Signed, sealed, delivered

Internet access just isn't very good here. It's slow and expensive and the support is bad and you're always losing service. A friend of mine used to have free wireless in her apartment. It stopped working, and now she's considering moving--that's how much of a pain it is here.

Service at the university isn't all that much better--the internet was down for four days straight once back in January, and went down again a few weeks ago just before final exams started. Anyway, I had been using wireless in my office, but the wireless connection is really slow. And also really flaky--sometimes you have to log in; sometimes you don't; it's always disconnecting. I'd finally had enough the other day when every 5 minutes, on the dot, I would get disconnected and have to log in again. When I couldn't connect using the ethernet, I assumed I'd somehow fucked up my laptop. This time it wasn't my fault, though. In order to plug into the internet in my office, I had to go talk to the computer help people, who did some configuring on my computer and then gave me a letter. I had to take the letter to my department secretary to certify that I'm affiliated with the department and then return the signed and stamped letter to the computer guy, who then hooked me up.

Do they really think that there will be a problem with non-University people stealing internet from offices with ethernet cords? The offices have locks! If I have access to an office, probably I'm legit. And the letter-stamping process is made all the more absurd by the fact that the wireless here is rarely even password protected. Anyone could walk in off the street and use a hallway or classroom to steal wireless (slow, shitty wireless, but still), but they need official stamps to let professors use the internet in their offices?

...this probably sounds like I'm complaining. I'm mostly not. I get a kick out of absurdity--even when I'm annoyed by it I usually kind of appreciate it. It makes me appear a lot more negative than I actually am.