(Posted here rather than in my TryingTechnology.com blog, since this isn’t quite about technology. I’ll add a cross-post (or whatever the blogspeak term is) for it over there.)

While we have cable TV at our house, going to the 5+ year old non-flat TV upstairs, the dunno-how-old from-the-street junker downstairs still isn’t hooked up. That one is used primarily for watching DVDs and videotapes), episodically (no pun intended) used for watching PBS.

So, several months (and also to be prepared in case of a cable outage), I ordered my Converter Box Coupons (at https://www.dtv2009.gov/), to be prepared for the exciting upcoming Farewell To Non-Digital Television Broadcast Signals slated for February 2009.

My coupons arrived in a timely fashion… and semi-promptly got buried in a pile of other papers. (Easy to happen, as anyone who’s seen my home office knows.)

A month and some weeks later, I learned that THESE COUPONS EXPIRE IN 90 DAYS!

Go [expletive deleted] figure.

I found the coupons, but by the time I was able to get to a store that had converter boxes, THEY HAD EXPIRED TWO DAYS AGO.

Meanwhile, I’d applied online, on behalf of my father, who also has an uncabled TV. Weeks or months later, no sign of those coupons. I just checked online at the DTV2009 site, it has no record (and I foolishly didn’t save the tracking number).

Ah well. I have applied again, on his behalf. And saved the tracking number. And emailed the gummint for a fresh set for me, explaining why I didn’t use the first ones they’d sent me.

Meanwhile, this video on the upcoming conversion to DTV that a friend of mine found pretty much says it all, I think.