A Word on Technology

Several of the blogs I read are written by moms who do not have TV's in their home. We have a TV (two actually), but we rarely watch it, mostly on Saturday mornings for cartoons and when someone is sick. Although I think it is important to be able to get by without technology, I also recognize that technology can be used to enhance our quality of life. However, moderation is key! Some ways technology can be used in positive and negative ways:

1) Computers can be used to learn new information not readily available in your location, but too much computer time will take time away from your family and/or other tasks and projects.

2) Cell phones can be wonderful if you have car trouble with a little one or two or want to keep up with family and friends, but they can also be a distraction from tasks that require your attention.

3) TV can be educational, and it can give you a few minutes to relax and do absolutely nothing. However, it can also serve as an escape from time with family or other tasks and projects.

There are others, but those are the big three in our house. I used to spend a fair amount of time on my cell phone keeping up with my numerous brothers and sisters. However, I have tried to limit it some to give me more time with Jessica and accomplishing tasks when she is asleep! I also use the computer...a lot! David and I both do actually. Sometimes it is kind of nice because we will sit right next to each other each researching whatever we are interested in and share what we are learning with each other. However, you can have too much of a good thing, and some computer activities are more useful than others! Facebook and virtual farming are probably my least useful activities! However, I also spend a fair amount of time researching how to do things around the house I don't know how to do, child development questions that invaribly come up, etc. Overall, I am a big fan of technology, but it is important to "keep it in it's place" and not let it run your life like Farhenheit 451!

A Frugal Computer Option

My husband recently gave our computers a much needed upgrade. For the most part I let him do whatever he wants as long as he is buying the parts at a good price and doing the work himself. However, one decision I was involved with was which operating system we would be using. Windows is pretty much the standard, but it is pretty expensive. Also with Windows Vista, Microsoft gave themselves the ability to "spy" on your computer. This can be a very useful feature; however, that does not jive very well with our self-sufficient mentality! After much discussion, it was decided that I would switch completely over to Linux.

Linux is what is called "Open Software." In other words, computer, math, and science geeks from around the world program software, and then make it available to everyone for free!! It looks very similar to Windows, and there are thousands of programs you can download for free to use on a Linux computer!! I have the basics: internet, calculator, word processor, spreadsheet, presentations, as well as a bunch of games! We just finished downloading a lot of educational games for children! The only down side is that since these games were all created by computer, math, and science geeks, there are lots of math and science games and very few English and foreign language games! I do have a few computer programs that are for use in Windows that I am hoping to use in Linux with a program called Wine. Supposedly, Wine translates programs created for Windows so that you can use them in Linux. We have not experimented with this yet so we are not sure how well it will work. However, I only have a couple programs that do not have a Linux equivalent so most of the time this is not a problem.

There is some troubleshooting involved, and there is no hotline to call for help. However, there are plenty of computer, science, and math geeks online posting information about how they fixed whatever problem they had. Linux appears to be a great option for us thus far. It is not for everyone, but definitely something worth looking into!

Entertainment Upgrades

A while back I wrote about how we had lost most of our channels due to the switch to digital. Today it is time for an update! My husband had borrowed a digital antenna from a friend of ours but we were only able to get about 7 channels. Then we tried moving it to the top of the ceiling and it improved to about 20 channels (but it was kind of annoying having all of those wires running down the wall). Now, my husband is not satisfied with mediocrity so he kept researching until he figured out a way to get the maximum amount of channels for our area. The conclusion: he built his own antenna! We now get 25 channels from the antenna he built out of spare parts that we can leave outside below the fence! He ended up connecting it to the cable wire that we don't use. Final result: more channels, no obtrusive antenna in the house, easily reached antenna for adjustments, and we are $50-$100 richer because we did not have to buy an antenna!


We also recently made another upgrade to our TV watching experience: a new TV! My husband has been wanting a new TV for several years now, but we have been trying to pay off our student loans so we kept putting it off. We also hated to spend so much money on a TV when we do not watch a lot of TV; however, we recently realized that if we wanted to go out for dinner and a movie, it would cost us $50-$100. Although we do not watch a lot of TV, we do enjoy watching the occasional movie together. Recently, we have saved enough to pay off my student loan (which we will send in once his contract is renewed in September) so we decided it would be fun to do something to celebrate! We decided on a plasma TV as they were running some great sales on them. We also decided to hang it over the fireplace to give us more room for extra seating! We figure that we will really enjoy that as our family grows! I think the really fun part about it though is that I can run a slideshow of our daughter on it when we are not watching TV!

Lost Connection

Since we got married, we have not had cable or satellite television in our house. At first it was because we could not afford it. Now it is out of choice. We discovered that without cable or satellite we spent more time reading, talking with each other, taking care of things around the house, pursuing hobbies, and learning new things.


As of today we are down to one channel, NBC. All of the others switched over to digital. (There were not that many others....maybe three.) We have not yet bought the box we need to receive digital broadcasts. I assume we probably will at some point, but we are not in a hurry to get it. During a typical week we watch a couple Veggie Tales videos with our daughter and perhaps some cartoons or a woodworking show on Saturdays. Occasionally we will watch a movie or episode on dvd. (We do have a pretty good collection of vhs and dvds, mostly from the $5 bin at Wal-Mart.) We usually follow sports on the internet or radio.

So what do we do for fun you ask? (I know you are dying to know.) We listen to music and talk shows on the radio. We read books, currently most of them are on the founding fathers and the constitution. We read message boards and watch videos on the internet pertaining to our hobbies (astronomy, woodworking, cooking, cars, shooting, gardening, sewing, education, etc.) We take care of things that need to be done around the house. We play with our daughter. We talk about current events, our hobbies, things we would like to do, parenting, goals, etc. Often after our daughter has gone to bed we will work on our woodworking projects.

Just to make sure I do not give you the wrong impression, I do not have anything against television. However, I do think that reality tv shows tell us something about the culture that we are living in: When people would rather sit and watch someone else live their life as opposed to living their own lives, we are getting very dangerously close to Farenheit 451.