[O/T] Falling Away From The Grid
Hi. I'm not a Luddite, but sometimes I play one on the internets. It's not always by choice.
If you watch television or get a lot of junk mail, you'd believe that we're in this glorious era of infinite electronic communication. Phones! Wireless! Wi-fi! 9thG internet! iPhones! Twitter! Eight gazillion channels of crystal clear television! I suppose that we are in that era, but since there's (usually) no such thing as a free lunch, you have to pay to play.
I've been slowly dropping off the grid for years now. A home telephone line was the first to go. Other than missing the very occasional "OMG I'm in jail" call on the weekends, there have been no negatives. I would say my quality of life actually improved, since I get 99% fewer telemarketing calls with just a cell phone. Cable TV went a few years ago and except for selected sporting events I don't miss that either. Sure, the whole "I'll have a bunch more time to do stuff around the house" plan hasn't worked out as intended - any time saved has been sucked up by the internets - but thanks largely to the 'net I haven't missed anything important.
It may be that the internet is the next to go, and the thought of that has me antsy. I've been less than 100% thrilled with my provider, but most of the time they've offered acceptable service. But as of any day now they're switching over to a new technology, one which would require completely different hardware and a physical installation that I'm not keen on. And the cost of service would increase ... by about 60% per month over what I've been paying.
The alternatives aren't promising - dialup or DSL would require a home phone line, and the last time I checked the cable company required that you at least pay for basic TV on top of their internet service charge. Obviously I will check again, but ... sigh.
Change is hard. On a personal level, just letting it go would probably be a good thing - about 99% of all time spent on the internet at home is wasted, maybe a few ticks lower than that if you factor in the couple things I do to bring in a dollar here and there. There just isn't a real reason that I couldn't do those things at work during off hours. It's not like it's that far away.
Time will tell what I end up doing, but I do know this - if I drop the home internet any online (play chip) poker play will quickly drop to zero.
Or maybe it's just Thursday and I'm annoyed with being at work.
If you watch television or get a lot of junk mail, you'd believe that we're in this glorious era of infinite electronic communication. Phones! Wireless! Wi-fi! 9thG internet! iPhones! Twitter! Eight gazillion channels of crystal clear television! I suppose that we are in that era, but since there's (usually) no such thing as a free lunch, you have to pay to play.
I've been slowly dropping off the grid for years now. A home telephone line was the first to go. Other than missing the very occasional "OMG I'm in jail" call on the weekends, there have been no negatives. I would say my quality of life actually improved, since I get 99% fewer telemarketing calls with just a cell phone. Cable TV went a few years ago and except for selected sporting events I don't miss that either. Sure, the whole "I'll have a bunch more time to do stuff around the house" plan hasn't worked out as intended - any time saved has been sucked up by the internets - but thanks largely to the 'net I haven't missed anything important.
It may be that the internet is the next to go, and the thought of that has me antsy. I've been less than 100% thrilled with my provider, but most of the time they've offered acceptable service. But as of any day now they're switching over to a new technology, one which would require completely different hardware and a physical installation that I'm not keen on. And the cost of service would increase ... by about 60% per month over what I've been paying.
The alternatives aren't promising - dialup or DSL would require a home phone line, and the last time I checked the cable company required that you at least pay for basic TV on top of their internet service charge. Obviously I will check again, but ... sigh.
Change is hard. On a personal level, just letting it go would probably be a good thing - about 99% of all time spent on the internet at home is wasted, maybe a few ticks lower than that if you factor in the couple things I do to bring in a dollar here and there. There just isn't a real reason that I couldn't do those things at work during off hours. It's not like it's that far away.
Time will tell what I end up doing, but I do know this - if I drop the home internet any online (play chip) poker play will quickly drop to zero.
Or maybe it's just Thursday and I'm annoyed with being at work.
1 Comment:
As far as I know, you can get DSL w/o having a home phone line. Technically you will have a "home phone line" that the phone company identifies you by, but you don't have to pay and actually have the service. This is how I'm setup for my internet.
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