My world, 4:30PM.

I am sitting in a deli, waiting for new tires to be installed on my car.  I am eating a roast beef sandwich and drinking coffee.  I have my laptop, and I am coding.  I have plugged into someone’s free WiFi (network name ‘linksys’), so I have my VPN to my office up.  I have three instances of Visual Studio launched, switching between them and my Perforce client (our code management system).  I am debugging ImageScope (high-end digital image viewer) and Digital Slide Studio (editing tool for digital images), both of which require megabytes of memory to deal with images which are gigapixels in size.  I can launch Outlook and pickup mail.  I can launch Sharpreader and read RSS.  I can launch Firefox and connect to any website in the world.  I can ask Mr. Google any question I can think of and get an instant answer.  And of course, I can blog.  Wow.

Meanwhile, I am in the middle of an invasion.  About fifty senior citizens have suddenly appeared in the deli, filling all the surrounding tables.  The deli staff are temporarily overwhelmed.  The noise level rises.  Distracting?  No.  I plug my Sony headphones into my HP laptop, launch iTunes, and select my "metal" playlist.  Mr. Satriani and Mr. Blackmore blast away the environment, and I am back in my little cocoon, oblivious.