What I learned, so far, in Barcelona is that blog posts need to be like Tapas.
Small. Frequent. Varied. Tasty.
Easy to digest every few hours.
Criteria For Traveling With Craig
October 13, 2007 — serentripity
This photo is both unfair and illustrative.
Unfair because Laurie doesn’t (really) smoke. I asked her to pose for this
photo. She likes to pose by looking elsewhere. Metaphor for her life.
Anyway: illustrative because criteria for traveling with me is you need to
be a drinking buddy.
Laurie is a great drinking buddy. As I type this, she has poured me my third glass of Champagne.
And we’re heading out because it’s Saturday night, and we’re in Barcelona.
Fuck You Wireless Drama Unfolds
October 13, 2007 — serentripity
This is my view from my hotel room in Barcelona.
As mentioned, a major peeve of mine is paying for Internet access in hotels.
Also mentioned, I brought my wireless router so as to pay for Internet access, and
broadcast it to all of Barcelona.
I meant to broadcast my Internet access from the 16th floor (see above picture) to all of Barcelona. Ola, how far wireless will travel from the 16th floor across a flat city!
The Plan
This was not only a plan, but a scheming, boastful, Lex Lutherish plan to make
a fuck you statement to the hotel by giving away Internet access to 2/3 of a
city of several million (for you geeks, I maximized the IP range of the DHCP
server – and wanted to take a photo of a saturated DHCP table to demonstrate
success. Also for you geeks, the SSID was going to be FuckTheHotelForCharging_FreeInternetByCraig).
This IT task appears easy given the fact that the city is flat and I am both
in the middle of the city and on the 16th floor of my hotel.
But the entire operation backfired when I safely plugged my surge protector
into the wall with a European three prong adapter.
Moments later, the power in the room went out.
Somehow, the surge protector blew a fuse. No, it blew the fuck out of fuseS.
Not one, but several, electricians operated on the problem before there was a fix.
As though written by a Hollywood screenwriter inspired by films like “Speed”, my great scheming plan unfolded and backfired.
The device I spent so much time tinkering and preparing for my violent / abstract IT protest came back, like a boomerang, to create enormous wreckage at its point of origin.
I have a newfound respect for successful conquistadors.
