Austin Good, AT&T Bad
Austin is great. If you don’t have access to the internet, simply drive into any suburb with a laptop with a wireless network card. Within the space of three blocks, you will always find someone who has left a linksys wireless access point running for you to use for free. While on the move, I often find myself driving slowly down small residential roads to get a signal for my laptop. The last three days spent driving while looking at a map have been good practice – now I drive and look at a computer. I do this as I am cheap and too lazy to find a place to pay for internet access.
AT&T are worse than dreadful. My shiny new mobile phone on the AT&T network behaves pretty similar to the laptop above. I have to drive around slowly looking for a signal before I can use the thing. Except that with the mobile phone, I pay AT&T for the privilege. It’s like using a mobile phone in the UK in 1996. You have to lean out of windows, hang out of moving vehicles and all that nineties malarky. AT&T sucks goats.
Austin Good, AT&T Dreadful
I arrived in Austin on Monday afternoon. By Wednesday lunchtime, I had a driver’s licence, bank account, mobile phone and if I’d have been happy to live with a freak, I could have had a place to live not too far from downtown. Oh, and I found out how to get pretty much any gun I wanted. In England, the same achievements would have taken me weeks. Took me about 24 years the first time around. And I never managed the gun. By far the hardest thing to get here was the AT&T ‘gophone’. And it’s the worst. Did I mention how dismal AT&T are? Good. Just so long as you know. And don’t expect to get through to me on it.