A Sad Pathetic Little Man

My three kids practice football at two different locations. When I am at practice for my youngest, I can pick up “kevsnet” if I take a folding chair out next to the baseball field and aim north. This connection is a little shaky and I keep losing my disconnect protections. It definitely adds to the drama to play there. I have been repositioning the last few days and it is getting a little better.

At my two older son’s practices, I can park my car a little bit away from the field and pick up “Ted’s Network” clear as a bell. This is by far my best poker playing location when I am stationed next to a football field. The only problem is that I don’t have a clear site line to the field.

I can’t play party poker at work because it’s blocked and I really like my job and would hate to get fired, but, at lunch, I just found a nice spot at the local park to escape. If I take a folding chair and walk halfway across the park to the shade of some pines by some nearby houses, I am in range of “linksys” and get a great signal. “hpsetup” is also there, but I haven’t quite got the positioning right to get that one in clearly. The only problem with this spot is that the laptop screen is a little hard to see. I have trouble finding the cursor sometimes and have to squint to tell suits.

Overall, it’s pretty pathetic really. Is it illegal to steal internet? I don’t know. Is it illegal to play internet poker? Probably. Is it sad that a grown man would be doing both on a regular basis? Definitely.

Imagine the site of some asshole wandering around a park carrying a laptop open in front of him and continually clicking refresh on the advanced screen of the wireless internet connection screen hoping that this is the spot to perfectly pick up and eventually steal someone’s internet connection. The walkers, joggers, rollerbladers and other proper users of the park facilities must have wondered what the hell was going on. Until I grabbed the folding chair, it probably looked pretty official. But, once I had the chair and now that I regularly sit there staring at a laptop screen and smoking one cigarette after another, I definitely must look like the biggest loser on earth.

I used to play beach volleyball every day at that park. Some of the hot female walkers used to check me out, tanned golden brown, somewhat cut from regular working out and hours of weekly volleyball, or so I liked to imagine. But since my back operation, I am not allowed to play volleyball anymore, and I have become a pathetic shell of my old self. Just give me some breadcrumbs to feed the damn birds and the picture will be complete. Those same women actually turn away in confused revolution at the site of gut sporting geek of a man sitting in a canvas folding chair under a tree next to the jogging path, smoking cigarettes and gesturing wildly at the laptop screen in front of him.

Fuck ‘em!