Orbital - Walk Now...

This track reminds me of the kinds of mobile mischief I used to partake in in 1996. I saved up a good chunk of cash from working at CompUSA and bought myself a brand new laptop at the time, an NEC Versa 550D. And boy, was it stylin' back then.

Modems, sound cards, and whatnot weren't very common on laptops. I bought a PCMCIA laptop modem and an acoustic coupler to go with it. When I got home to play with my new goods, the Orbital II album was playing, hence the flood of memories. Even while a senior in high school, I was quite the road warrior. This carried on into college. With this setup, I could get on Bulletin Boards, the Internet, and into the college's campus from virtually anywhere there was a phone, even if it was a payphone... especially if it was a payphone! And the wonderful thing about payphones is that you can't really trace a payphone down to a specific person unless you have video cameras rolling or can get there before the person leaves. This shield of anonymity often provided me with the brazen resolve to do a lot of things that I probably shouldn't have been doing.

Of course, now, we have EDGE and EV-DO wireless broadband, 1xRTT tethering, satellite, and almost ubiquitous IEEE 802.11 "WiFi" at our disposal.