xtcian

1/27/03 Day 37 of the

1/27/03

Day 37 of the Sam Houston Galleria Full of Homosexuals Road Trip of Oh The Historic Irony Dept.

Cut & Shoot, TX to Houston, TX

Have I mentioned before how much I adore clandestine wireless pirating? I believe I have, but a big, modern city like Houston offers all sort of wifi opportunities; you just need to know where to look. I had a hunch about the butt end of a Comp USA, and sure enough, here I sit in our Residence Inn parking lot with three choices for surfing: a transmitter called Airport31oCb, one called James, and another called (boringly) Linksys. I chose the latter, because it has the best reception and they didn't ask for a password. Once you have the signal, just go to the Tools section of dslreports.com and you can find the outgoing email server and then the world is your oyster.

I'd feel bad about it, I guess, if I were to spend my entire internet life out in this goddamn parking lot suckling the hard-earned broadband teat of someone else's toil, but three or four days isn't going to hurt anybody. We can always go to Starbucks for wifi, but I don't feel like paying TiMobile 25 a minute for the pleasure. Plus, it's WAY more fun to do what Tessa and I do – drive around silly places looking for signal, like the Feds do at the end of "Pump Up the Volume."

Besides, Starbucks better charge for it while they can. It's getting too easy to do this, and nobody is bothering with passwords.

Speaking of brain trusts, passwords and secret money, I accompanied Tessa to the top of a Houston highrise this afternoon to meet with her financial advisor about the future of her portfolio, as well as his astute prognostications about the trends of the market. I didn't always understand the language (I have trouble determining between "equity," "capital," "assets" and "cash") but the view sure was nice.