falling back into the last century

Our house, as nice as it is, really only has one cable out in the whole place. It's in the front room, which means it's the only place at my house to watch tv. It's just on the other side of the wall to my room, so I could drill a hole through the wall and run cable into my room that way. A more plausible option for a renter like me would be to skip the whole hole drilling thing and simply run cable around the living room, into the eating nook, past the computer area, into the kitchen and then into my room. In either case, I'd have to split the cable from the source, which I don't really care to do. There are enough wires and gizmos sticking out from the back of the tv.

A couple of days ago I purchased an archaic antenna to attach to my room tv.

It's pretty old. It even has those forky connectors that we used to use to set up the 'ol Atari 2600. Works wonderfully though. With it, I became re-acquainted with an old friend -- flipping through channels.

See, for the past several years we've had digital cable and TiVo™. Both have changed my life for the better and I'd sacrifice two of my limbs for them, but they do come at a cost (besides the monthly fee (which Rhett actually pays for (the TiVo™ part anyway))). There is a huge delay (about seven seconds) when the channel is changed. I think the delay is increased because of the combination of both technologies. Is seven seconds worth the ultimate convenience, control and selection of these technologies? Well, yes.

I wouldn't say that being able to casually flip through channels is a more important friend than digital cable and TiVo™, but it is like a friend who may have been my friend long ago, but was abandoned by me when I got cooler, more popular friends. Thanks for still being my friend, Ability to Casually Flip Through Channels! And thanks for not going anywhere!

The biggest problem with my particular ability to casually flip through channels is that I only get broadcast channels, not the hundreds of quality cable channels the living room gets. That means a couple of average channels and like 17 Spanish channels. Why do Spanish-speakers get so many more channels? I'm pretty sure they're not even a majority in this part of the world yet. It seems like the marketplace would demand that there actually be more English local channels. Oh well. I'm considering learning Spanish by flipping through all the channels above 20.