Welcome to the 21st Century
So what do you do when your dial up connection finally refuses to budge? I mean, you got nothing. No tiny creeping blue bar, no email access, no celebrity baby photos. Of course, as far as the photos went, it’s not like those ever loaded decently. I’d get about a third of a picture and there it would sit. Brad Pitts head and maybe just a smidgen of torso, stuck there reminding you forever, if you had the patience to wait that long, of all that the rest of the photo had in store. Never could really make out what particular child he was carting around. Visitors have always been amazed that as close to town as we are, we couldn’t ever tap into some sort of high speed connection aside from using a satellite dish. But up and over the hill and a mile or so away from all the necessary take out options, can still leave a person stranded with extremely spotty technology.
It’s one thing to have to position yourself against the proper window to make a cell phone call, entirely another to coax any speed out of your stationary computer. Cell phone calls we have gotten down to a science. Two windows, family room and master bedroom, are best suited for successful cell calls. These rooms are suitable due to the lack of the tin roof that covers the original part of the house. The raised tin roof, perfectly lovely and wonderful when it rains, was still a common component of homes in Virginia even as late as our home was built, which was in 1939. Ours is a nice shade of red, my favorite color for a tin roof, though I have to admit that the red color only covers the front part of the roof. This is because, after successfully painting most of the front portion of the roof, my husband decided that the bees were getting a bit too plentiful. Claimed they were dive bombing him. So he climbs down the ladder, retrieves some Wasp and Hornet Killer and heads back up to the roof with the can in tow. He goes back to the painting, spraying liberally when the bees threaten. Doesn’t take long and the roof becomes saturated with Wasp and Hornet Killer and this is not good for the traction on his sneakers. When he does finally slip, he manages to NOT fall off the roof and merely loses the can of paint he was using. So a good portion of the grass next to the walk is red and an even bigger portion of the flagstones that make up the walk is red, but there are no broken bones and grass can be mowed and flagstones can be flipped over. Whenever I mention that, really, that back part of the roof desperately needs to be painted, he recalls how he nearly slipped off the roof before. Well, yes, I say, that’s true but you were spraying Wasp and Hornet Killer with wild abandon and that was probably not a good idea. Why don’t you get back up there at a time of the year when the bees aren’t so rabid? Oh, yeah, I should do that, he says. And then it never happens. And it’s been four years since he managed to paint the front and leave the back a not so appealing shade of primer yellow.
So, yes, the tin roof is a major obstacle in connecting with those cell phone towers. But we can usually hang onto a conversation if we turn just right and basically press our bodies against the window. When even those attempts fail, we are forced to go outside and find a suitable spot. The driveway is not so good, but if we go over towards the west side of the front yard we can make a call from there. And if it’s evening we can watch the cows filter down from the top of their field. Put on the bug spray, get comfy on the bench and watch the calves run amok. For a change of scenery, we can also make calls from the top step of the back deck. Can’t try this on the steps leading down from the master bedroom into the yard, and can’t do it on any of the other deck steps. This also involves the use of bug spray and a hat doesn’t hurt if we’re placing the call during the day because it is quite sunny there. Texting, though, works from a number of windows and rarely involves having to go outside. Type the text, stick your arm straight up in the air, and wave the phone wildly about, and the text will be successfully sent.
While we have come to accept and deal with our cell phone limitations, even going into town to place a long distance call if the cell phone gods are being particularly obnoxious on a given day, we have been slogging our way through dial up connections for far too long. With virtually no hope of any cable stretching it’s way down into our rural environment, we have feared that our only reprieve was catching our high speed connection through a dish. We have had a satellite dish for our T.V. for about ten years, and since that is our only choice for proper T.V. reception in the 21st century, we have to put up with all the flaws that comes with it. Basically, if the wind picks up over ten miles an hour, we lose the family room reception. The reception on the bedroom set will hang in for, oh, maybe, twenty miles an hour worth of wind, and then that’s gone. And if a dark cloud in the southern sky decides to so much as hiccup, forget it. We’ve lost “The World’s Most Luxurious Yachts” thirty-five minutes into it, just when we’re totally sucked into the mindless, captivating power of the program. Nothing is more annoying then the ruined hour long program.
But this is where the Happy Ever After kicks in. Thanks to the persistent, but always polite, salesgirl at the Verizon store, we have entered the 21st century, late but better then never. Didn’t even know, couldn’t even guess, that the little device popped into one of the USB ports on the modem could provide such happiness. Along with the obliglatory two year commitment and careful, patient tweaking of it’s little antenna, we have successfully achieved two green bars on our connection screen! Oh, yeah, we did have to purchase the booster antenna and haul in a magnetic surface to stick it to and carefully and patiently point it where it demanded to go. And it really doesn’t want to produce more than two green bars when the truly desired amount of bars is four. But there’s always the Wi Fi booster for one of the other USB ports. Never give up, never surrender. And never, EVER, trip over, dislodge, or otherwise jiggle any of the carefully tweaked, patiently aligned connections to the outside world.
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