As always, when a new era arrives, I have to be drawn into it, kicking and screaming.

I liked our old Internet dial-up but our provider finally got tired of supporting what may have been its last dial-up customer. I’d call and say “the funny screeching when it’s connecting won’t stop,” and after 60 minutes of futile inquiries and suggestions, they’d solve the problem, telling me to move my chair off the cat’s tail. The provider finally said, figuratively, forget it, take this new broadband connection whether you want it or not, we won’t even charge you for it! The support group heaved a collective sign of relief and went into a high fivin’ frenzy Saturday night when they finally got me set up with the new router and broadband service.

I’ll admit the new broadband is considerably faster, but fast isn’t everything when you live on an island. The drama of waiting for the connection is gone. I could dial up Cabela’s Bargain Cave and make a morning of it: Type in the address, and then go wash a few dishes, walk the dog and come back inside and see if the connection was working yet. And that just got me to Cabela’s. I’d go through the whole thing again when clicking on Bargain Cave, and any items I might want a closer look at, such as the moosehead lamps. There was never an unwashed dish in the house and the dog was fit as a hairy fiddle. And dial-up, slow as it was, was a lot faster and cheaper than actually driving to Cabela’s.

Now, an Internet destination arrives in a flash, which simply induces the user to visit more useless Web sites. The dishes go unwashed and the dog gets fat as I read the same news story 20 different times from 20 different Web sites, 19 of whom stole it.

Loss of my dial-up service opens old wounds, such as the time they told me I couldn’t get another rotary phone; all they had was pushbutton models. I never would have switched if the rotary dial hadn’t broken, and I’m sure somewhere out there today on Whidbey Island is a person who still has a rotary phone. My advice: Don’t switch. The pushbuttons aren’t fun, they don’t make a backwards clicking sound, and they’re so fast that you can’t reconsider making the call. With the rotary, you had time to realize you had nothing say, and you could hang up.

Some modern conveniences bypassed me entirely because nobody made me get one. I’ve never had a fax machine, for example, even though at one time they were all the rage. Newspapers worried the fax would put an end to them, so on the advice of highly paid consultants who couldn’t keep a real job, they started their own faxed newspapers, so local news could arrive instantly: “Fax Flash: The City Council met last night, and didn’t do much. End of flash!” Our newspaper still has a fax machine sitting in a dusty corner and we still get faxes, but nobody reads them.

With the new broadband Internet connection, I can finish my Internetting in just a few minutes, leaving me wondering what to do the rest of the weekend. I guess the dog could use a walk.