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These days we take all of those ubiquitous satellite dishes we see on rooftops and lawns across America for granted, but I can remember a time when it was just a dream for rural folks who had a hard time getting decent reception on their TV sets.

Back in the 1970′s we lived “up in the holler” in rural Widener Valley, Virginia, and to say that our television reception was poor would be quite an understatement. For years my dad spent his hard-earned money and lots of his time buying and installing all types of TV antennae and cabling, but it all came to nothing. Not only was our house located in the “fringe” area of all of the local TV signals, but it was also, well, “down in a holler” with a high hill blocking what remained of those signals from reaching our abode.

It made no difference how high we mounted an antenna or how strong the “booster amplifier” was, the only station we could watch with any satisfaction was channel 5 (WCYB out of Bristol, Virginia). And to add insult to injury, even that channel was always “snowy”.

Then one day I read in Popular Science magazine that the Hughes Aerospace company was planning to launch a series of satellites that would deliver high-quality television signals directly into homes and businesses all across most of North America. Of course this would mean an end to our reception problems, and I for one couldn’t wait.

After all, the other kids at school were always talking about the latest episode of “Happy Days” or “Charlie’s Angels”, and all I could talk about was the Major League “Game of the Week on NBC (carried by affiliate WCYB of course). Now don’t get me wrong, I loved watching big league baseball, but it would have been nice to see the Fonze and Charlie’s pretty Angels on occasion as well.

I excitedly told dad about the amazing new satellite TV signals that we would soon be able to “pull in”, but he wasn’t the least bit impressed. He said something like “I’ve tried to get a decent signal from a transmitter just 40 miles away, and you’re telling me that we’ll be able to get one from out in space! It’ll never work.” Of course work it did, and before long we had one of those massive 10 foot satellite dishes sitting square in our front yard.

And let me tell you, after watching the Skipper chase Gilligan around that tropical island through what looked like a snowstorm for years, the picture we received from the dish was absolutely amazing! Every once in a while if the wind was causing the dish to shake we would see a few “sparklies”, but for the most part the reception was “picture perfect”.

Well, dad is no longer with us, and neither are those behemoth satellite dishes that made yards and rooftops look as tacky as your average junkyard. I miss my dad very much, and I’ll never forget the ecstatic look on his face on our first day watching “satellite television”.

The premise is simple: If drivers know they’ll get an automatic ticket if they run a red light, they’ll be more careful when approaching an intersection. But that premise is also apparently flawed.
 
Study after study has shown that “Red Light Cameras” are actually causing more accidents and serious injuries than they are preventing, and a recent in-depth study conducted by researchers at the University of South Florida shows the problem to be even worse than previously thought.
 
There are two primary reasons for the failure of those now ubiquitous cameras to fulfill their lofty mission:
 
1 – More drivers are now slamming on their brakes at the last second when the intersection in front of them is actually clear in order to avoid getting a ticket, resulting in record numbers of rear-end collisions.
 
2 – Many municipalities have reduced the time that the yellow “warning” light stays on in order to generate more tickets (and revenue), causing even more brake slamming and collisions.
 
Of course these studies aren’t likely to prompt many municipalities to remove the cameras from their intersections because of the revenue they generate. But then again these types of “safety devices” and policy changes are rarely implemented in the name of safety – it’s almost always about increasing revenue.

Like most everyone else over the age of 10, I spent a large portion of my early Internet years waiting. I waited for what seemed like an eternity for my modem to dial in to my ISP, make a connection (usually a pretty bad one), and authenticate my user name and password. Finally, if all went well and I had made no errors entering my info, the little “connection” icon would slide into its “home” in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Yoo-hoo, I was online…

for about 20-30 minutes, until I lost my connection or it simply froze up on me. And then there was the constant waiting for my email, web pages and any associated photos to download. I can vividly recall just sitting there staring at the screen as line by line of “content” slowly came into view. Back then the Internet was almost synonymous with Yahoo, and the Yahoo home page took forever to load!

For me, in the early days the Internet was a mixed blessing. All of a sudden I literally had a world of information available to me on countless topics and the ability to communicate via email with people all around the world in a manner of seconds. But accessing this new-found bounty was like trying to pull myself out of a tar pit without a rope.

Frustrations mounted daily, but at the time there were simply no real options for faster, more reliable Internet connections. You could choose between a local dialup ISP or AOL – period!

But then I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina for a short period where I heard about a new technology called “Cable Internet”. Dubbed “RoadRunner”, it was offered by Time Warner, the local cable television provider, and the promises they made in their ads were simply astounding: a rock-solid “always on” connection with no logon hassles or delays coupled with lighting-fast downloads that take seconds instead of minutes or hours. It was this old dial-up user’s dream come true.

Unfortunately, my stay in Charlotte didn’t last long enough for me to give RoadRunner a whirl, and once back in the hills of southwestern Virginia my options immediately reverted back to dial-up only.

Well, that brief introduction to the possibilities of Cable Internet whetted my appetite for it, and eventually Comcast began offering it in the more populated areas of the county. When I began dating Cheria, she was already using Comcast High-Speed Internet and she absolutely loved it. And after giving it a whirl myself, I quickly found out why.

With Comcast, gone were all the frustrations of dealing with the phone lines. I just turned on the computer and went right to work on the web. In a flash I could check my email, visit my favorite websites, buy and sell on Ebay… and all at a then-amazing speed of 1.5 megabits per second! Let me tell you, going from 26 kilobits per second (on a good day) to 1.5 megabits was like hopping off of a bicycle and jumping into a Ferrari!

Cheria and I have used Comcast as our Internet provider ever since, and we have never had even a single regret. On the rare occasions when we have needed it, their customer service and technical support have been superb, and they have increased both their upload and download speeds on several occasions without raising prices to compensate for it.

I have heard that the RoadRunner folks have problems from time to time, but I can honestly say that Comcast has the Cable Internet thing down pat. It’s a great service at a decent price, and in most areas its speed simply blows DSL (the phone company’s high-speed Internet offering) out of the water. Unless something changes for either better or worse, I don’t plan on ever switching to anything else.