Every apartment building has three distinct castes.
At the top are those with their own wireless Internet connection, protected by a password. They can afford to shell out the big bucks, and they're wise and competent enough to keep intruders out.
Next come the people who open up their laptops on their first day in the new place, discover an unprotected connection, and exploit it for free service. What they lack in finances they make up for in brains and survival instinct. They stick it to The Man.
And then there are the exploited. The resident push-overs who foot the bill for everyone else's party. The whipping boys of The Man.
My roommate and I have been getting whipped. When we moved in, the good connections were locked. We thought about proposing to pay our next-door neighbors for their password but eventually realized that real people don't do such things, sucked it up, bought a modem, and made a deal with The Great Satan (Time Warner). We identify with the second caste, but faced with no other options, we guessed we were moving on up.
We were wrong. We proved incapable of protecting our goods. The installation CD that came with the modem doesn't work, despite several pointless calls to the help desk. So we have full service, but can't set up a password. We have become the village bicycle.
About a month ago, new neighbors moved in down the hall. We sadly imagined their joy when they performed the obligatory test run and found a full signal there for the taking. This weekend, we finally asked what connected they use. Belkin. (The inability to name your network lets everyone know it will be available forever.)
We told them we used it too. But we didn't mention that it's ours. The shame would be too much to bear.
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1 comment:
As a fellow blogger (and as a fellow writer for Charlotte Mag), I can relate to the (admittedly vain) fear that no one is reading your blog, so I thought I would reward you with a comment (the Scooby Snacks of the blogger world. Just one is enough to keep me going for at least a week of posts).
I audibly sighed in understanding with your post about free internet. I used to gank it for free when I lived in L.A., and then when I moved to Chicago, I became one of the suckers who couldn't password protect. Not only did everyone in my building mooch off me, but I am pretty sure that the questionably employed gang next door used my internet to arrange drug drops.
Keep up the good work, blogger darling.
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