I’m sitting in Panera Bread right now. It’s like the midwest version of Corner Bakery (although they have Corner Bakery here too). My internet went out at home, and I couldn’t get on to my neighbors wireless network. Seems like people suddenly know how to put passwords on those things. Anyway, it was a nice day so I decided to get my bike tuned-up in preparation of sunny days ahead. I also wanted to get out and search for Wifi.

 

When I first moved to Chicago I was living in a hostel for a few days. During that time I discovered that Panera offered free Wifi. So I went and tried using it. Unfortunately it didn’t work for some reason. I figured it’s just Panera being broken. Now, a year and a half later I come back to Panera and it’s still “broken.” Then a nice person at the table next to me said, “Are you using Safari? You need to use Internet Explorer to log in first.” AHAH! How lame. Nobody likes IE. Not even Microsoft likes IE and they made it. I don’t like it either so I deleted it from my machine. Actually, I’m not even sure if it was ever on my new iBook. Anyway, I tried to get online using Firefox, the goto web browser. No luck. The thought of all the emails that I’m missing and all the information I can’t access was killing me. You know you’re addicted to the internet when you get mad that you can’t instantly check the weather using your dashboard widget before you go out into the “real” world. But I digress. I could see the t-mobile network from the Starbucks across the street but I’m not about to spend $10 for a stupid day pass to the internet. Luckily I remembered that they have a free-day pass so you can try their service. So I packed up my stuff, went to Starbucks, got the card for a free day-pass, went back to Panera and opened a t-mobile wifi account for free. Hooray, stick it to the man! So I figured I might as well put IE on my computer since it appears handy in certain situations (actually only one situation). BUT apparently Microsoft hated IE so much that they stopped making it available for download. Instead I downloaded Netscape and Camino and thought to myself, “why the fuck are there so many browsers?”

 

Anyway, long story long, I am now online. And I’m relieved to discover that I only got junk mail since I last checked while I was at work yesterday afternoon.

 

I lead an exciting life.