Saturday's are usually the days reserved for me and my daughter to hang out around town. This morning we had absolutely nothing on our agenda, so we ventured off in search of a place to camp so I could get some client work done while she made her way through Book 2 of twilight.

I had recently purchased the starbucks gold card because of not only the 10% discount but the 2 free hours of at&t wifi per day. So, my idea was we could go hang out at Barnes and Noble in Kenwood, get some beverages she could read or run around looking at books while I worked a bit.

Ordering drinks is where the pain began. I confidently presented my gold card to the barista who seemed mildly annoyed to have a job. I was told they don't honor those and mumbled something about the B&N starbucks not really being a starbucks. Whatever. Got my drink and found a table to camp at for a couple of hours.

Upon booting up my computer immediately found and connected to the AT&T wifi and I was presented with the typical login that I have used so many times. Enter user name and password. ....Presented with a screen that my credentials were rejected. No further explanation except call some stupid 1-800 number for further explanation.

It was obviously accepting my credentials because I was able to access my profile, view my information, and change my password / secret question.

So here's what pissed me off.

#1 I spend a boat load of money at Barnes and Noble(spent $80 today even). In exchange for this, I am constantly harassed about signing up for their gold card, and other such promotional deals which make checking out an long painful process.

#2 The internet's underlying technology was paid for with public money. And telco companies have pissed away billions of tax dollars that were ear marked for building up our internet infrastructure to be more in line with the rest of the world.

#3 AT&T monitors and saves all my internet traffic(yours too) so that the NSA or whoever can determine whether I am a terrorist, or might be saying something "un-patriotic" about the current administration. An activity also funded by our tax dollars.

Given all this, painless wifi access would be nice once in a while.