T-Mobile Eats Babies

Not really, but they have succeeded in making my trip to Albuquerque a real pain. Their hot spots charge $9.99/day for internet access, roughly 1/4 the cost of my connection at home per month. They only "provided" internet at two places I visited, but spent a substantial amount of time at. The following details where internet was and wasn't available.

• Greenville/Spartanburg Airport (GSP): Free internet. Postage sized airport.
• Dallas/Fort Worth Airport (DFW): T-Mobile Hotspot. Enormous sized airport.
• Albuquerque Sunport (ABQ): Free Internet. Provided by the city of Albuquerque, that's how you roll out the welcome mat.
• Hyatt Regency Hotel: T-Mobile Hotspot. This is a luxury hotel. All said, I paid $US 174 per night for a triple occupancy room. Every cheap hotel near the airport has free wifi, but the conference hotel for a conference of Electrical Engineers can't? I think there should be a rule that if you don't give away internet access, you can't answer the question "Do you have wireless internet?" in the affirmative or use WIFI as a marketing term on your hotel's website.
• Albuquerque Conference Center: Free internet in public areas where you could get away from people spamming the spectrum with Ad Hoc networks and Ad Hoc phishing schemes.
• Just about every restaurant and cafe in Albuquerque: Free internet, not that I sacrificed conversation with friends and colleagues to surf.
• Grand Canyon National Park: A glorious dead zone without cell phones. You get one bar right up to the entrance of the park and then nothing. I hope the National Forest Service makes this possible at many more of their parks.
• Holiday Inn Express: Free internet with login. Better than the Hyatt on this one.

The point being I'm a spoiled kid who likes his body permeated by 2.45 GHz waves providing free internet.

The rest of the conference ...

My presentation was last Tuesday morning in a session with the rest of the MURI group we work with. The day before I attended a session with some gents from Sweden who were doing similar work testing GPS receivers against a wideband magnetron source (*drool* I use a heavily modified microwave oven). They were pumping a maximum of 700 V/m from their source. The oven was rated at 1300 W which gave me a maximum in the 10's of V/m. Magnetron envy aside, my presentation went well. I received a lot of positive feed back and collected some business cards as lovely parting gifts. Wednesday a professor from JMU presented similar work performed by undergrads with a less heavily modified microwave oven than mine. Bottom line: Beware your electronics are subject to testing by intentional EMI if you leave them lying around. :)