Praying to the Wireless Gods

I have a photo of two frollaborators (pointless portmanteau of friend and collaborator) kneeling in front of a hotel window on the 14th floor, with their laptops on the windowsill. The reason being that in this way they could just about pick up a WiFi signal. I'm now in a somewhat similar position myself: laptop hoisted up on a couple of conference proceedings next to the window, in order to catch the signal of a neighbor whose password I've borrowed. Since they are the only people in the world still using B, the signal is weak and a bit flaky, so I can only pick it up from this one location, so it doesn't really feel like "true" wireless -- it has the same pauses and cut-outs more familiar from dial-up, which was my solution for my Maidstone trips in previous years. It's quite weird to go back to the model of actively having to connect to the internet to check email or look something up, and then disconnecting. I don't recommend it.