20071219

Gasping for broadband

Am thoroughly enjoying some peaceful reflection away from the hustle and bustle of usual busy life. Survived US embassy interrogation (of three mediocre questions; for this I have to travel all the way to london and then sit around in the queuing system from hell for four hours?). Am a little irritated that I have to hike three and a half miles with dying laptop in tow in order to access broadband so that I can type out these messages and not have to wait an hour for anything to happen.

Anyway, am on the verge of getting bored, so does anyone who knows me feel like an exciting day trip to maidstone over the next few days? Board and lodging also available. Otherwise I might end up doing something silly, like some work.

20071210

dial up

everytime i come back, dial up gets worse and worse. why isn't there some kind of temporary broadband you can get? it doesn't help that every time I try to resuscitate the account I set up last time i was here, it is dead, the provider has changed, and I have to go through a tedious set up procedure all over again. my mobile phone is also dead, but since it's about ten years old, it's probably time to pay ten quid and get one from this century.

this time for the first time I do see loads of wireless access points around me from home -- but they are all secured. that's not fair. i'd consider cracking them, but this seems altogether more complicated than it needs to be. why isn't there a one click solution to feed my addiction?

20071205

I win at email

Just about to set off for the airport, and after sending the final paper (of, er, about five in the last four weeks), I made a final push, and got the total number of messages sitting unanswered in my inboxen down to 8. Yay. Of course, as soon as I go away, it will start shooting up again, and because of limited email access, will probably reach a hundred or so before I return at the end of the month and start hacking away again. It's like some kind of never ending tetris game, except that there's no limit to how high the stack can get. So, as I mentioned before, this is it. I am now closing 2007, and am not prepared to take on anything further till 2008. Please remember to check out my travel itinerary in a recent blog post and ping me if you will be around in any of my locales for the rest of the month, else I shall bid you adieu for now.

20071203

If you go down to the woods today...

In all this fuss, no one seems to have answered the question: so what happened to the bear?

Now ask yourself, in all of this, who is actually responsible for "insulting religion and inciting hatred"?