2004-10-05 - 2:17 a.m.

I should have gotten my first pair of glasses way way way earlier than I did--I had really poor eyesight as a teen but had only faint suspicions of that fact.

And when I got my first pair, it was one of the happiest days of my life--I could see things! I walked around for weeks looking at things with my glasses on, and then taking them off and looking at those same things, admiring the contrast.

I just switched from dial-up to DSL. It�s more money, but I�m absolutely amazed at how worth it it is.

I just can�t believe it. I downloaded an entire operating system update for my mac in like three minutes. For fun. Whereas previously it had been of necessity and a process nights in the making, babysitting my computer and internet connection, drinking beer and watching X-treme Dating on tv, staying off the net otherwise so the download would go faster.

Pages load right away now--I don�t have to wait a minute for a big page I don�t care about to load so one link will open for me in a new page. Strongbad e-mails load instantly. Songs (that are up for grabs on band websites, mind you) start playing right away and are finished downloading by the first chorus. I can watch quicktime movies start-to-finish right away, whereas before I would start loading one for kicks before going downstairs to do some laundry, figuring by the time I got back it�d be halfway done.

Okay--put it this way. I watched the entire Kerry/Bush debate, every second of it, off of boston.com in one sitting. No problem.

And it takes probably two seconds to connect. This, I�m sure, will translate into at least one weekend evening trip to Harvard or Central and not wanting to wait in the cold for a bus, and oh, let�s check the schedule, okay we have ten minutes to get there let�s go, and then, once warm and snug and on the bus, a we wouldn�t have made it before followup.

And not getting timed out! I don�t have to pull up the weather in the morning before my shower, knowing I�ll be timed out by the time I get back but that the page will probably still be up. Who cares? Worst case scenario, the browser crashes, I sign on again, in a matter of seconds I know what to wear for the day, even if I�m running late.

I�m very happy about this. I actually do know why I didn�t do this sooner, by the way (and thus ends the commercial--no, I wasn�t paid for the above testimony).

Think what you will about me, but prior to my switch to DSL, I was still getting two freebies from the folks (aside from the errant orange juice or set of plastic cups or Thanksgiving leftovers, and occasionally a piece of furniture a distant cousin was going to throw away). Let me preface this by saying that I haven�t lived at home since the day I left for college (including summers), that I paid (I should probably use am paying) for my college education, and that I�ve paid for every dime of my rent. I don�t have a problem with kids that live on the dole for awhile--I�m just stating that that hasn�t been my situation (not that my parents are generosity-despising misers, of course).

That being said, I have an ugly confession to make. Since college, my Aunt T has gotten me a T pass each month (she gets a discount from her work, and I always take care of her at Christmas and am always there via email for when she goes into town and needs �insider� driving/subway/parking/walking directions and eating/things-to-do recommendations, and no, she�s not Aunt T because she gets me a T pass--that�s a coincidence), and my ma has paid my AOL bill.

So it was a tough choice--going from paying nothing to paying more than I would have been.

But it�s one I�m glad I made. The whole AOL thing has been a huge source of guilt for me for years, plus AOL sucks. And my ma was a lot more happy about it than I thought she�d be when I told her, which made me feel like an awesome person and a heel at the same time. I�m gonna go with awesome person, though.

And now I have DSL. Which doesn�t crash all the time (although Safari and Internet Explorer both crash and both complain that I don�t have the plug-ins that they asked me to download, which I guess they didn�t really like). I�m optimistic that I�ve yet to figure out a few things I didn�t know I�d have access to, although I have been pining away for this for years.

It�s just so great. It�s like when I caved and got my cellphone, finally getting to enjoy something that others had been taking for granted for years. And when the walls came down, it was fast and I was ready.

Oh, so good to actually use the internet like a real person. No more late night I can�t do that�s, and no more getting into awesome dorky conversations about computers and being careful to stay away from certain subjects lest my mooching and poor internet provider choice be revealed.

The most negative experience I had during the entire process was AOL. They were horrible to me--just plain mean. Very, very, very mean. Extremely mean--all I was trying to do was to cancel my service and they kept me on the phone for over a half an hour. It was a very bad breakup (it�d been eight years), and they wouldn�t let it go, insisted I answer a ton of irrelevant questions or they wouldn�t cancel the account, and got very, very pissy when I turned down their �let�s stay together for one more month but live apart�-esque offer and explained why (they asked). It�s almost like the rep took it personally.

What more than made up for it was the lady from my new service provider that asked me for my phone number to get the new account set up, and instantly recognized the exchange as a Somerville number. She was lots of fun, and we talked about Somerville for a long time (people that live in Somerville like to talk about Somerville). She agreed, by the way, that I had �earned the right� to live here.

Like she needed convincing.