Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”- Mark Twain


Monday, September 12, 2011

The Family that Lives (Close) Together, Surfs Together.


I live in a rural community in NS. We have one option for high speed internet, and it's pricey. The monthly bill is $55.00 (taxes included) for mediocre internet that stops working at least once a day. It isn't blazing speed, but it sure beats dial-up.

For a few years I gave in and subscribed. I wanted to keep up-to-date with the world and to keep my sanity. I do enjoy it, and would hate to live without it.

I recently moved. As it turns out, my new neighbors are my parents! (Oh, rural living...) This is both convenient and not convenient at the same time, (since they now can know everything I do). However, I must say it does come with it's perks.

Last spring they too decided to get with the times and get high speed internet. Knowing less about internet set up than I do, I was given the task of purchasing the wireless router. Knowing my father, I made sure to get "the best of the best" out there, otherwise he wouldn't have been satisfied (and probably would have made me return it). Luckily I found one on sale, and for $80.00 he was happy.

Fast forward to last month, and I move in next door. We had to disconnect our internet at our old home, and to have it connected at our new home would cost another $99.00. This is the same price as the initial set up. A little peeved about this, I decided to cancel the internet account altogether. My thought was that I could always change my mind in a month or two once we get settled in, and it wouldn't cost me anything extra. Actually it would save me the $55.00 that I didn't spend for that month of internet service. We'd be unpacking most evenings after work that month anyway, so the chances of us missing it were slim.

Just for the fun of it one day, I opened my laptop to see if there were any signals that I could pick up. Low and behold, my parent's signal was a whooping four out of five bars! More than enough that I would need to check my Facebook and email once a day. Now I'm thankful that my father required "the best" router!

I talked to my mother, and told her about my discovery. I suggested that I would gladly pay half of her internet bill if she would give me the password (which truthfully, I remembered anyway since I set it up). She was thrilled about it, since $27.50 a month for moody internet sounds a heck of a lot better than $55.00! So that was that, we both had internet.

Mind you, there are times that this set up isn't ideal (if I wanted to use the internet in the far end of my home, or during a huge storm), but I remind myself that for $27.50 a month in savings plus the $99.00 installation fee, I can learn to deal with it.