Going cold turkey, without the Internet

It was a tough job but we did it. We survived five whole days without the Internet in our house.

We recently switched over from one bundle bungler to another bundle bungler in hopes of lowering our TV, internet and phone bills, and on paper, it looks as though it is going to do that -- significantly. But on paper, you don't see all those extra charges for all those pay-per-view movies you just have to see now that all you have to do is push a button to access to them ...

But in the process of the changeover I forgot that one computer was virused out of commission and the other didn't have a working CD drive. Guess what you need to download the modem info?

By Monday, our sick computer was supposed to be washed free of hacker venom and ready to go, and I managed to get the modem info transferred from the CD to a jump drive at work, but we still had to go the whole weekend without the internet. Without Facebook? Without Pogo? What was I going to do for two whole days at home?

("Clean?" suggests my husband. Yeah, right, dear.)

Turned out to be a non-issue, since a sinus infection and general winter lethargy kept me asleep most of the time, but I think my teenager was starting to fray around the edges. Sunday night I actually caught him reading a book. A real book -- with paper pages and no moving illustrations.

I re-discovered the age-old truth about the expanded world of television You can have 999 channels and there can still be nothing on. Even the free stuff offered on the demand channels was pretty bad, although we found a few rare gems, such as "Long Life, Happiness, Prosperity" with Sandra Oh, and we finally got to see "This is Spinal Tap" from beginning to end. That's one of those movies, like "It's A Wonderful Life," that I always seem to come in on partway through.

But otherwise, it was the endless run of "Roadhouse," home decorating shows, home decorating shows in HD, and more reality shows than should be allowable by law.

Overwhelming

When the internet began its first massive expansion and I first got access to it, I spent hours and hours searching site after site, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of what was out there. It didn't take long to realize that the same rule held. There are 999 million web sites, and not much worth looking at. Now I tend to get on, check mail, make a few Facebook posts and comments, play a few games, and sign off. When I got into work Monday morning, I had more than 50 Facebook post alerts -- and only about 10 of them were actually from friends. The only thing I really missed about being 'netless was the instant access to information. Is the African American young man on "Community" any relation to Danny Glover? What really happened to Charles Darwin's daughter Anna? What was the spice Giada used in the chicken piccata? All these life-altering TV show-inspired questions were going to have to wait until I got back online.

Donald is not related to Danny; Anna was Charles' oldest daughter and died at the age of 10, possibly from complications of scarlet fever or tuberculosis; and brined capers. Yeah, I'm gonna find those at the CornerMart.

Back in the stone age, when the World Wide Web was a plot device in a Spider-man comic book, we'd have to go to the library to find out this information, and even then, it was hit and miss. Who can recall having to send letters to celebrity gossip columnists to find out if Rod Steiger was still alive of if Jean Harlow was a natural blonde? And you had to send a self-addressed stamped envelope to the TV station to get a copy of the recipe of the day ... If these are vibrant memories, count yourself out of the silicon generation. (That's siliCON, not siliCONE.)

Pick and choose

I wish the television signal distribution agencies, or whatever you want to call 'em, would let you pick exactly what channels you want and just block out the ones you don't. Yes, I want the BBC channel, and no, I don't want ANY sports channels, especially since none of them show three-day-eventing, show jumping or any other horse event except the Derby -- and I can get that on network TV.

Internet provider -- yes, I want all the legitimate news sites; no I don't want anything with xxx in the address, search results or anywhere, even if it refers to that movie with Vin Diesel. Especially if it refers to that movie with Vin Diesel.

Phone provider -- yes, I want free long distance; no, I don't want telemarketers calling from Mumbai to explain the benefits of the Veg-o-matic.

Of course, the problem with being that picky is you can miss out on some great stuff. I've found some of the neatest shows and web sites simply by surfing and they can more than make up for the junk I have to wade through to get to them. Another plus to having too many choices is I found myself retreating in self-defense to some old favorites and ended up watching Nature (great edition on hummingbirds!) this weekend, as well as re-reading one of my favorite science fiction series. From a book. With paper. One of the books in the series was missing from my bookshelves and it's out of print, so it was a little frustrating. I could have ordered it from eBay or downloaded it from Amazon -- if I'd been online.

Of course, if I'd been online, I wouldn't have been reading the series this weekend anyway...