Middle America's Worldview

Monday's are always difficult around here. However, not being on-call and having that hover over me helped yesterday.

Here is a taste of yesterday. Fortunately also, the kids were out of school as well.

• Kel was in the office all day yesterday and didn't get out till around 6 p.m.
  
• Went to speech therapy at 3:15
  
• While son in speech therapy, the daughter and I ran to the post office.
  
• After speech therapy, ran the daughter to choir practice.
  
• While daughter in choir practice, ran the son and I to chiropractic.
  
• Managed to run to Best Buy with son to jot down notes on digital tvs (more on that later), while daughter still in choir practice.
  
• Pick up daughter from choir practice, the three of us back to together again.
  
• Ran to Walmart to pick up pictures. They could not be found.
  
• Ran over to my dads to drop of cheat codes for his PS2 game he is working on.
  
• Then finally home again.
  

Tired yet? We made it home a bit after 6 p.m. Fortunately, Kel is very organized (unlike me) and we had chili in the crockpot before all the running. So supper was waiting on everyone.


Regarding the digital tv's; I went by Best Buy to try to decipher the best outcome, plus my wifes side of the family is looking to get her dad a new tv.

I was thinking the required conversion to digital was next January (2008), but after a lengthy discussion, it was conveyed "Nah man, not till 2009" by the kid at Best Buy.

Looking online this morning sure enough.

"Early in 2009 all over-the-air TV stations must switch the way they transmit their programming, bringing a number of changes not only to broadcasters and viewers, but to emergency responders and digital innovators as well.

"Since the advent of television, stations have sent their programming via analog signals. As a result of legislation passed by Congress in 2005, they will have to convert their transmission to digital signals by February 17, 2009."

Well, that gives us another year.

I also found out, what exactly does that mean. We currently have Cox Cable in this house. We use it, partly because we get all the lower channels in the kids room and my office, without having to have a digital box. I view it as getting the lower channels free. Especially since with Dish, you are required to have a box to get anything.

Well, when the cable companies go to digital, these lower channels will also be digital. Thus, if your setup like I am, all those rooms pulling the lower channels will be gone. You will be required to have a cable box or the tv themselves will require a "internal asc tuner". This will allow you to view the digital signals. Most tvs' on the market now have this internal tuner. But if you are like me, you have the 13 year old tv in the living room.