Ahoy there mate
We are internet pirates. We grab our internet connection from the various unencrypted wireless connections spewing their waves across our neighborhood. The downfall to this is we frequently can't get a good enough signal to connect. It's best in the late evenings which is why you see more posts from Rob than me these days because I have that blasted early bedtime. Tonight I'm ignoring my early bedtime and posting from the middle of my backyard where I have just barely enough signal strength from neighbor X to connect. I could also use neighbor Y by going out to the front yard, but neighbor X is an Earthlink customer and has much better connectivity than neighbor Y who uses SBC. There's also neighbor Z who provides an extremely strong signal (also Earthlink cable) and it's so strong that I can pick it up inside my house with my wimpy built-in antenna. Unfortunately they went to WEP encryption a while back and I've resisted the urge to grab the key and hop on their connection because I think of WEP as a door lock. It might be a really weak lock, but it's a lock nonetheless. I know who neighbor Z is since their SSID gives them away and if I knew them better I might offer them 20 bucks a month if they'd let me share their connection. But for now I'll stick with the freebies even if it means sitting in the middle of the backyard sometimes.