Hoshnasi

I am noticing a serious disappearing act going on at Hotels and coffee shops as far as free Wifi goes. I guess wifi in Hotels and Starbucks have pretty much already disappeared, but I digress. Why all the access restriction? I don’t want to pay for a coffee or a hotel room and NOT be able access the internet. If the establishment wants my money the establishment needs to entice me to go there. In the case of the coffee shop, sure you have soft couches and nice drinks, but so does my house! Plus I can put BOOZE in my damn coffee and surf the net naked! This applies double for the hotel room! Especially if I or the company are shelling out upwards of $250.00 a night for. So here is what I think cafe’s should do.

• Hourly restrictions: A cafe could tie a number generated at checkout on a receipt to an hour (or two) of wifi. When the hour runs out, person buys more. That way, you keep the coffers full without loosing money on the free-loaders.
  • Taking this further, lets say you needed uninterrupted access to the net, as I sometimes do accessing a VPN and remote desktop. It would be REALLY sweet that if the web login page that takes the receipt number would spawn a timer that counts down to the end of the free time. As I got close to the end, I could buy a bit more food/beverage and enter the new number to continue the timer and sustain my uninterrupted access.
• Change the access point name: As I read on the NY Times some cafes just change the access point name every few hours to something “Buy a large latte get a brownie free!” This seems like a better option, but for some the sudden lose of connection could come at a bad time.
• Or put up a few signs, something light that says something along the lines of “Free Wifi isn’t free, would you care for another cup?”

As for hotels, I don’t know the cost numbers here so I can’t comment on whats profitable. I can however say that many try and go after the sought after “Business Traveler”. The business traveler will often require net access to work long after they have returned to the hotel from what is more than likely a twelve or more hour long day. They need to work not only to keep things aligned at the office back home, they also need to work to keep things cool with the family. For example, I spent Valentines alone last year in Salt Lake City, UT. I net access and after I got back to the room spent the evening chatting with my then fiance and working on Google Docs planning the wedding. If I had to come home after working thirteen hours and then fool around with some janky web login system with my cooporate card that in many cases DOESN’T show up on the hotel receipt so I have to track in manually when stating my charges I’m going to be really steamed at the hotel.

Make the consumers life easy. Give the Wifi away free.

I’m a ball of disappointment today. Which is pretty much the exact opposite of how I was four years ago. With that said mundane items seldom cause me pain. However today they send my mind SEARCHING for reason to oppose, discourage or destroy them. Take for example the pile of leftover Halloween candy someone left in the office kitchen. Half thinking I grabbed some Starburst and a sour apple Charms Blow Pop. I actually remember picking it up and thinking to myself, “why did I hate these for over a decade again?”

Then I remembered, it was this stupid ass commercial.

There are so many things I hate about this commercial. One the off scene asshole whispering lines into the microphone, two the kid who face palms himself, three the fact that this weak ass attempt at a commercial was to make it seem like it was made by kids and that kids I guess suck at making commercials? Four and most importantly the bullshit at the end

<whisper>”Say from Charms”</whisper>

“What”….”Now?”

I saw this damn commercial so much as a child that I just finally had to immediately change the channel and not change back for a good half an hour to full hour stretch of time as though I was some Nielson house and I could subconsciously make the horrible commercial go away FOREVER. So jaded I was by this commercial that I stopped eating all Charms Blow Pops till 8th grade. For the first five years I remembered why I stopped eating them. However the last few years was just a subconscious aversion. It was like they would be sitting on the table but I would just not see them.

EDIT TO ADD:  I forgot I also REALLY hated that reel to reel projector clicking in the background too!  ARGG!!!!!

Sorta-Kinda a part 2 from my last post.

I’ve been carrying a field notes pad with me all this week with space pen and I’ve jotted down a few ideas. However I’ve caught myself doing something else that is super bad-wrong. I’m vetting my ideas BEFORE I put them down on paper. I’m asking myself “is this good enough to waste white space on?”

I’m chuckling as I’m typing this because is damn CRAZY! I’m concerned that first and foremost that I’ll spoil my clean white piece of paper with my horrible idea/writing and even worst I’m concerned that my ideas are inferior and that if someone saw them I’d be embarrassed. Writing this make me think I have a complex or something. I need to get past that childhood fear of being mad fun of my peers I guess.

I fail through the memory hole. When I was in high school and college I would have plenty of funny ideas in a given day either from things that would set me off on TV, radio or my friends idiotic banter. I could recall these little moments easily hours even days later when I wanted to pull out an idea. Now, five or ten years later I’m having a very hard time recalling the things I wanted to write about. Thinking “I gotta blog about that.” isn’t cutting it anymore. I’d like to blame this on the stresses of my job, but I know my personal life is more hectic now too. It would seem I need a better way to keep track of these little specs of gold, er.. silver, bronze… copper? Either way, I need a better memory hole. The sad thing is I OWN all the popular quick data logging tools.

• Note pad and pen? Got it, never use it. I feel it takes to long, plus my writing is AWFUL! Hell I could write upside down and underwater if I wanted too!
• Digital recorders? I have an Olympus. I don’t use it because often, when I need to remember something its around people and I don’t want to be that guy.
• Laptop? Have one, but its too big and slow to bust out for a quick quip.

The Hipster PDA was my most resent though. Again, I’m not writing stuff down. It honestly seems I have a bad habit now. I prided myself on remembering the dumbest things. Movie quotes, memorable (and obscere) historic moments, the Java API and so on. Now when I actually want to use the data I can’t seem to get myself to put it on paper. With all the above things, I’m a google click away from the answers for what I forgot. However, there is no goodle for my memories… Not yet at least.

Anyone else have this issue? Have you forgot the best ideas that none of us will ever be able to see?

I noticed some whois traffic coming to the site so I too went and looked up my hoshnasi.com whois. Suprisingly I noticed my first and last name was under the registered to mark. Not a big deal, but I know I checked the anonymous registration box. Either way, that sparked my other six month hobby. Doing a search on Google to find out dirt on yourself.

I fired off a search and came up with what looks like two to three other Josh’s in the world of the interwebs. Me being the most awesome having my Facebook being the number one slot for my first and last name. One of the other Josh’s looked like a hardcore downhill skier, but screw that… Am I right?

Having become satisfied in myself for attaining the top rank in my name I set out to check out what images matched my name. Again, an image ranked number one from an old podcast I use to work on with my finace. However, the other pictures were a bit odd. The number two slot was a picture of a mother and a newly born baby sitting in one of those birthing tubs. There were a ton of pictures of dirt bikes and even one of Josh Norton.

Either way, my path seems obvious. I need to focus more on Xtreme dirt bike riding, skate boarding. Getting ripped and carrying huge weights. With a little office work sprinkled in. Also, get ready for Nass 08!!

The story is back. The asshole judge wants another crack at 54 million for a lost pair of pants from what was at the time a Korean owned dry cleaning company. To re-cap, the dry cleaners lost the customers pants and instead of telling the customer and paying for the pants. They tried to replace them with another pair. Outraged the customer sued the dry cleaners for 54 million in damages. In 2005 the case was decided in favor of the dry cleaners leaving the customer no other action than to try the case again in appeals court. He has always had the option of pulling his head out of ass and accepting the loss, but hey. He really wants that 54 million.

Hand talkers. At one point we have all had someone delivering a story or speech with an over abundance of hand gestures. Most of the time its fine. However sometimes -In the case of the last to episodes of Hak 5 (now on Revision 3) Its WAY overboard. Few people can use their hands to really drive a point home. Most of the time, its too much. Sadly, in the case of my Hak 5 example I totally forgot to *listen* to the point of what was going on and just watched this girl flail about looking really awkward.

Hand talkers have some issues in other places too. Like job interviews. When a small group of interviewers are watching your every move its “often better to just fold your hands on the table top. It gives a sense of togetherness and teamwork“, or so says the speaker I just so happened to be listening to you yesterday on the top of job interviews.

The point is simple, if you see people watching your hands more than you face, put them down and keep them there.

In the case of Shannon, I think it safe to say we are watching your hands. You have good points, but we need you to stop moving so we can focus.

I’m not fully sure what is going on here. Except there is alot of pressure building up on this pipe.

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I haven’t been brought to tears from laughing in years. This however sent me right over the edge.