O.T.A.

I have negelected this blog for a while, a combination of not much to write about for a while, then too busy to sit down and do some scribblin’.   In June I was busy dancing between starting a new job on weekdays and ferrying The Wife to the TT’s she entered in preparation for the District pursuit championship at Hellyer.  More of the same through July, and now we are to August.  Where has the time gone?

For the past couple of weekends my time has been sucked down by a divorce.  No, not from The Wife, but a divorce from the cable provider with the local franchise.  I have had some issues with the whitewash poor tech support, but that is not the reason.  It is a pure dollars and cents decision; we have decided they overcharge substantially for what they provide.  Five+ years ago I had an old analog TV with an indoor antenna with poor reception on two channels, but that was OK.  Then as The Wife and I got married and started a home remodel we bought a digital TV, and got cable primarily for the Tour de France coverage on OLN (now Versus) and for HD.   At the same time we transitioned our separate DSL lines to a single cable connection to the i’net.   At the time we got all we wanted, cable internet and basic cable with HD, for less that $50/month.  Probably more than it was worth, but not exhorbitant enough for us to complain.  The 13 months ago they informed us we had to transition to a digital package, much more expensive, in order to get HD, but that we would get a lower price for the first 12 months.  Well the Tour de France ended a couple of weeks ago and the low introductory price on their digital package ended about the same time.

Given the high cost point of the cable, The Wife wanted something cheaper.  Satellite will put us in the same high price boat after a short introductory period and leave us with a decision about internet connectivity.  AT&T has perhaps the worst customer service in the country, which coupled with their high prices put them out of the running.  With the digital television transition over (for the most part, still some fallout) the question was: could we get sufficient reception O.T.A.  (over the air)?   I was tasked with the project, and have been busy evaluating antennas (bonus for smaller sizes) and getting everything installed, wired, and running.   While going down that road we came to realize the cable company wanted $42/month for the internet connection; we could go cheaper with lower bandwidth but I found a reputable DSL provider that will give us the same bandwidth for $20/month.

Last weekend my spare time was given over to getting the antenna installed and wired to the demarc box at the outside of the house with a temporary trial connection to the TV in our bedroom.  Lots of work on the roof, including some work tacking the cable from the antenna under the eave while laying on my back in an inverted position.   Then during the week I did the footwork to get DSL connected on Friday in preparation for moving off the cable.  Yesterday (Saturday) I spent a couple of hours under the house doing the shoulder crawl from place to place as I laid new RG6Q cabling all interconnected via a single 5-2300MHz splitter.  After terminating all the interior cable ends and adding new 3GHz faceplates we are all digital running O.T.A. for television and off the DSL for network connectivity.  Guess in a couple of days The Wife will serve the cable company with our notice of separation.

We will not be total luddites.  As part of the transition I acquired a TiVo HD so we can now plan our TV viewing around our schedule, not the schedule of the networks.  With everything in place it is time to pick back up on the riding schedule.  I did a nice 46 mile loop through the hills in the heat today, and am now relaxing while watching the first NFL game of the season.