Eighth anniversary reflections

I'll have to admit to being a bit melancholy as I contemplate how different things are from how they were when I published this blog's first post this very evening in 2005.  I'm sure part of that is simply due to Wi-Fi's having been something new and exciting around town in those days, whether it was free and open or not.  Going months without posting, as I'm sure you've noticed I've done lately, was unthinkable then.  Well, the world has kept turning, of course, and booting up a laptop or powering on a tablet or smartphone and finding you've got free Internet without wires doesn't provide the joyusly electrifying jolt to the psyche it once did.  

And to be honest, my life has changed a bit since that night, too.  I just don't get out as often as I did before I got broadband at home; in fact, I now work from home about half the time.  Makes it a bit harder to keep up on where the latest local hotspots are popping up and whether or not they're play-for-pay, among other things.  

I did drop in again at a local fast-food establishment previously reviewed here this past Monday, though (got to take advantage of the Chiefs' sudden resurgence and grab those buy-one-get-one-free burgers, you know), and what I saw there late in the afternoon could have been either a sign of success or maybe just a little sad, depending on your outlook.  There was what I took to be a high-school student in the back hunched over a laptop and, I hope, digging into her homework, but even if she were simply tweeting or Facebooking the day away, so what?  She was there and taking advantage of a local business' efforts to bridge the digital divide, and rewarding those efforts with her patronage.  There was also, however, an older gentleman sitting up front, whom I passed on my way out.  I really didn't pay too much attention to what was on his screen, but the presence of a cable lock securing his computer to the base of the table was somewhat disheartening.  I pray that he was moved to this by caution rather than experience.  

In addition, I'm sure it probably doesn't help that many of our recent posts have been of the look-at-what-some-criminal-used-Wi-Fi-to-do type, and while I'd like to thank Macenstein for those (and feel free to put up more of them, Mac, if you find them interesting), it's just that those seem to be the kind of stories about Wi-Fi that make the news these days.  As an example, here's one from the Associated Press about how and where they caught the black-market drug website operator who's been in the headlines.   

In the end, it really doesn't matter.  Change is inevitable, and if the changes over the last eight years as well as those still to come mean fewer and less frequent posts, so be it.  Thanks once again to you, the reader, and rest assured that we aren't going anywhere, so don't you either.