The WiFi Penis Guy
Thursday, December 30, 2010 at 4:16PM When you’ve got a blog-life like mine, you can work from home. But anyone who works at home quickly realizes than the best work gets done when you’re not at home. Home is where distractions are, like watching another 30 minutes of MythBusters even though you’ve seen the episode before. Distractions quickly become synonymous with procrastination.
So to work distraction free, (and so I don’t go stir-crazy) I’m frequently out and about town at various coffee shops and other locals with generous seating (loitering?) policies. That also means I’m at the mercy of whatever free wireless Internet is floating around. Some places have dedicated WiFi, like Starbucks, Panera Bread and Barnes and Noble.
But other places, like my new favorite cozy independent coffee shop, do not.
Which is half true. See, they do have WiFi, but the first time I was there the Barista told me...
“We’re having some problems with our router right now. But you can use the WiFi with...a bunch of symbols.”
I’m no stranger to using rogue WiFi connections. I just make sure I don’t do any online banking and check my personal e-mail on my phone. But after getting my coffee and sitting down, the WiFi available to me wasn’t a random bunch of symbols.
It was this.
A penis.
The Barista was being polite and didn’t feel like saying “The penis WiFi connection works great!” I don’t blame her.
But this wasn’t the first time I’d discovered the penis. I noticed that someone around town had been logging into unsecured routers and changing the SSID to the ASCII penises. A popular bar I go to also had an unsecured WiFi which became a penis, too. What’s worse, an unsecured WiFi network around my public library had also became a penis. (Won’t somebody think of the children?)
Since these vandalized WiFi connections had still been left unsecured, I logged into the routers and changed the SSID to the brand name of the router. Digital hero, hard at work.
Sadly, the penis-network floating around the public library was a bit too weak to connect to, and alas, I could not save it. All the crime scenes were inside a 4 mile radius of each other, so I’ve put together a profile of the suspect:
- White, upper-middle class male between the ages of 16-21.
- Has a laptop, iPhone or other mobile Internet-connected device.
- Has rudimentary understanding of how wireless routers work.
- Likes penises, a lot.
- Wants others to enjoy ASCII penises.
- Likes equal signs, less-than signs, the number 3 and tildes.
If you see this suspect or his handiwork, please, report your findings and location to me. Variations on the penis include using the number 8, equal signs and greater-than signs. In the meantime, I’ll be vigilantly correcting the graffiti of the Internet, and I encourage you, dear reader, to do the same too.
Only you can prevent ASCII penises.
