Blogging at Starbucks

Bought an Asus netbook a few months ago. Set up this blog a few days ago. The obvious next step was to go to a coffee shop, buy coffee, connect to their wireless, and post on the blog. Techno coolness would be mine. The netbook has a SD card reader, so I could even take a photo of myself writing my blog post and post it with my post. Could I get any more hip than that? I even had a gift certificate for Starbucks, so in addition to being hip and cool, I’d be thrifty!

We went to the local Starbucks (one of them). I ordered a Grande Mocha and Deane ordered a Vanilla Bean Frappe (aka a milkshake). Despite a bit of confusion with a new employee, we successfully got our drinks (along with a rice krispie snack), and sat down, ready to enter the world of coffeehouse blogging.

I Booted up the netbook, connected to the wireless hotspot. An AT&T / Starbucks screen appeared instead of Google. Ok, no problem, clicked home. Same thing. Tried Yahoo.com. No change. Tried a few other sites – nothing but the Starbucks screen.

I got up and asked one of the Starbucks persons (not the new one) about the much touted free wireless. She said it was indeed free, but you need to buy a gift card. This didn’t make much sense, as generally when one buys something it isn’t considered free. We went around a bit, but I wasn’t able to get any more details except that a purchase was required, but it was free.

Giving up, I went back to my slowly cooling Mocha and packed up my netbook. We left, never achieving the legendary coolness of coffeehouse blogging.