I just had a life changing experience. Not the ordinary kind like enlightenment or discovery. But the technology kind where, once you’ve experienced it, you will never go back to the dark ages. Let me explain.

For those of us lucky enough to live in the San Francisco South Bay hills, particularly the bucolic foothills stretching from Hillsborough through Belmont, San Carlos, Emerald Hills and Woodside, life has been peaceful and serene. There is a downside, however, NO CELL PHONE RECEPTION.

I often work out of my home office, and for years I have suffered from “message delay,” the embarrassment of driving back to civilization where my cell phone would buzz informing me that there were two voice messages and four texts that came in the previous day.

I once hoped that maybe the iPhone, with its magic powers, could “leap tall buildings in a single bound” to capture cell signals. But it was just a dream.  My new iPhone can only surf the web while at home, no-can-talk.

But, then, life changed last week when I forked over $150 bucks for an AT&T 3G MicroCell. You hook it up to your internet connection (in my case DSL) and it acts like a cell site, transmitting and receiving cell phone signals and routing them over the internet as if they were Wi-Fi signals. I now get 5 bars everywhere in my house and yard.

My wife and I were giddy, calling all of our friends in the flat-lands (who, by the way, think we are crazy) boasting that we now have joined the 21^st century. I never thought I would be giving two thumbs up to AT&T, but this time they really did a great job. Life is good.