God doesn't want me to have the wireless interwebs.

That must be it.

I got a laptop from my dad in February. It came with a little plug-in wireless reciever card for Wifi. He used it at his room to get the 'Net from the cafe across the street. I've never used it because no one has Wifi near our place, but I saw signs that Kelly's Pub and Cafe Anise in Newtown both offer free wireless broadband through uConnect.

So yesterday, when I went to get my medical certificate, I dragged along my laptop in my backpack. Went to the doc, picked up some groceries, then went to Kelly's. Ordered a drink sat down, located a powerpoint to plug in my laptop and realised I'd left the cord at home. Without the cord, I have a grand total of three minutes of battery life. D'oh. So I drink my drink and go home.

Today, I'm going to get Codril and some cold cuts and I think "Ok. I'm going to bring my laptop again, this time with cord handy. Got my Codril, get my cold cuts, go to Cafe Anise, the cafe where Dad used to use it./ Sit down, order a cup of T2 lemongrass and ginger tea, plug in my laptop. Which doesn't turn on. I check the powerpoint. As I'm doing so, a waiter goes by and says "Oh, that powerpoint's broken. And the other one has stuff plugged in. So we don't have any free. Here's your tea, by the way." I drink my tea. It's not great. I leave.

I go back to Kelly's. I plug in. I turn on my laptop. It works. I order a lemonade. I search for networks. I see uConnect. I hit "connect". Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. "Could not connect. Please check if network is available." I hit refresh to update my network list. UConnect is gone. Search again and again. Suddenly, I see another unsecured network, with a gibberish name. Any port in a storm, right? "Could not connect. Please check if network is available." Bugger. So I think "Meh. I can't get it. I'll drink my lemonade and read some Deadpool comics I've got on Cdisplay." So I read for a bit, finish the issue I was on, and, just on a whim, try to connect to GibberishNet again. "Acquiring IP address." What? Now? It's working? "Waiting for network." Holy crap! "Connected." Whaa!!! I open Explorer. "Cannot display page." What? I look back down at the connection. "Little or no connectivity. Signal may not allow internet access." Then, as I watched: "Disconnected. Acquiring IP address."

Repeat ad nauseum for another 10 minutes. It doesn't connect again.

So I'm blogging from home now.

Stupid technology.