I was being tested this week. Not in math or science but on how much impact the Internet has in my life outside of work.

At work, it has a whole lot of impact but home, well, that seems to be a different story.

You know the lyrics, "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

That's what I did. No, not the parking lot but my broadband card. It's gone to the state track meet and state softball tournaments.

It really has been the proverbial "now it's gone, I really, really, really need it." That, despite the fact, that most nights it sits, all alone on the computer table, waiting to be used.

Now, if it were my brother, that thing would have been worn out by now.

The lesson for me is that I need to get with it, get caught up in the Internet world.

I did. When I first got Internet, I was online way too much. It was new and rather exciting. I checked out Web sites, I found things I didn't want to find, I even chatted online. Shoot, I even joined an online writing group.

I was part of the Internet.

Of course the newness wore off as I became more and more sleep deprived. Chat rooms turned out to be hard to move into as they were as cliquish as high school was once.

Being so far removed from an actual person, people forget the social niceites. And, since you don't know them from Adam or Eve, they believe this gives them a license to be as rude and crude as they want to whom ever it is they are chatting with. And, some could get down right vicious.

I guess if you want to be the only one on the Web or just like fighting with someone that is the way to do it. It does drive off those who are looking for something other than "you're stupid," "you're a (insert curse word here)," or worse.

So it was goodbye to chat rooms. A person can only take so much of seeing others called stupid or being called stupid yourself.

OK, so that was then. Now there are social networking sites, which I guess will allow you to find people who like what you like and with whom you could have a conversation.

Another in the "paved paradise" line: Conversation is becoming a lost art. Listen to what's around you — nobody cares that cell phone talk is being heard by everyone around you — and you will notice that it's not what it used to be. I don't mean the constant, "Oh my Gods," it's the new "No way." Although you would think they would have something to alternate it with.

I mean the talk in which every other word is a curse word. Can't call that conversation. And when using the cell phone, we do tend to forget there are others around us who possibly don't want to here that much cursing or the entire contents of your conversation.

We are allowing these new fangled things to turn us into some of the rudest things on earth that think it is all about them.

I've had my moments of rudeness as well, but I really do try to catch myself because there is nothing I despise more than to be talking to someone face-to-face, have a cell phone ring and the person grab it up and walk off talking without so much as an "excuse me, I need to take this."

So, we'll see how it goes. Will I be more desiring of joining the faceless crowd on the 'Net?

I do know I will miss it for the things I do like to do but somehow I think I will survive. After all, the Marshall Public Library is still open for business.