Crosswalks to Nowhere

Becka got her driver's license this past Saturday morning.

Just writing those words makes me feel more like a parent than I would have expected.

Sure, I knew that one day I'd be at the Illinois Secretary of State's office with each of the kids, running through the Rules of the Road Drill. I used to joke that I could send them over to Portillo's to get me a hot dog if I was in the middle of some consuming home improvement project. (Becka joked back that if I sent her out with $50 for groceries she'd come back two hours later with a Hollister bag and an empty Starbucks cup.) I guess I thought it just wouldn't come this soon.

So this past Saturday morning at 7:00 am, I found myself shivering in line outside the Niles DMV office with my 16 year old daughter nervously standing next to me, ready for her road test. My steaming travel mug took some of the chill off.

We went through the line, handing over certified copies of birth certificates, Social Security cards, and Becka's driver's log, all dutifully filled out. By 7:20 am, she was sitting in the car with Harvey, the road test instructor. I sat down in the waiting area and waited for their return.

(I've always wondered why government facilities look so drab. Of course, if they were decorated in any way they'd be lightning rods for criticism of government waste. The only real "human" touch in the place was the picture of Jesse White, welcoming me to his facility. Thanks, Jesse-- it's really great to be here.)

About 10 minutes later, Becka walked back into the facility with a hard-to-contain smile. Harvey called me over and asked for her Social Security card. He pointed his pen at Becka, saying, "Give it to her, and she takes it over there. She's a good kid. She passed."

Moments later, my daughter was in possession of something she'll be expected to carry for the rest of her life-- her Driver's License.

If I were a more sentimental type, I would go on about "leaving the nest" and "they grow up so fast," with the tune of "Sunrise, Sunset" playing underneath my words. Since I'm not that bad, I'll just say that I'm really proud of the fact that my daughter reached this milestone and I was glad to be there to see it. And I hope I was able to teach her a few things about driving and responsibility that only a father can-- something other than "Slow Down!!!"

That afternoon, my daughter came up to me and asked-- for the first time-- if she could take the car.

At least she offered to pick up a Starbucks for me.

Lisa took me to see a taping of NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" last week.

I've been a fan of the show for a long time-- in fact, I was on the show a few years ago and won the prize of Carl Kasell's voice on my answering machine. Impressive, huh?

It was interesting to see how the show was put together, and to hear the finished product with its edits and other clean-up. It reminded me of some episodes of our podcast, where we creatively edit the show to make it the wonderful entertainment many of you have come to know and love.

In the photo, from left to right, you'll see Carl Kasell, Peter Sagal, Roy Blount Jr, Amy Dickenson, and Paul Provenza. After the show, we got to meet the cast and even got photos of us with Carl.

The Chase Auditorium is a small theatre-- designed, as you might expect, for corporate meetings. After all, it's located downstairs in Chase Bank's Chicago headquarters. It's intimate enough to be perfect for a live radio show.

(I saw Marisa Monte in this space years ago, and it was awesome-- we were two rows from the stage and it really had the feeling of being in a small club.)

If you're a fan of the show and you're planning on visiting Chicago, be sure to add a visit to "Wait Wait..." on your agenda.

With the advent of the Digital Television Age, I decided to take the government up on its TV Converter Box Coupon Program. This is the program where each household gets up to two $40 coupons towards the purchase of a digital TV converter box: you wire the box between your antenna and the TV, and voila-- digital TV.

Now, I'll admit to being a geek, which led to my installing a new TV antenna on my roof when we moved into our new house last year. Okay, it wasn't all geekiness-- I also wanted to be able to give the cable company the boot in case I got tired of their rate hikes and (potential) lousy service (we do have cable TV, but I use the antenna for my PC TV recording, as discussed here.). Since we live about 20 miles from downtown Chicago, where all the TV transmitters are, we get a pretty good signal on the ol' analog Toshiba (which, by the way, is about 5 years old).

Digital TV, however, is a vast improvement over analog. When I installed the Insignia NS-DXA1 converter I picked up at Best Buy this weekend, my eyes and ears were treated to-- dare I say it-- a whole new viewing experience. The picture is incredibly sharp, and some of our local stations, like the main PBS channel, have multiple sub-channels with different programming that aren't made available to regular cable subscribers.

Setup was very easy: plug the antenna cable into the box, plug the audio/video jacks into the TV (some models, like this one, have a regular "Antenna Out" jack that you would connect to your TV's antenna jack, just like the old days of VCRs), plug in the power, and fire the box up. It automatically tuned in all the available digital channels in under 5 minutes, and I was up and running. The box is very simple to operate, and the remote is very straightforward.

One of the most frustrating things about Digital TV (or DTV) is that until recently it's been very difficult to get straight answers about what all this terminology means. People tend to mix DTV up with HDTV, which is incorrect. Hopefully, this will help anyone who's looking for answers.

DTV (Digital TV): the method by which nearly all over-the-air TV stations will be broadcasting come February of next year. Digital broadcasting gives TV stations the ability to broadcast multiple channels at once, usually defined as channels 26-1, 26-2, etc. DTV is not to be confused with HDTV.

ATSC: the type of tuner in a TV set which is capable of receiving DTV.

HDTV: a special type of high-definition service which brings better video and audio to the viewer. HDTV is a special kind of high-resolution service that you can get when you get DTV, but not all DTV is HDTV. You need a special HDTV receiver and display to get the full HDTV experience.

Do the digital converter boxes pick up HDTV signals? Yes, but they don't output high-definition content. If I tune in an NCAA game on our local CBS station, they're sending out an HD signal, but my converter box is reworking that signal so I can watch it on my analog Toshiba. The picture is very good-- better than the analog signal I can still pick up-- but since I don't have a true HDTV setup I won't get the highest resolution. And that's fine with me-- frankly, we don't watch all that much TV anyway.

So, if you still receive your TV signal through an antenna and you have an analog (pre-2004, mostly) TV, you'll want to take advantage of the free/$40 coupon program. My coupons-- they're actually more like gift cards-- arrived about a month after I ordered them, and were accompanied by a list of stores near me that carry coupon-eligible converter boxes, including Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Radio Shack. All of these places carry converter boxes in the $40-$60 range.

For more info on the program and the switchover to DTV, go to www.dtvanswers.com. In the meantime, I'll be watching a program about Ireland on WTTWD-11.1.

Update 3/22/08: The previous owners of our home left a TV antenna in the attic, so I ran a cable to the TV in our bedroom and picked up this Magnavox converter box from Wal-Mart for $49.87. It's 10 bucks cheaper than the Insignia model from Best Buy, but it does pretty much the same job. The main difference is that it seems to want to "sync" with the signal every time you change the channel. Also, I can't seem to get the CBS station (WBBM-TV channel 2) because of a weak signal. I'll have to climb back into the attic to see if I can remedy that.