War driving.....

[irregularjoe]

I never actually did any war driving when it was the cool thing to do......but today I had the misfortune to have to use the Phoenix (aka Hell) city mass transit system in order to get to my chiropractor appointment.

Anyone who has been here will of course know that Phoenix and mass transit is an oxymoron. However that's another story..........Anyway on the way back home (a hour and a half trip on two buses that can be made in 15 minutes if you drive 20 miles per hour) I got bored. Due to the fact that the lights were apparently broken in the bus at 7:30 pm and I forgot to bring my flashlight I was unable to read the newspaper that I brought along for the trip. Then I remembered my new Droid! (yes folks, it's another droid story.)

I turned it on, opened the wireless properties, and watched all the wifi signals as we drove down the avenue. Truly amazing. Hundreds of wifi network names came and then dissapreared as we chugged down the street. A lot of the names were funny. A few: "keep out", "I hate cable", "horny pat", "No More Wife", and the best one by far came as we were driving past a bar. It was simpy:"BEER".

What was really amazing though was the fact that many of them were completely unsecured. Not even WEP.

I think I found a new hobby.

Joe

Edited January 5, 2010 by irregularjoe

[Pete_C]

The Phoenix transit system sounds just like Dallas. The cost of gas and parking has to be really high to justify the time it takes to get anywhere; and then it rarely gets you all the way, you wind up walking a fair distance to and from stops .

So what is this new hobby? Riding the bus?

[Honda_Boy]

The only public transportation here is a system called Rover. I see the little green buses every now and then. The only other provided transport I see is a few apartment owned shuttle buses that take people to and from the University and the University's own bus system that only runs around the campus as it is so large. What's awesome, is the campus is so large there are multiple bus routes on it.

I've often looked at the wireless around. I live in an apartment complex amongst other apartment complexes right now and there are wireless network's out the wazoo. Some are pretty humorlessly named.

[JDoors]

I have a sister-in-law who lives in L.A. She'd never been to Chicago and when she visited she went on and on and on about how lucky we are to have a logical and well planned public transit system. She managed to go everywhere from day one, see all the sites, by herself, using public transit. I lived in Chicago but even I didn't know how to get around that well!