Connected!!!

Yes! At long last, we are connected!

The Tiscali guy came today and hooked us up for broadband, digital TV, and phone. You actually get all three services here over a single phone line -- TV is just bytes over the wire, after all.

I actually looked around a bit, and have yet to figure out where the wifi signal's coming from. I don't think the set-top box is the source...no antennae anyway...but who knows. There's so much stuff buried under our staircase that one more router down there could remain lost for months.

Anyway, it will be a lot easier to maintain this blog in the future with an actual internet connection :-)

Now I'm going to have to figure out what's wrong with our desktop PC. The kids were using it last week, when something started to smoke, and then the monitor power cut out. We were running a US monitor off UK power using one of those 25-watt converters, and I'm pretty sure there's no way that a 17" LCD, cheap pair of speakers, and 500GB external USB drive could pull 25 watts...but clearly, something overheated, and I hadn't bothered trying to isolate which component, since personally I have little use for a standalone PC anymore :-) Now that it's networked, tho...

My parents are here this week, so the moment the TV was hooked up, they've monopolized it watching the Obama Inaugeration on CNN; yes, we come all this way just to watch US news on a US channel :-P

Those who know me know that this is the first time we have ever paid for "real TV", having survived for 15 years in St. Cloud on just an antenna. The kids are stunned at having actual channels that don't fuzz-over with static the moment a cloud forms. Ah well, they've put up with a lot in this relocation, and I figured they deserved a treat.