As of today, I’m no longer part of the mid-town Toronto Bandwidth Thievery Corporation. Cable modem was installed today, much earlier than anticipated, and if one day I meet Mike or Brian in this building, I will silently thank them for being generous (or blissfully ignorant) enough not to put encryption on their wi-fi.

The PowerBook is finally Tigered up (ROWR) and software upgraded thanks to Dax, although he rightly argues my use of the term ‘legit’. (Er, yes, but shhhhh…)

I’ve been using it for less than an hour, and already I’ve noticed a couple of my major pet peeves have been fixed:

1) Apple Mail (2.0.5) now allows for .Mac aliases (YAY! No more having to send mail from aliases via .Mac site anymore!)
2) synching with .Mac now allows for different synching options between .Mac and my computer (FINALLY!)

Dax named the network ‘BALCONYOFUN’ — rather prematurely, I might add, since it’s freezing outside and no-one in their right mind would be standing on it right now, never mind engaging in FUN. My old blogspot was named “Gail’s Balcony” after my Vancouver apartment, which had a great view:

This photo was taken almost exactly two years ago, on Feb 22, 2004. Look at those blossoms!

There’s no balcony at the House of Fielding in PA, and alas, the current balcony isn’t facing the ocean… or even Lake Ontario. It’s facing the balconies of the adjacent building. But I’ll make it cat-friendly, so Hugh can pretend he’s Intrepid Cat Explorer Extraordinaire again. Then, maybe it’ll be the BALCONYOFUN for at least one of us.

Failing that (because cats are the most fickle creatures on the planet and Hugh may end up never stepping foot on the balcony), maybe I can call the network “At Large” or some such. But it won’t be quite as amusing as chatting with someone in the laundry room about our ISPs and getting the question, “Are you BALCONYOFUN?”