Why the DTV delay is stupid

So I'm converting our blogspot account into my "Jared's Views" area and keep it away from the main area of my blog, so those who don't care don't have to see it unless they see the little link I'm going to put to in in a very indiscriminate place.

The DTV delay just proves once again the biggest pitfall of America, and one in which I succumb to way too often myself. One that I'm succumbing to as I write this. Procrastination. I am a procrastinator. I put things off to the last minute too often. I should be doing homework right now, but my mind thinks about other things and I'll keep thinking about this until I write it down. This will be my point eventually.

Anyway, we've known about a DTV transition for about a decade now. We've had time to upgrade our TV's. But yet, the general public has not been very educated about the transition. One reason is because cable and satellite companies pushed their "Digital Cable" and made it sound like digital cable was what people meant by the transition. I remember that's the impression I got. But then after researching it, I found out that it was for over-the-air broadcasts. 

Then the next thing was all these local channels talking about the transition. The thing they emphasized most was the fact that you need a converter box. So I'm SURE that a TON of these converter box coupons were sent to people who didn't even end up needing them. There was just so much commotion about needing a converter box that people just signed up for the coupons and decided they'd find out later if they needed it. 

This also goes along with the cable companies pushing their digital cable. I bet some people thought that the cable companies were switching to digital too, so they would have to get a converter box because they needed one so they could watch their digital cable. Then the local broadcasters started figuring out that people were confused, and a few months ago (when the coupon program started running out of money) they started emphasizing that it was only people who were getting OVER-THE-AIR broadcasts that would be affected. OOOOHHHHHH...... so there's probably all these people who have HDTV's with built in DTV tuners, who have their HD satellite dishes who decided that the transition is going to affect them too so I should get the coupons. 

But then all the people who actually didn't watch TV (because they don't care that much about TV or don't have time to watch it) started getting the news that if they want to watch TV, they needed to either: upgrade their TV, or get a converter box. Well, since they don't care too much for TV or don't have time for it, they aren't going to upgrade their TV. People who REALLY cared about TV upgraded to HDTV's once they could afford it (or they were one of the first to get converters). But the people who don't care for TV that much didn't do a thing.... until just recently, they figured out "Oh, I won't be getting ANY TV. I don't want to spend the money on a new TV, my 20 year old one works fine. I don't want to spend the money on cable because I don't watch that many shows. So I need a converter box. Oh wait... the coupons are all gone."

So 2 things caused this coupon debacle. 1) Overly zealous, uninformed people who got the coupons who didn't actually NEED them because they either had cable already or a TV with a built in tuner, and 2) Apathetic people who didn't get the message until just barely.

So to reward procrastination is not going to help any. People who need the converter boxes probably more often than not fit into the "apathetic" category. If we push back the deadline for DTV, people are just going to wait until June to get their converter boxes anyway. There are some people who won't even have it when either the Feb. deadline or the June deadline comes. They'll get it when they decide they want to watch TV again. It's just not that high a priority. There are some people where the only motivation to get a converter box will be the blackout. But those are the same people who will throw the tantrum saying they weren't given enough time to switch over, when it was simply them waiting until the last minute to deal with the situation. That's why I think the DTV delay would be stupid.

Real Blog Over There!

Our real blog can be accessed at www.beckyandjared.com

Blogspot still up in the air

Uh.... maybe people shouldn't get too attached to this blogspot thing JUST yet. Apple is coming out with a new version of iLife which also has a new version of iWeb. I was taking a look at the features of this new version of iWeb and it has a built in FTP uploader and incremental upload, which was out biggest problems with the software. iLife comes out later this month, which we're definitely getting (mainly for iPhoto and iMovie upgrades). So we'll try out the new iWeb and then make our final decision on which blog we're going to use. We'll post on both blogs what our decision will be.

New Blog?

Why are we now on blogspot you may wonder? 

The biggest reason was that using beckyandjared.com is really hard to post from. In fact I (Becky) have never learned to post blogs that way, so I would always have to rely on Jared to post the blog. Also, posting the blogs took a lot of "power" so without a high speed internet connection it is impossible. This is usually not a problem with our superior M-Star internet that we have in our apartment but we recently went to my parents house. Well, lets just say that we couldn't post our blog until we got back. 

Another, little reason is that I was getting tired of our black background. Jared participates a lot in the blogging process and loves the black. But, I have been jealous for a while now of all our friends cute backgrounds. So, I have been bugging him about getting cute backgrounds of our own. As you can see I haven't quite got my way, but wait and see. In a couple weeks, we too will have a cute background.

So, let us know what you think! Do you like our new location? Do you like the black background? What can we do get you to read our blog?  

(Jared's Turn, only read if you're bored) Okay, so here's the real deal (none of this cutesy pansy wansy stuff... this is the real technological reason why. We have been using Apple's website and blogging software called iWeb since the start of our blog. It initially started as our wedding website which gave more info about our wedding and a digital copy of our announcement and such. But then we got married and decided we would blog about our life since people ALWAYS asked "How is married life?" So we started a new blog (dubbed Site 2.0 on my computer) and went to work. After a while, we started adding tons of pictures and we had lots of entries. This is where the downfall of Apple's software lies. Apple iWeb works really well and fast if you have their $99/year MobileMe service. Basically, iWeb creates a big huge file of your website. If you have MobileMe, you can just say publish and it will put it on the service. If you DON'T have it, you have to export the files and folder structure (which takes a long time for a large site), subscribe to a different comment service, enact a script that automatically replaces tokens with the comment link, upload all the files and make sure that nothing is broken. It was quite a tedious process and one that took me a few weeks to perfect. Anyway, as Becky said, when you have a slower internet connection, it takes FOREVER to upload all the files and such. And instead of being an incremental export, it had to export EVERYTHING each time (which, considering the size of our site, got annoying to wait for). So now we're moving to blogspot to make it incremental and to use some of the other Google services that go along with it, like Web Albums for pictures and such. So hopefully it will be much more easier to navigate after the switch.