Jeff Cutler™ – columns, essays and opinions

Have you been overseas…or do you live overseas? And by overseas I mean not in the United States or Canada.

If you fall into one of these two camps, you have lived the rogaine-worthy hair pulling I’ve experienced over the last two weeks.

There’s precious little unprotected Wifi in Europe.

Contrary to what I’ve heard numerous times on podcasts like Buzz Out Loud and read in Wired Magazine, other countries might be ahead of us in Wifi availability…BUT THEY LOCK IT ALL DOWN.

Whereas you can drive into the parking lot of any condo complex or apartment building in the United States and feast on strong, unprotected signal, that’s not the case overseas.

Why does this matter? Shouldn’t the signal someone is paying for be locked down? Am I really whining about this?

1 – Beacause if Wifi is difficult to access, people won’t use it.

2 – Yes, if I’m paying for the gas in my car or the rent on my house, I’d rather not have vagrants and interlopers using my stuff.

3 – Yes, because I put on the interloper hat on my trip overseas and planned poorly when it came to securing Internet access.

What do you do? Do you lock down your modem with a crazy, unbreakable code or leave the default password of admin, password or 9876543210 on the device?

Do you think signals should be shared because Comcast and others engage in packet shaping and other methods that fail to give us the bandwidth and speeds we are paying for?

Or do you not care because you spend a limited amount of time online and think worrying about stuff like this could lead to an ulcer?

Maybe you’ve got another perspective. I’d love to hear it. Tell me about times you’ve been away from home and had to find Wifi to stay in touch.

As Chris Brogan said in a recent post about the abstraction of our shared conversations on the Web…

First, I think abstraction is here to stay. I don’t think we’ll have simple URLs to remember for all things (wish it were, but it’s not). I think the trend of shorteners that supposedly add value is here for a while, too. I think the fractured conversation is here to stay.

Now, will this impact business? Not exactly. Instead, it will require us to pick our battles, to determine just how splintered and muddy we want to get to catch up every drop of conversational/business goodness, and it will require us to keep futurists and sages on speed dial (how quaint a term is that?).

I wonder where we’ll all going to end up if we can’t even go beyond our front door without the challenge of finding a path online. I strive to be part of the conversations around me – it’s sometimes telling that the way to be part of that discussion is to remain connected online.

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How long does it take for a hot-water heater to properly warm up its contents?

Facing that question, I sit here dirty and moody while the water heater fulfills its destiny in my basement.

From a Karma standpoint it’s probably fortunate that the water heater pilot went out last night. There are errands on my docket for the day, but no pressing deadlines and no important interviews or meetings. We all know that the great unwashed don’t make a great first impression.

Deeper than the extrapolated result that hot water delivers, I wonder how our society got so fixated on piping hot water for cleaning ourselves and our belongings.

Multiple trips to Europe have taught me to cherish the abundance of heat AND water we get on this side of the Atlantic. Overseas, you can’t be a shower napper-the warm water envelope disappears after about 350 seconds and is replaced with needles of stinging ice shards.

I’ll admit that it’s more a psychological situation where our expectations have been built up to the point that warm water is taken for granted. Turn on the spigot and out pours clear, clean, hot water.

It’s the same as when we flip a light-switch skyward. The circuit is supposed to close and our lamp is supposed to illuminate the room.

Pause for a moment and think about how maniacal you become when the television remote has run down its batteries. It’s like an affront to your character that the ‘clicker’ would allow itself to become depleted while in your meaty paw.

The same holds true for cars that won’t start, burners that won’t light, fridges that let food spoil and computers that crash.

Isn’t there some sort of rule in place that should have prevented this? Who can we blame?

Today I almost decided to take a cold shower to embrace the European or even early settlers’ way of life. I had the towel out and the cell phone on the sink just in case the cold water caused my heart to stop.

Then I thought about those same settlers and the generations who spent centuries in cold castles and murky caves. And I realized if I am not smart enough to improve my own situation when given the tools (mental and physical) to do so, I’m doing the entire evolutionary process a disservice.

Darwin would have applauded my efforts (and success) in relighting the pilot. He’d also cheer softly that I wasn’t sitting here cursing the grime on my body while waiting for the water to heat up.

And while we’re bringing up people I’ve never met, I think Freud would say that I had advanced mentally and established a positive pattern for adapting to my environment. He’d add that I was probably a contributing member of society and then bill me $15 for my co-pay.

Had circumstances been different, would I have freaked out entirely and broken into a Holiday Inn Express to get smarter and get clean at the same time? I can’t say.

But I will tell you that in the time it’s taken me to write this, the water heater has probably done its job and I’m going to go scrub my body clean and continue my day.

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As you all know, I’m a published author with a cycling guidebook under my belt. I’ve also been lucky enough to have dozens of columns and features in cycling publications. Therefore, it’s probably no surprise that I’m writing about the grand cycling tours again this year.

Find my online posts and links to my traditional print publication pieces at TDF08.com.

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