Reduced to using the Internet.

It could be worse; the phone line could go out and you'd be down to having to read a book!

Books are one habit I have not been able to break. If I do not get a minimum of a hour of reading in bed I can not fall asleep. I was addicted from the womb by my Mother who was a major addict. Like the Crack Babies sorta but I was a book baby. I did not ever learn to read, it just always was there.

Book addiction is vicious and leaves its victims with little free time. Socialization is minimized and the addict is known to ignore others as they actually read the 6 year old Reader Digest magazines in the Doctor offices instead of engaging in healthy small talk. The affliction, once prominent in Society, is fortunately becoming much less of a issue as the new Generation have learned to avoid this dangerous addiction. Young people can go through life without once even reading a whole Novel, let alone a Short story. Thus, though there is no known cure for the heavily addicted, the scourge has lost its grip on our Nation.

Soon Books and their poor victims will be a thing of the Dark and Distant Past. Something to be seen on the History Channel (If the @!#$% thing works) between Nostradamus and Tales of UFOs. Most people will not believe such a thing could have existed.

On Friday, NASA shot the moon. Now it's striking back. First come down the satellites ...

Well Matt you can always spend more time at the still making sure all the ingredients are mixing just right.  Then there is nature watching with the hi-power.  You'll need the scope for close up inspection and just in case da 30 pointer walks by. 

And of course you could always go out for a cruise

Day 2 without TV.

Would watch videos on Internet but the dial up time is still 4hrs and counting for a 3 minute clip to load. Have gotten all the way to level 5 on Frozen Bubble after many hours. Quite good IMO, I may attempt a new record. Have taken to staring at the dark TV screen and making comments on the latest stupidity the News reporters are up to. (I just know, even though I can not watch the News, that something stupid has been said.)

Spent time reading all the interesting Threads on all the Forums. Ok, any Thread interesting or not. Desperation for entertainment has driven me to read obscure postings regarding multimedia issues. (Warning, posts concerning multimedia issues are know to induce vomiting and blindness.)

Hopefully, before Spring time comes, the Mule Team will deliver the new Satellite Receiver. Will check again Monday with the phone company regarding DSL (each month they say check again next month) Last month, when I had called, it was perhaps only 3 weeks away they said. Of course they also said it might be available in August before August came and went. But last call, the Engineer had reported that he had looked on his map and said my name was one of those that were supposed to get the new wire. Hope is born.

Must endure.

Keep the hope and we will continue wishing you good luck in receiving DSL.

I'd offer to import you to my neck of the woods/glaciers. But I think we all know how that would go.
And besides the bandwidth here might just kill a ol codger such you.

Unsafe at any speed? Thanks for the almost invite but I will have to let the Glacier slide.

The thing that is really annoying is if the Weather was nice I could sit out on the porch and not miss the canned entertainment. It always seems that when you are trapped indoors is when the Internet has nothing going on, the latest Linux version is weeks away, the TV breaks and the cats get grumpy.

Huzzah!

The mule team stopped by with the new receiver. After 3 hours of setup it mostly works. I say mostly because the HDMI connection causes the sound to cut out when changing channels (can regain sound when power cycling TV). Luckily this does not occur when running Component. Since the old eyes see little difference in the high definition at Component over HDMI I can live with it. I suspect the old CRT HD TV I have from '03 does not get along with the changes in the HDMI Standards that the new receiver has.

I remember when all it took to hook up a TV was a attenna wire that had two leeds. That and a day to yell out, "turn the attenna a bit more," to the poor person hanging onto the roof before the reception was ok. Now it takes a advanced electronic degree and 60 cables to hook up all the peripheal devices.

I think the World is getting too complex or I have exceeded the pull date.

However it works!

Hmmm... Why perusing the features of the new receiver I noticed it has a Ethernet connection and in the Receivers Setup Area is a IP number and place for Local network and Internet connection configuration. Looks like they are planning for the Future to be hooked into both. Not sure the need but it looks interesting. I wonder what OS the receiver uses?

I bet its running Linux.

For the antenna rotation we either welded a piece onto the pole or just used a good set of vise grips.  Until we moved up to the fancy electric rotor, that we could stay in the dry to change.  It never failed that the only time you wanted to change directions was weather related.  Des Moines might not come in, but Omaha, St. Joe, or Kansas City might.