I landed in Phoenix two hours ago en route to Dallas for Bar Camp and missed my connection because another plane was in our gate… So instead of arriving at 1:40pm, I’ll be getting in around 4. Yuck.
So why am I bothering to broadcast this on my blog? (I realize this sounds like a big whiny complaint, but there’s a reason…)
Because Port 80 is my sole vehicle for outgoing web communications at the moment.
My email is blocked (another vote for moving entirely to Gmail), IRC is blocked, IM is blocked, Skype IM is blocked… I can’t even send smoke signals via FTP. On top of that, my SMS is totally backed up and I haven’t been getting texts for days.
WTF?
Now I know that more capable geeks would tell me to just tunnel into some other unblocked system, but c’mon, I’m a simpleton, remember? I expect (and need!) this stuff to just work. If this kind of service variability is the future of the networked environment, man, add that to DRM and we truly are EFFed. If we can’t even rely on publicly-accessible (though privately sponsored) wifi for these basic communication channels, we’ve gotta think about who should really be in charge of these networks… Who cares about my robot breathren taking over when we’re already turning our computers against us.
Seriously. WTF.
Factory Joe 
I’m getting the info through IRC for you right now…if you are interested. 😉
First message: missrogue: connect to a SOCKS proxy, run XChat over proxy
Erm…that doesn’t help me at all…
In case you still need it:
tyler: missrogue: System Preferences > Network > Airport > Proxies
[12:14pm] missrogue: k
[12:14pm] rtyler: enter in a SOCKS 5 proxy http://www.samair.ru/proxy/socks.htm
[12:14pm] rtyler: what IRC client doe she have?
[12:14pm] missrogue: factoryjoe?
[12:14pm] rtyler: he
[12:14pm] rtyler:
[12:14pm] missrogue: (aka Chris Messina) lol
[12:14pm] missrogue: he uses Colloquy, I believe
[12:15pm] jakedahn: yaeh he does, hes a Colloquy feind!
[12:15pm] rtyler: Chris Messina is having trouble with this?
[12:15pm] • rtyler wants to send him the howto setup Flock with Proxies
[12:16pm] rtyler: missrogue: just find a SOCKS 5 proxy from that list tat’s in the US
LOL…smoke signals 2.0!
Oh…and he added one thing:
rtyler: in the connection details in Colloquy you can add the proxies
T.
Point your Colloquy to home.bakankin.com port 80 and it willf forward to freenode to you.