High speed

We have advanced into the 21st century - we now have high-speed internet, and boy is it sweet - especially since it's free! The local utility company is going to start offering broadband services to the town, but they have to do some testing first. Around Christmas I happened to read the local paper online, and there was an article about how the utility company was looking for people to test the new services - internet, cable, and phone. So I called and volunteered, but they were not certain they would need us because so many people volunteered (after all, this is the Volunteer State). I didn't hear back and had given up hope, especially when I saw their trucks at our neighbors house. But in early February they called to hook us up. They offered to give us free digital cable, 10 MB internet, and phone during the test period. I really, really wanted the cable, what with the NCAA tournament, NHL playoffs, and baseball season all coming up. But then I thought about how much time Carla would waste watching HGTV, so I chose only internet and phone. And only 2 MB internet at that, because coming from dial-up, that would seem really fast, and I don't want to have to pay for the 10 MB speed once it's not free anymore and then drop down to 2 MB. So over the past few days we've had guys coming and running fiber optic cables through our yard (but you could hardly tell they did any digging). The last guy came today and hooked up the computer. It took a while to get it working, and he had no idea what was wrong. Turns out the problem was with the company's server, because we were getting only internet and not cable. We were the ONLY people who were not getting cable. I mean, what kind of crazy fool would turn down free digital cable, right? Watching the Winter Olympics made us realize how much time we would spend sitting in front of the TV when we could be doing much more productive and edifying things. And since we now have high-speed internet, I can at least listen to radio broadcasts of Wolfpack games and Yankees games. And Carla can shop faster than ever before.