While I agree that you should drink when thirsty, I also think that it's important to carry a Nalgene-esque bottle of water around. Why? Because that way you don't spend $3 for a plastic bottle of water bottled and shipped from far away when you are thirsty. Nothing makes me crankier than having to pour out my water bottle before entering TSA hell only to be told to buy $5 bottles inside and have the tap water on hot-only.

What are good options for modulating bandwidth?

I'm a huge believer in open WiFi but a few weeks ago, I had to shut mine off. Someone in the neighborhood appears to be a huge bandwidth hog, making it impossible for me to do my work. I hate having locked WiFi, but I don't know how to make certain that I can get what I need and leave the rest for anyone who wants it.

My ideal situation would be that when I'm online, I get to be the complete bandwidth hog. When I'm not online, everyone else can duke it out. I have an Airport Extreme and a Mac. Is there anything that I can do to intelligently control the bandwidth so that I don't have to close down my network?

I used to work for a fast food company as a teenager. Most nights, there were only two of us in the store. Cops would come in and demand free food, threatening us if we balked. For every sandwich we gave them, we were docked the cost of the bread from our salaries. When you're only make $5.15 an hour, that's a huge deal. I try to remember that most police officers are not bad people, but daaaamn, my experiences growing up made me outright fear them.

A few years ago, I went back to my neck of the woods for a friends' 10 year reunion. Two of his classmates were now local cops. Late into the evening, they offered me cocaine, noting that they had grabbed it off of some punkass kid. Some things don't change. But I guess that's why some people in small towns grow up to be cops. Le sigh.