I don’t like moving. 

I don’t like trading jobs. 

If my Chevy S10 four-wheel-drive truck from the ‘80s still ran, I would still be out in the mud. 

The one thing that has forced me to do a lot of changing has been in my entertainment and internet. 

Television:

When we moved into our current home in 1991 we had an external over the air antenna and we could pick up local KTBS ABC station, KTAL NBC station, KSLA CBS station and on a good day we could get UHF channels KMSS FOX, and KLTS PBS.

Count them again….3 ‘regular’ stations and 2 UHF channels that showed a lot of static. 

At some point we wanted more so we invested in a huge satellite dish that moved when you changed channels. You would click your remote, wait while the dish out in the backyard moved and pointed in the correct direction and BOOM…you would have HBO. If you paid for it.

My most vivid memory of that era of TV was that sometimes it would randomly just be ‘off.’ You would change channels and some would work, some wouldn’t at all, and some would work but be not quite right. One day a channel wouldn’t come in, then it gradually got worse.

The only way to eventually make it work again was to call a satellite tech. He would show up in the evening later than most people would let strangers into your house. He would stretch out in your favorite chair, spread out like he was going to take a nap, click on your remote , and adjust things while mumbling to himself. In about 30 minutes he would restart everything and it would just work again. He would collect his check and leave in his unmarked white van.

Later I got his remote maintenance ‘code’ and when it started happening, if I was very lucky, I could make some small adjustments to the satellite that would put off the inevitable call to the professional. 

Telephone: 

I should mention at this time our communications choices. We had a land line. We did have cell phones as soon as we could (bag phone), but none worked where we lived. There were no towers anywhere near us at the time. We paid outrageous prices for limited coverage and were thankful to have it. 

Internet Access:

Around this time we had a computer with a modem and I got on the internet the only way that we could at the time. Dialup internet at 2400baud. At first I was only connecting to BBSs all over the country and reading about the internet. 

My first true internet service provider was Network Internet Solutions. World Wide Web was still finding its way and most sites were very basic. There was no streaming…as a matter of fact you could barely download an image file because it took so long . There were, however, a lot of BBS systems offering a lot of text files, and they were all long distance. I resisted the urge to ever get an AOL account.

Later on I changed to Sydcom internet and had my first actual email address! I updated to a 14.4Kbps modem and the World Wide Web made things a bit easier to find and use. My connections were still downloading at a whopping 2K per second. I did have a good friend start a BBS locally at the time, so at least I could connect locally and hound the SYSOP to find and make files available.

TV:

We eventually dumped that huge satellite and opted for DirecTV. No more cable guy, just a box with cables running to the roof. We didn’t have a lot of ‘premium’ channels, but we used every bit of the ‘free trials’ that we could. 

Internet:

My first high speed internet connection…and I use that term loosely considering what we have available today, was WildBlue. 

We only had 15GB of highspeed data a month on a rolling 30 day window. After you reached this limit, your speed was throttled back to the point that even browsing the web was tough. I hated it. I had to keep a spreadsheet to check my data every day to find out how much we had left.

Telephone and Internet:

I had upgraded my cell phone service to Cricket and we finally had service at my house! Since we did, I bundled my cell phone with some hotspot internet and finally dumped WildBlue. With Cricket we got the same 15GB, but the limit wasn’t a rolling window, it was a pay service period. The penalty for going over was also not a dramatic slow down in speed. It was a dead stop. Out of data in the middle of a show, screen goes blank and computer has no internet. 

It wasn’t perfect, but it was cheaper than before. 

TV AND Internet:

My DirecTV account had billing creep. They would just add a bit…then some more…I stayed with them for almost 15 years. 

I decided to call them once a month and ask if there were anything that could be done. After 3 months of seeing ads for new account deals that were less than half what I was paying, and not being able to get a break on my account, I changed service. 

I had checked into DishNetwork Satellite internet and TV service already and was ready to pull the trigger. I dropped that Cricket Hotspot and DirecTV at the same time and got the DishNetwork Internet and TV bundle. Two different dishes on the house.

TV AND Internet:

In 2021 I put a deposit on a Starlink account. One full year later the system was available in my area so in March ‘22 I made another huge switch.

I dumped both DishNetwork  accounts and we decided that we would just use streaming for TV. The Starlink was unlimited and fast and I thought I would never change. I ran that for 5 years without an issue.

They upped the price $20 after the first year, then another $10 recently. At the same time, I saw a brand new fiber box at the end of my driveway.

I made a call and found out that I could get a fiber optic connection of up to 1gbs, unlimited, and a land line phone number for less than I could even get internet with Starlink. 

I’m so spoiled and scared of change that I am paying $10 a month to keep Starlink ‘on the hook,’ in case my new deal doesn’t work out. I’m still undecided at the moment because my Fiber company has been down more in the first 2 months than Starlink was the entire 5 years I had them….but it’s so much cheaper right now. 

My plan is to monitor them for a while, then drop my land line and replace it with the fiber phone number, but that is a change I’m not ready to make just yet. I love the speed of fiber. My wife misses the reliability of Starlink. Thirty-four years of living out in the woods has taught me that when you finally get a good connection, you don’t let go of it easily.