ElectricTeaParty.net being social

So I'm a remote worker. I work from home, via a VPN into the office, and theoretically I could work from anywhere there's an internet connection. I've worked from my parents' place in Calgary before (I live in Edmonton, in case you're not paying attention), and from various friends' houses when I've been paged while on-call. Oh, on-call, you are a cruel mistress.

I have this vague I idea in the back of my mind that, theoretically, I could take a road trip and work while out there. Oh, it's just a theory. But I can work from wherever I have net access, my phone has an obscenely huge data plan, and as an iPhone owner I have unlimited access to Rogers' hotspots. Even if I can't get the VPN to work with my laptop tethered to the iPhone (I've gotten web browsing working on my Mac in the past, but not much else), I should at the very least be able to use wifi hotspots.

Well, I'm on call. Despite this, I thought I might take a chance and try to get my hair cut. Just pulling into the mall parking lot, I got a page. While rushing home, sans cut hair, I contacted a couple of my co-workers to address the page until I could get back to the comfort of my own wifi. As it happened, the page was dealt with altogether before I got home. But it got me thinking, "I shouldn't have to do this. There's wifi everywhere - practically every Starbucks or Second Cup has a Rogers hotspot, and basically every Safeway has free wifi." So after stopping off briefly at home, I headed out for some self-satisfactory proof-of-concept tests.

I hit up the local Second Cup and connected to the Rogers hotspot. No problem. Well, slight problem - I couldn't find my password at first. But then once I found it and logged in via the default home page (pain in the ass), I was able to browse the web freely. So I fired up the work VPN client, and it connected! Then disconnected. In like 2 seconds. In fact it didn't even disconnect, really - it said it was still connected, but the traffic dropped to zero and I couldn't connect to any intranet stuff. I reconnected the VPN, and started loading up the support ticket queue. Page starts loading... doesn't finish loading. VPN broken again. Rinse, repeat, about 15 times. I can not for the life of me figure out why the VPN connects and then disconnects EVERY time. I can get a tiny morsel of data - half a web page from the intranet or just barely connect to Sametime - and then, *poof* nothing.

Safeway, then. As I drove up to the Safeway, my iPhone automatically picked up the wifi there. In fact, my iPhone and my laptop both could get a weak Safeway signal all the way over at the Second Cup. I drove to the front of the Safeway to make sure I had a good, strong signal. Deleting the Rogers connection from my history just in case, I tried to get my laptop to connect to the Safeway one. It just... wouldn't. Sat there "connecting" forever. Rebooted, same damn thing. The iPhone had no trouble connecting, but the laptop simply refused for some reason. I fired up Safari on the phone to see if I really had access, and a page loaded. Though it wasn't what I was expecting - it was some sparse and unfamiliar login page with an invalid security certificate. Just a username and password box. Not the usual Safeway homepage. What gives? Even if the laptop connected, could I use the web at all?

Fine, then, I thought I'd take another stab at tethering the laptop to the iPhone's 3G connection. "Right, I've done this before on the Mac, so all I have to do is fire up an ad-hoc connection on the laptop and attach the phone to it..." The laptop started "connecting" to the fake wifi connection, but it wouldn't show up on the list on the iPhone. I tried several times to be sure - with ad-hoc networks you usually have about 30 seconds to connect before one computer or the other gives up. But again, no dice; even though the laptop would supposedly create the connection, the iPhone could never see it in the list of available SSIDs. Even a manual connection on the iPhone didn't work. Jeebus, what's going on here?

Is it REALLY that hard for someone to get internet access on the move? Like, seriously? Come on! There aren't billions of road warriors, but there are sales reps and executives aplenty who do their work on the road for whatever reasons. Tethering, wifi, hotel internet, etc. Two wifi hotspots, phone tethering... all FAIL. EPIC FAIL.

I'm pretty disappointed in today's technology. Something this simple shouldn't be this difficult.