...the last time I tried to use a laptop in an airport terminal was--I think--O'Hare in Feb of 2009. (Maybe Aug 2008; I don't remember.) What I do remember is that if I wanted to access the Internet, I needed to provide a credit card number, which would entitle me to an entire day's worth of WiFi.
I demurred.
On impulse, yesterday--after I'd eaten lunch--I decided I'd give it a try. Lo and behold, Birmingham is not like Chicago; I was able to get right on and post here, and do a bit of surfing, and answer some e-mail. It was very nice.
Consider what it actually costs to provide WiFi to the traveling public: it's cheap enough that plenty of stores and restaurants provide it free of charge as a way of getting customers to come in. Libraries have it, too.
You would think that something like one of the busiest airports in the world (if it's not still the busiest) would be making enough money to provide free WiFi.
Then again, O'Hare is run by Democrats.
We'll see if I have time to check out the WiFi at Midway. There's about a 25 minute gap between my arrival there and the departure of my bus, but God alone knows how that'll work out.
* * *
One really annoying thing: I used this laptop with a dialup connection in Maine in 2009; now whenever I'm using it the goddamned dialup dialogue pops up every five goddamned minutes.
THERE DOESN'T SEEM TO BE ANY WAY TO DISABLE IT. I've looked and looked, and CANNOT figure out how to get this goddamned thing outa my face.
...well, another perusal of the Control Panel found that somehow the dialup had been set as my "default connection", so I axed that. Maybe that'll fix it. I hope so; that's F-ing annoying.
* * *
I could comment on this Sultan Knish post, but the following paragraph says everything that needs be said:
Vietnam was the work of two Democratic Senators with no executive experience, who promised the country that a new age was coming. The JFK assassination was the act of a misfit turned radical socialist who ate up all the paranoia being dispensed by the left, and decided to jump the gun on the revolution. All the overdoses and assassinations were spawned by the cultural chaos that the counterculture itself had unleashed. An anarchy that rebounded on itself in murder and suicide. And of course the great legacy of drug abuse and insanity, by counterculture figures who had made their living celebrating both, until it killed them.Most of his posts are too long; his paragraphs end up being dense blocks of text which would be fine on paper but are terrible on screen.
Anyway, the post is about how the left inevitably destroys itself once it's finished destroying whatever it set out to destroy--Czarist Russia, traditional morals, whatever--and I think it makes a pretty good point.
* * *
The economy is better and people are spending more and layoffs are slowing, but "...too few jobs are being created to lower the 9.8 percent unemployment rate."
If you dig into the meat of the article, the news ain't as rosy as the headline might suggest. People bought things like appliances, computers, and "heavy machinery", but "Total orders for durable goods dropped 1.3 percent." It only looks good if you exclude transportation (trains, planes, and automobiles) because then it turns into a 2.4% increase.
Problem: if the transportation sector is not doing so well, it means fewer people needed to build those cars and airplanes. And:
Many analysts are predicting that the economy will grow at a 3.5 percent to 4 percent annual pace next year. That would be up from an expected 2.8 percent pace this year.Would these be the same "analysts" and "economists" who were always shocked at the "unexpected" increases in unemployment? If so, I don't trust them any further than I could comfortably piss a battlship.
Still, by one estimate, the economy needs to grow by 5 percent for a full year to bring down the unemployment rate by one percentage point. Many economists expect the unemployment rate to be near 9 percent by the end of next year.
* * *
So my sister and brother-in-law have gone to work, and here I am sitting at a table in their living room and thinking about going back to bed.
One of their cats is this big old tom named "Uncle Jack". Uncle Jack reminds me of Moon from Mimi Wo Sumaseba--this big phlegmatic fuzzball of a cat. If you pet him, he makes a kind of growling noise that might be a purr and might be a meow.
Here I thought my cats had personality.
* * *
I'm too tired to tell the entire tale of my trip down here, but I nearly forgot my WoW authenticator. That would have been great, especially since I went to all the trouble of setting up Seiren (the laptop) to update its WoW client. In the moment that I realized I needed to take it, I imagined how that would have gone:
Get the laptop set up, get the internet connection set, start up WoW, enter my password..."Authenticator...oh, it's still hanging by the computer at home! FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU--"
So I clipped it to my keys. It's here with me.
I can play WoW.