\nwas working, just seeing what was going on in the world. I’ll have to
\nsee if I can scope out a less conspicous spot tomorrow to get my next
\nfix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On my second day in Maui, I got a serious case of Information Anxiety. I wonder how much email I got? Is there anything important happening in the news? What’s YHOO at? Since we apparently have the only cable system on the planet that doesn’t have the weather channel, what’s the weather going to be …<\/p>\n