While I didn't want to spend more money or slide into the cost creep of going with another Yagi antenna for my Verizon Jetpack, I made an Amazon purchase of a Netgear 6000450 MIMO Antenna with 2 TS-9 Connectors. I'll get it sometime this week. I feel good about its success—I don't even care about more bars, I just want 1 bar of a LTE!

With the lack of cell phone coverage here, all I gotta say is that "the dream of the '90s is alive:"

And I now have a first-hand look as to why rural America can be so technologically backward and few steps—a whole block—back behind everyone else. It's somewhere between access and culture. One aspect I miss about working among IT peers is that I no longer passively acquire tech information, trends, and application. Sure, it's out there, but I have to actively go for it. I've always felt places like the South with a low cost of living were at a huge disadvantage compared to places like NYC. It is much cheaper to buy books as the cover price doesn't change between the two regions. And the more we move away from brick-and-mortar shopping, the further the disparity will be. Thus, the acquisitions of the latest technological knowledge and self-education is challenging for rural America to acquire, even for someone with who has a predisposition toward those in his wheelhouse.

But, hey, it's quiet out here, the drives are pretty, and there's little chance of a double murder-suicide like my next door neighbor when I lived in the Normal Station neighborhood in 2011. I literally have my own private park trail for contemplation in my backyard. And if the mood fits, Chickasaw State Park is close by. I have future plans of running around its Lake Placcid in the spring.

And maybe that's the thing: don't expect the country to be the city. Yet, in this increasingly global community, there are those who don't realize they are out in the hinterlands...and prefer its price.