"So I decided to click on her profile, and it wasn't private either. So I looked at it, and he and I had talked about living situations. His said he lived alone, but her profile said, 'Living in [a Washington suburb] with my honey.'"
That was enough.
"I'm normally a nonconfrontational person - but I decided to do something about this because I thought it was such atrocious behavior," she said. "I guess I'm still a small-town girl when it comes to that kind of thing. So I composed an e-mail that said, 'Funny, you didn't mention your girlfriend at lunch.'"
FOR THE RECORD - The address for the DTV Transition Coalition Web site listed in Mike Himowitz's Plugged In column in yesterday's editions of The Sun was incorrect. It should have been www.dtvtransition.org
The Sun regrets the error.
Not surprisingly, there was silence from the other end. After a few days, she could stand it no longer. "I got back on Facebook to check his profile again," she said. "This time his profile was private."
Boys and girls, there are lessons to be learned from this tale. You can decide what they are.
Canary-in-the-coal-mine department: Last week I wrote that the Federal Communications Commission was still looking for a city with broadcasters foolhardy enough volunteer for an early test of the nation's switch to digital transmissions. The very next day, the FCC announced that it had found one: the coastal metropolis of Wilmington, N.C., America's 135th-largest TV market.
Wilmington is an ideal location. With a population of 100,000, the city doesn't have enough people to kick up a really big election-year fuss if things go wrong - especially with a congressional seat occupied by a safe, six-term incumbent. And with only 7 percent of its population using antennas to receive TV (less than half the national percentage), Wilmington has even fewer people to get mad when their TVs go dark than a city more like the nation as a whole.
So beginning Sept. 8, Wilmington's five major stations will turn off their analog transmitters and broadcast strictly digital signals. People who rely on over-the-air broadcasts (as opposed to cable) will have three options: buy converters for their existing analog TV sets, replace them with digital sets, or sign up for cable, satellite or fiber-optic service.
The same thing will happen nationwide Feb. 17, 2009. The FCC hopes the timing of the Wilmington test will allow enough time to warn local viewers about the switch but still leave enough time to act on any lessons learned before the national rollout.
