Me and my bro were stuck in Yuma AZ a few summers growing up, so our idea of fun was sitting in front of the television playing Atari 2600 (yes, I'm that old!) as it was way too hot outside to play until the sun went down.
USB to serial dongles are quite common in my line of work. Most if not all networking gear (backbone, not your typical $30.00 Linksys/Netgear stuff) can be locally configured only via a serial cable and telnet software - like Hyperterminal.