I was dumb enough to pre-buy 300 WiFi minutes from T-Mobile last month, while cooling my heels in the Dallas airport. It seemed like a good deal, except for the little problem that the minutes expire after three months. Advice to the curious: buy on-demand.

Since I have these extra minutes and absolutely no chance of getting through them all, I decided to take my laptop into Borders, since they now sport hotspots. This is where I am now. Sadly, this experience is somewhat lacking. First, I can't employ my handy laptop bag, since it's the perfect size for stuffing books into. So I'm slogging this laptop around in one hand. Second, Borders only has enough comfy chairs to appear like a nice place to sit, not enough to actually find one for sitting. So I'm perching on a little footstool, flattening my ass for science. Finally, it's just not very compelling to want Internet access in a bookstore. So I just feel even more like a dork than usual. I suppose if I had a little WiFi PDA, this would be slightly more compelling, although then I'd just be frustrated that the damn thing only worked in a limited number of locations.

To complete my self-imposed dork humiliation, I've taken a little picture with my camera phone, which I only had to try THREE TIMES to e-mail to myself because of connection droppage:

Remember, I do this so you don't have to.

That's enough of that; I'm buying my comic books and getting the hell out of here.  5:36:25 PM  (comments [])