I don't wear a watch (the strap fell off it about five years agon, and#

Sun, 27 Oct 2002 01:08:07 +0000

I don't wear a watch (the strap fell off it about five years agon, and i never got around to getting it fixed). Instead I use my cellphone to tell the time - I carry it basically everywhere and it's turned on pretty much all the time, so really I'm only inconvenienced on planes and in churches. Anyway, It's 2:09am according to said phone. Confusingly, it's still light outside - local time is 18:09. Double confusingly, it's 1:08am according to emacs, which obviously knows more about the BST->GMT shift (that's the UK equivalent of daylight savings time) than my cellphone does.

I can't believe that there's no UTC time signal on the GSM network that cellphones could set themselves to. I suspect there is, and my phone's inability to use it is just typical consumer electronics design lossage.

So I'm in Starbucks. I wouldn't usually, but dim recollection suggested that they had wireless access in most or all branches, and indeed they do. For the knockdown rate of only $2.99/15 minutes - not only is this about double what internet cafes cost in 1996, but back then the cafes actually had to provide the hardware too. Do I feel ripped off? Yes, but only for $2.99, as I now have some useful AP detection tools installed which I am sure I can use to find a more friendly service provider. On the standard friendliness scale that has, say, "your dog" at one end and "your bank manager" at the other, Starbucks is on current showing somewhere out in "loan shark collection agent" territory, so this really should be Not Too Hard.