So as not to come off as a total Grinch...

...let me begin by offering my best wishes, and those of my colleague ath64 as well, to you and yours for this holiday season.

Now then...I finally made it out to the Johnson County location of the company that ran the "new" coffeehouse a block north of Power and Light on Grand downtown that I mentioned back in October in my open-air hotspots post. Seems now that the downtown location, instead of being in the process of opening, had actually gone belly up after having been in operation for a while. Anyway, out of curiosity as to whether the whole business had gone under, I stopped by the other shop just to see and am happy to report it's still up and running.

Not so happily, however, I have to tell you I didn't stay long enough to try out one of their mochas-or to find out the hard way whether their Wi-Fi was free and open or not. Another memo to the management: In addition to updating your website and removing the downtown location if it's no longer viable, you really ought to tell prospective customers whether your Internet access is play-for-pay or otherwise restricted. One can only assume you'd trumpet its being free if it were, which means that it's probably not. Either way, a little honesty and openness would help here.

And in the "Gee, I wonder how the free Wi-Fi situation is over in Topeka?" department, I spent a day earlier this week doing some more historical research at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library, which like the Mid-Continent Public Library system over here is lit up by AT&T. Unlike Mid-Continent, however, Ma Bell doesn't try to raid your wallet over there after you connect. Just click through a page acknowledging you'll abide by the library's acceptable use policy and that's that. And you only have to click through it once, not every so many minutes as you do at some locations.

I don't know if this is a sweetheart deal between TSCPL and Ma Bell, but even if it is, let's hope someone introduces MCPL to that sweetheart.