The Sprint For Speed

On the quest for the elusive high-speed internet connection, our travels led us to a stranger's driveway. How we have fallen, after being chastised by Buttmunch, Inc.

Since the A T & T laptop connect card debacle, the #1 son immediately set his sights on alternative connect cards. Remembering how his church choir director gloated over his new iPhone, and that he had gloated in the same way about his Sprint 3G connect card thingy, #1 put in a hotline call to the dude. His goal: to see if CCD would loan us the Sprint dealybobber to see if it would work at our house. CCD sang the praises of Sprint once again, and agreed to meet us to hand off that speed-in-a-flash-drive format. Since he was tuning a piano the next day, and it was halfway between our homes, he gave out the address of the piano and told us to find it and meet him at noon. Now you know where this is headed.

#1 googled the address. We arrived at 11:58. We drove down a beautiful concrete driveway, past a well-manicured lawn of about six acres, to an L-shaped concrete area by the garage. A woman came out the house door into the garage, and waved. I waved back as I parked in her driveway, careful not to get too close to the house, and more careful not to turn my tires without them rolling so as not to leave unsightly black marks on that immaculate concrete. I told #1 to call CCD and let him know that we had arrived, and see how close he was.

Well now. CCD said, "Oh, I'm running a little behind. It took longer to string those wires on that piano than I expected, and I still have to swing by home and pick up the Sprint card, so I will be about 15 minutes late." Knowing what I know about the geography of this region, it was apparent that it would be at least 30 minutes until CCD got to our current location. I asked if he wanted us to relay this information to his client. "Oh, no. I didn't even tell her that you were meeting me there." Great. Now a very nice lady expecting a piano tuner had a stalker in her driveway. I asked CCD if we could meet him somewhere else, and he agreed to a frozen custard establishment in the town of the A T & T store. That was fine with me, since we were headed there anyway to fork over that piece of crap connect card. I made #1 get out and knock on the door to tell the lady why we were in her driveway, and that her tuner was running late. Because that's the kind of gal I am. I would go nuts if someone sat in a car in my driveway for 30 minutes. She might have called the police, and then where would I be? At a beer blast at the White House, with Nanny HH watching the kids.

We left the stranger's house and drove to the frozen custard parking lot, where we waited a good 15 minutes for CCD. He handed over the Sprint card and its installation CD and said #1 could have it until 7:00, and drop it off at church choir practice. #1 was all excited about a new gadget to experiment with, though he had to wait until we actually got home, because his traveling laptop runs Windows 7, which is not really out yet, and the installation wouldn't work on it. He tried it on some MAC program that he had downloaded, but had no luck. At home, he had that Sprint card running in a flash, at an amazing speed, and linked all of our computers through the wireless network that he set up way back when he was 10.

We are SO getting one of those Sprint cards!