Today’s lunchtime post comes to you from Bookstar in Poplar Plaza. Now, Bookstar doesn’t officially provide Wi-Fi for its customers, but I decided to bring the laptop up here anyway and see if I could use what my friend Mikey terms “MoochNet” – jumping on unsecured wireless networks that belong to businesses in the area. Sure enough, I found one. The signal is only 1 bar out of 5 (Very Low), but that’s good enough – it’s not like I’m going to be playing interactive video games or using Google Earth during my lunch break.
Congratulations to Center City Commission president Jeff Sanford, who was named Chairman of the International Downtown Association last week. According to this Eyewitness News article, IDA is an organization made up of downtown revitalization professionals, and its goal is to champion “vital and livable urban centers around the globe.” The fact that the head of a Downtown Memphis organization was chosen to lead the IDA shows that our downtown really is making a lot more progress than we sometimes realize.
Man… this connection keeps going up and down… don’t know if Bookstar is going to work as a MoochNet location. Too bad, because there are cute girls in here studying.
Attention MySpace and other networking site users… there’s a new scam called spear phishing that you need to be aware of. What these people do is, they surf MySpace user pages and find someone that has an interest in a particular band (i.e. that user has that band added as a friend). The spear phishers will then send the user messages, directing them to click on a link (which appears to be a legit MySpace page) to get more info on the band or free stuff. When the user clicks on the link, software is installed on their computer which collects their financial information to send back to the phishers. For more info see this Fox 16 (Little Rock) story.
Sleep Out Louie’s bartender Josh wants me to let everyone know that starting Sunday, he will be working all day from open to close. So come on by for Sunday brunch and he’ll take good care of you. Hey Josh, now that you’re a manager, WHEN YA GONNA HIRE SOME MORE ROMANIANS???
This connection sucks. It’s up one minute and down the next. Regular reader Otto sent me an article on how to boost incoming Wi-Fi signals, but it looks like you have to be at the same location as your access point for this to work. If anyone knows how to boost signals on the road (other than that Cantenna thing I posted about Friday), let me know.
I’m going to attempt to post this thing and get offline. I’ll be at the Saucer with my trivia team The Rapscallions tonight about 7. Cardinals and Mets play Game 5 of their series at 7:19 tonight, and anytime the Cardinals are playing, Blue Moon is on Fire Sale for $2.50 at the downtown Saucer, so you know what I’ll be drinking.