Granny's Take on Technology

In the interest of full disclosure, this post is in fact NOT being written by anyone’s “Granny.”  It’s being written by me, Stacey, 35 year old member of Generation X.  And recent curmudgeon about many things technological.

My cell phone has become my enemy.  For the past two weeks it has randomly set itself to “fall back” an hour, even though Daylight Savings doesn’t end until this COMING Sunday!  I happen to use my cell phone as an alarm clock in the morning, and twice now this week I have woken up late because my alarm NEVER WENT OFF.  Because the cell phone had RESET ITS CLOCK.  ON ITS OWN.  What’s up with that?  I thought those things were attached to satellites or something that always told it the correct time.  Seems like my satellite is a little out of orbit.

I’ve also become annoyed with this whole switch to digital television signals.  I remember hearing about this, maybe two years ago or so.  I thought it was a joke!  I thought it was someone’s bright idea to force millions of Americans to either get a converter box, a new tv, or cable.  Stir the economy, or whatnot.  But by golly, it’s the real deal, and now we are inundated with commercials informing the American tv audience that they better get with the program.

Here’s my complaint:  my rabbit ears may only provide a (very) fuzzy version of 4 or 5 tv channels, but at least they are consistent.  I get consistently fuzzy tv, and I’m fine with that.  Once I hooked up my converter box, though, not only did I lose our favorite channel – PBS of all things!! – but we also had to deal with the crazy pixelated reception of the channels we DID get.  Sure it was clear, until it wasn’t clear, and then it wasn’t fuzzy, it was all broken up into freaky little pixel boxes while the sound reminded me of horrible reception across an old drive-thru voicebox (think: only hearing every 3rd or 4th syllable).

Then we got a letter – what a coincidence! (ha) – from our internet company telling us the following:  we’re going to raise your internet rate next month, BUT, if you sign up for another service…say…CABLE, we’ll keep your internet rate the same and give you cable for the difference we would be charging you for the increased cable rate.  Got that?  Pay more for one service, or order another service and pay the same as the newly increased rate for just the one service.  So of course we had the cable installed.

We haven’t had cable in more than 5 years.  It’s like being given a chocolate cake to eat after 24 hours of fasting.  Oh, I’m full!  Oh, I’m a little sick!  Man, this is a lot of television, and not all of it is good.  And by “not good,” I don’t only mean a bit trashy (which some of it is!) but also just plain dumb.  But some of it is also fabulous – it’s just taking time to figure out what’s the what.

One observation I’d like to make:  I am totally surprised by how many commercials there are on cable tv!!  I find it very odd that television I am now PAYING for has as many (if not more) commercials than television I used to get for free.  Take TLC.  I am loving that channel, but not loving the insanely frequent commercial breaks.  For this reason (skip the commercials!), plus the constant groaning of my children that they’ll miss some show or the other because – of all things!  oh the nerve! – SCHOOL, and other such inconveniences, we’ve now started talking about getting a DVR.  Oh my heavens, more technology?  I can hardly stand it.

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