Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Spokane Hot Zone

So I went down to Aunties bookstore this morning and browsed around then decided to sit and have some coffee at Liberty Cafe. I pulled out my computer and my maps and books on France was ready to dive into making up our itinerary. I never got to even start, because long ago in a Spokane before I moved away I signed up for Spokane Hot Zone and have long since lost track of my password. Now on the surface this may seem trivial, however, in this case it is not. Spokane Hot zone has no "I forgot my password" button and even if it did you could never retrieve the damned thing anyway because you have to have internet access to get the new one from your e-mail account. So I went the other route and tried to register a new account. This turned into a whole new lesson on betrayal, annoyance and general homicidal urgings that started with "your password choice does not follow indicated format or contains illegal characters" and ended with "Our database indicates you already have an account please login using your password." I tried signing myslef up again, I tried signing up my husband I tried signing up with my old address, and nothing. Obviously they use the computers ISP address so it has nothing to do with e-mail address, name, or actual address.

I have never seen such tight security! My bank doesn't have this kind of crazy clearance. Defeated I looked on the Spokane Hot Zone website (the only one I can access without logging in) and tried to find a missing password link or a technical support number, all I could find was a contact page filled with names of the marketers, presidents and vice presidents of the company and not a single helpful job title among them.

I finally gave up shut my computer and went home feeling crabby and muttering curse words at a "Free Wireless" set up that is completely unusable. I appreciate the offer of free wireless Spokane, but could you please, when I forget my password that you require to be case sensitive, have one capital letter, one lowercase letter and one digit (not two or you wont accept the password as 'legal'), give me some more options for getting online? I would appreciate it.

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