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!!!!!

I had a plan for halloween, but the wife had different plans and when the dust settled we had three days to put our costumers together here is mine, Steve Zissou from the sad ending of Life Aquatic.

Halloween 08'