I’m at the Compass Internet Cafe at Galleria. The difference between this and Netopia is that this place allows you to use Firefox, although the default is this annoying ‘Avant Browser’ which looks like some sort of IE add-on and, as is usual for such things, thoroughly annoying therefore.
At any rate, this is Day 6 of no internet at home, and my resulting efforts to cope have been interesting. First off, by an amazing stroke of luck I managed to score two excellent books. First, there’s “China Hands”, by James Lilley where he recounts his experiences growing up in China and eventually serving in operations of the CIA, and eventually ending up as U.S. ambassador in 1973. His is an absolutely absorbing tale of history and true drama.
The other is “Where The Game Matters Most“, about the 1996-97 high school basketball season in Indiana, the last year when the old rules of equal competition still applied before the new divisional system segregating schools by size came into place. The old rules allowed for such miracle stories as the ‘Hoosiers’, but more importantly discusses the small towns and small town details that make Indiana the mystical mecca of basketball (as opposed to New York, which is the mecca of the NBA), that it is.