Silflay Hraka

Atlanta Named Most Wired City.

This, quite frankly, is crap.

Whoever compiled the report is probably sitting in some comfy cafe surfing the internet on some free wi-fi signal. They have not, obviously, ever tried to find a similar cafe in Atlanta and had they put in the effort, they would’ve driven in futility through the poorly maintained streets of downtown and mid-town Atlanta looking for any sign of internet life.

They have probably also never had to get high-speed internet access in an older apartment building in midtown Atlanta, only to discover that there are only two vendors that provide access to that address and neither one can apparently figure out how to make it work.

Even though Atlanta is home to Cox, Cox doesn’t service the area. Neither does Verizon, even though Verizon has a presence in Atlanta. AT&T does provide service but probably only because they bought out BellSouth. Hell, I live within spitting distance of the Earthlink building and even they can’t provide service to my address. And there’s no wi-max either. Don’t think I didn’t try to find it. I did.

This only serves to underline what a bunch of horses-asses your average main-stream journalist is these days. They compile a bunch of useless statistics from a comfy desk in some cubicle somewhere in New York and think their writing even sniffs of accuracy.

I’m not alone in my assessment. The article even quotes an analyst who happens to live in Atlanta.

“It’s a dynamic area with a lot of young people, but exactly why it’s No. 1 is a mystery to me,” notes telecom analyst Jeff Kagan, who coincidentally is a long-time resident of Atlanta.

Anyone who lives in Atlanta would probably be mystified.

Plus, no one ever seems to have a power outlet around when you need one. How ’s that for wired.  Freaking computer is screaming at me to save my work and shut down. I guess this is why Charlotte didn’t make the list.

Kehaar’s traveling again. I’m sitting in Charlotte Douglass International airport and I’m pleasantly surprised to find that they have free wireless internet access. I thought I’d use the free connection to post an update for those of you wondering where the hell I’ve been for the last few weeks.

The short answer is that I haven’t been anywhere, especially if you define “anywhere” as “anywhere in which I have both the time to blog and access to the internet”. I moved into a new apartment right before the new year and haven’t been able to wrangle an internet connection worth a damn since. I can get a tentative connection to an unsecured wireless network from one inconvenient corner of my home, but only in the later hours of the evening and only if I stand on one leg and hold the laptop at arm’s length. Blogging is not something I particularly desire to do in those circumstances.

Comcast has been out twice to install my internet service but hasn’t been able to get the cable connection working due to “faulty wiring” and “calling the wrong number instead of the number I gave them as my preference and thereby not keeping their damned appointment with me even though I took three hours off of work to wait for the bastards”. Deciding I’d given them enough of my precious time, I told them they could keep their “service” for all I cared. I can get other internet access and I don’t watch TV anyway. The cable was located in the dining room anyway and I would’ve had to run literally hundreds of feet of coaxial cable in order to get it to the den. I’m actually looking forward to not having television again. I am more productive without it.

On to AT&T DSL but they can’t seem to figure out which apartment I’m in and won’t be able to activate my service until Wednesday of next week at the earliest. This didn’t prevent me from going to Best Buy last night and buying a $75.00 DSL modem. I was a hair’s breadth from also buying a $280 dollar wireless router from Linksys but I managed to convince a buddy of mine to talk me out of it. In my move, I discovered that I own enough networking gear to maintain a small to medium sized business. Another router I do not need. But it was black and shiny and had lots of little antennas and looked a little bit like the robot from “Lost in Space” and I coveted it greatly.

I’ve been craving lots of technical gear lately. Routers, laptops, desktops, hard drives, media servers, wi-fi phones, LCD televisions…you name it, I’ve had an urge to buy it of late. I blame it on my mid-life crisis. I figure it’s probably a proxy for having a wife and kids. Kind of like getting a puppy. It’s something with which you can develop a relationship. So far I’ve been able to talk myself out of spending the four or five-thousand dollars it would take to buy everything I want but I know it’s just a matter of time. Since I won’t have cable, I’ll need to set up a sophisticated network in order to stream movies from my laptop to my television on those rare occasions that I get the jones to vegitate in front of the boob tube.

Anyway, I’m off to Boston now to visit Black Sheep and his family. Camp Girl * (formerly known as “Short & Curly” in this space and also known as “There’s No Way In Hell You’re Calling Me Short & Curly, I Don’t Care How F*cking Funny You Think It Is, Mister.”) will be there and we’ll attempt skiing tomorrow, if the weather allows. So far traveling has been better this time around, even though it started at 3:45 a.m. and even though the weather threatens snow. My gates have been closer and I even sat on the second row for once. I figure I’m doomed and I’ll be stuck in Boston on the return trip.

Stay tuned for more. Kehaar out.