Two weeks ago in this space I lamented my brand new TV’s stubborn “no signal” response,even though I had carefully hooked it up to a rabbit-ear antenna designed for the digital age. My next door neighbor offered his technical expertise, but the best he could coax from my flat screen Memorex was reception worse than that of my 27-year-old analog model.
Poor TV reception was only one of my problems. As a blogger and free-lancer writer, I was using my dial-up connection to the Internet several hours a day, thus blocking incoming phone calls. It got so bad that my niece from Ohio contacted my son who lives here in St. Paul to express her concern; she had been unable to get through to me by phone.
Suddenly vulnerable to the cable company’s sales pitch, this long-term holdout bought the package including high-speed Internet, starter cable TV, and digital phone service with unlimited long distance. A week later, and my household is digital.
My TV viewing habits haven’t changed: better reception and more channels haven’t improved the quality of the programming, so I continue to turn my set off after the evening news. But I do enjoy whipping around the Internet at top speed, and unlimited long distance is an asset for a free-lance writer occasionally required to do out of state interviews.
In the meantime, I managed to keep my old phone number, but I’m still working on notifying contacts of my new email address. And I’ve only had to move a few pieces of furniture around to accommodate the location of the previously installed cable jacks in my apartment.
Now if I can just find the receipt so I can get back the $30.00 I paid for that rabbit-ear antenna that was supposed to work with a digital TV.
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