I'm old enough to have listened to the radio on my home-made crystal set because that was the only radio I had. I scrounged transformers for the wire and strung out antennae of various lengths to catch different stations more easily. Ray Nelson and I made a small, durable one to take with us when we went backpacking into the Applegate Valley of Southern Oregon in order to tell time. I watched most of the grainy black-and-white '52 and '53 World Series standing in front of a neighborhood appliance store, skipping school to do it. Our own TV was still several years away for our family.

And when I was 15 it took me eight hours to drive from there to here, with all manner of small towns, stop lights and speed traps along the way. Travellers then were a bit like salmon going upstream there were so many hazards. Now I could make the same trip in 3 to 3.5 hours.

OK. And now I've purchased a laptop with some goodies. Lots of promises came with both it and the goodies, but I'm not sure I believe them. I load things up and bundle it into the back of the van and off I go to a public parking lot nearby.

Viola! I have a wireless LAN available, 'net and all. Nice.

I put up the magnetic TV antenna, not even rabbit-ears but one rabbit-ear, pull it up to it's full 15" heighth and plug in the teeny-tiny TV adaptor. And all at once I'm watching both analog and digital TV, nice pictures. The webcam opens up, and YIPES! - that's me, full-screen and full-face, enough to scare both large and small children. And me!

I plug it into the surge protector which is plugged into the inverter which is wired to the auxilliary battery which is wired to the battery isolator and the thing charges nicely.

I put in a video I bought because I liked it and could give it to a neighbor for his kid, "Ice Age". Great video, high quality, fun.

The only problem so far is with sound. HD-TV likes digital sound, the DVDs and talking books mostly like analog. That's two entirely different drivers, takes some fussing to go from one to the other.

What a difference a lifetime makes! Now if the football season were only longer I'd be happy.

Arf