Poetic License

This afternoon I made the trek from Arlington to the U Street neighborhood of the Discrict exclusively to go to Busboys and Poets. This was the third time I’ve been to the self-styled “progressive” cafe/bar/restaurant/bookstore/event space. The first time was superb. The second was marred by wonky wireless and poor service, but a positive report from some friends encouraged me to give it another go.

Busboys was buzzing at 2PM between talks by historian Howard Zinn. I slipped in to a seat at one of their couple of communal tables towards the front of the cafe/bar area. I’m reasonably convinced, from the books strewn about, that everyone at the table was a law student, though they were clearly not a study group. It took the waiter a couple trips to notice me, as he was accosted by frustrated patrons who’s orders he’d forgotten. “They’d sell me a latte every 30 minutes if the waiter would just come by” said an exasperated fellow table-dweller.

Having procured a menu, I ordered a cup of coffee and a peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich on challa off the brunch menu. It was tasty, a fine distraction from my wireless woes.

Busboys uses a dreadful registration system to access their wireless network. It’s free, but you have to supply them with your name and email address (well, a name and email address). The system then allows you to roam the net for 15 minutes, presumably long enough to check your email and click the validation link they’ve sent you. Once you’re validated, you’re then allowed a couple hours of access before the system forces you to login again.

As a protection for their customers, this system is about as useful as TSA banning nail clippers on planes: ignorants will think they’re secure, and everyone else is inconvenienced. After my second frustrating visit to Busboys I wrote to the management about their unreliable, insecure, and inconvenient wireless system. I received an arch, patronizing email from their tech guy explaining the fundamentals of wireless security, along with some blathering about their system preventing residents of the building above the place from abusing their network. I wrote back with some slightly more technical details about faults in their system and, shockingly, never heard back.

Needless to say, I was expecting the worst when I tried the wireless at Busboys today. Sure enough, their system didn’t like my password. I clicked the “I forgot my password” button and it reported that it had emailed me a new password. I tried to get to my mail. It asked for a login. I tried to create a new login. It said I couldn’t create another login, clearly having tied my laptop’s MAC address to my existing account.

Catch 22: I need to login in order to get the password I need to login, and I can’t create a new account because I already have one, but I can’t use it. It’s the sort of scenario most programmers learn to spec out in Application Architecture 101. I felt in sudden agreement with my latte-deprived tablemate: “if they’d just let me on the goddamn Internet I’d be ordering something every 30 minutes.“

So I paid my bill and went back to Murky in Clarendon, like always, where the wireless is free and unrestricted. I checked my email and sure enough, there was the new password the Busboys system had sent me.

Somehow, I don’t think I’ll need it anytime soon.