Location: Pacific Beach Library (map )
I chauffeured Amy to the Sandbar last night so she could party with her coworkers unencumbered by vehicular responsibility. By the time the cab deposited her at the door midnight was just a distant memory, but our tradition of staying up and chit-chatting was too entrenched to allow her to go to sleep when she got home. It was a later night than usual. I interrupted a story about Cute Boy to tell her I would be leaving on Monday. She wasn’t happy about that at all. She proposed a date a few weeks from now. She asked me to wait at least until she had a day off so we could hang out, but she’ll want to be spending her rare days with Cute Boy, I’m sure. Now she wants to find Cute Girl for me so I’ll stay. She better hurry. Still, it’s nice to feel welcome.
We did make a pact to get married if we’re both still single when she turns 35. Lord help both of us if that happens. Fortunately we still have a few years. I guess I better figure out when her birthday is.
This morning I loaded up the laptop for my daily pilgrimage from Amy’s (map) along the shore of Mission Bay, pausing to watch the Hobie Cats dart about, soaking up the sun, listening to construction workers curse at each other, and generally enjoying myself. On my way up Cass street I heard Rich practicing piano through his open front door. I was tempted to drop by and say hello to my former coworker, but I didn’t want to break his concentration. I’ll flag him down later if he walks his dog past Sluka’s (aka Javanican) (map) while I’m there. Usually I go to Sluka’s and then come to the library, but I wasn’t very hungry and I was interested in seeing what had happened in my media empire overnight. (One of Amy’s neighbors has an unsecured wireless network, but to get a reliable connection I have to stand on the arm of the sofa in one corner, my head almost touching the ceiling, and holding the laptop up at eye level. Makes it hard to get much done.)
Now I’m hungry, though, so I think I’ll just throw this to the wind and go grab some chow. I’ll make this episode more worthwhile later by adding a picture from my commute.
how did you ever find the network?
On occasion the network is detectable while I’m sitting on the sofa but is rarely strong enough to get anything done. I started moving the laptop around to help, and after much trial found that higher was better.
Me too, but not re the signal.
Finding a unsecured wifi site? It’s called War Driving by the hackeratti. (Note to self: change band name to hackeratti and retitle CD to “War Driving.)
You can find these sites by googling. There quite a few in San Diego.
The hackeratti, I thought, were more interested in the mischief they could perform on careless corps than just getting Internet access. You can go to the library for that.
Typing while standibg right now. Slow.
The hackeratti are typically war driving, looking for businesses with unsecured wifi. Last week a couple guys found an unsecured site at Lowes. They installed some spyware (to suck up credit card #’s) and returned a couple days later to get their booty. Unfortunately, a programmer at the store had found the spyware and it wasn’t too hard to find two guys sitting in a car in the parking lot at 2:00 AM playing with their PC. Dumb crooks.
There are times I come to believe that some people turn to crime because they don’t have sufficient intelligence to hold onto a regular job. One of my favorite recent stories: Two guys held up a gas station and made off with a fair amount of cash, but they ran out of gas about a half-mile away. So what do they do? They grab a gas can and trot back to the gas station they just robbed, arriving while the police are taking the report from the clerk.