Internet Access

Just an FYI, I wrote this on Saturday but didn’t post it till today. Monday at 5:30 eastern time.
Well here I am back in O’Hare on my way home.
After attending a one day sales meeting that actually took about 4 (or 5 if you stretch it) hours!
Fly out on Thursday, meet and great disguised as a bridal shower for one of the young reps who’s getting married. Lots of upsides to that one, she’s a sweet kid and her Dad and I have a bunch of common history, and he’s been a good friend to me – he got me the gig with the clothing company which is growing steadily into a really good thing. The other is the company picked up the bar bill and bought pizza for the party!
Friday we reviewed the line break, talked about how good the company is doing, which I’m really happy about. Then we were done by 1 for the day. Friday night was the annual award banquet at the Denver Chop House, if figures we go to one of the better steak places in Denver on a Friday night during lent! The Maryland Crab Cakes were good though.
Saturday and I’m on my way home. I’ll get home about 4:30 this afternoon, and my bride tells me the draft horses will need hay, so I’ll change and put out a round bale and then I can visit with the love of my life.
Now back to the title of today’s missive.
While walking through the airport I was checking the headlines and news above the fold on the papers in the boxes and saw a little blurb about expanded internet access starting a fight at the FCC – they didn’t use the word fight and I can’t recall exactly how it was phrased, but it conveyed the idea that it was controversial.
I’m too cheap to pay 2 bucks for a New York (or any other city’s daily for that matter) paper, but I do know that it has been one of President Obama’s goals to expand internet access to rural and underprivileged folks.
Maybe Obama thinks that rural dwellers are underprivileged?
Did anyone ask those of us who live beyond cable access if we wanted expanded internet access?
To be honest I’m sure that there are lots of folks living in the country that would love to have high speed available. I’m not one of them.
Personally I get along just fine with my Verizon air card, and I used dial up long after everyone in town had high speed. I do need to be able to access the internet for work, and I also get to use if for play, like this blog and I pay for the privilege of having the air card.
If you need high speed for work it’s just part of the cost of doing business. But I don’t want it too easy.
There are way too many people living outside the village limits, that should move back into town. Back being the operative word here, if you’ve always lived in the country, you don’t expect to have cable tv, sewer lines, city water, high speed internet, etc! You expect to smell cow manure on the corn field next to or down the road from your house between harvest and next springs planting, the neighbors chicken is supposed to crow, he’ll quit when he’s dead. Which is supposed to happen when he no longer is fertile or you want tough chicken for dinner, actually young roosters are pretty good eating, and if you butcher them while they’re young 10 or 12 weeks old is plenty old enough for a fryer. If you live in fruit farming country, it will smell like spray dope off and on all summer. You know that tractors are slow moving vehicles and you shouldn’t pass them on a double solid line, or on the right when they swing wide to the left to turn into a farm driveway while pulling a piece or two of machinery. These and a million other things are common sense to anyone who has always lived in the country. If you are an escapee from town, not so much!
I don’t want street lights obstructing my view of the night sky, I don’t need a cop close by, not that much crime happens out here anyhow and what does most county folks are well equipped to take care of themselves until a county sheriff, or a state trooper shows up.
So speaking for myself, I don’t want or need expanded internet access out here, mainly because I don’t need another reasons for folks who live in town to think it’s a good idea to buy a piece of property in the country, and then ride their 4 wheelers, snowmobiles, whatever across farmers cropland destroying crops, damaging the soil, and generally aggravating me!
I also don’t want them petitioning the town to run the water lines a little further out, asking the cable company to provide access because they can’t get all the local channels on satellite, or suing a farmer because his farm operation negatively affects his enjoyment of his rural lifestyle.
Well it’s almost time to go to the gate, so I’ll post this later today at home, or tomorrow after church. I left the aircard for the wife to use at home, because the hotel we stayed at had free high speed, and I’m too cheap to spend 8 bucks to access high speed here at the airport.
I get to spend my life in two worlds, and it works for me. If I had a trust fund or was smart enough to either make enough when I was young to retire already, or have a business or invention that would make me wealthy, I’d spend the rest of my life a lot farther away from town than I already am. But alas I’m not wealthy in a monetary sense, though I am rich beyond compare in the things that really matter – family, friends, and faith – so I’ll keep living in both worlds and enjoying every minute of it, because this life is fleeting, and shouldn’t be wasted.