[tlug] A place to connect my laptop

[dave@example.com]

TLUG,

Because Hikari One/DTI are a bunch of retards, my internet connection  
at home has been down for the last week, and will be down for another  
two weeks or so.

I could go into a really long, long rant about why and how this  
happened, but that's not going to be productive.

The main thing is that I need to have internet connectivity for my  
work. More than merely web surfing and email checking at an internet  
cafe, as I'm doing right now.

I can transfer enough material to my girlfriend's laptop to make it  
useful. But, then I need to be able to park the laptop somewhere where  
I can do things like FTP a fair amount of data around and check it,  
re-upload it if need be, and possibly other kinds of things.

If I schedule myself well enough, I can manage by preparing things at  
home, and then doing all my uploading and downloading within a couple  
of hours every few days.

I'm thinking I have two feasible options.

One is to bring the laptop into an Internet cafe and ask if I can just  
take the ethernet out of the back of the computer that I'll buy the  
time for, and put it in my laptop. I did this before, way back when I  
was in Windows world. Because internet cafes by and large are running  
Windows Share networks, it was easy to hook up. But now that the  
laptop is running Linux, I'm not sure I can just plug and play in a  
local network where they probably won't like me asking too many  
questions. Do you guys think I can get away with this easily enough?

Option two is to get a wireless LAN card for the laptop, and park  
myself at one of these hotspots that are supposed to be around town.  
The Tully's coffee near my house has an M-Zone wireless service. Has  
anyone used that service or anything like it? It seems like a nice  
consolation to my troubles that I could potentially sit in a cafe for  
a couple of hours while I do my work. But, I'm worried that a shared  
wireless network in a cafe will have it's bandwidth choked by other  
users. And I can't quite wrap my head around the service fees and  
application procedure.

Advice about these or other options would be much appreciated.

Oh, and by the way, I looked into getting one of those mobile internet  
services, where you can plug in what is basically a PCI card with a  
keitai attached to it and have internet service everywhere. I'd gladly  
pay the 6000 yen a month to have that access, but apparently they only  
come in minimum 2 years plans, with heavy penalties for getting out  
early.

And one other thing - I don't have an NTT phone line at home, so no  
chance for a quick dial up connection either.

Anyway, any advice would be much appreciated.

--
Dave M G