[Hallicrafters] Strange Tale, Read This One Guys!

[Duane B. Fischer, W8DBF]

Remember my request to be sure to include a ready to use address label when a
person requested the special HCI commemorative certificate? Well today I
received one in Braille! I hate to be the bearer of sad tidings to whomever sent
this to me, but the people at the post office do not read Braille! Their high
tech equipment has a hard time reading print, let alone Braille! Besides that,
if it has to go to a special sorter device, AKA a human, the dots have been so
obliterated by the postal systems high tech Braille dot crushing equipment, AKA
large rubber mallet wielded by angry woman who just caught husband with neighbor
lady, that not even Helen Keller could read these DOA pimples! 	
	
Additional bad news flash! There is grade one and grade two Braille. Whomever
wrote this, did not use grade one. Which consists of words being spelled out
completely. Whereas grade two uses short forms to create a kind of shorthand.
For instance, the word 'father'. Grade one spells it out letter by letter. Grade
two uses a shortform consisting of dot #5 and the letter 'F', which means
"father".	
	
I can hear some of you now, "Huh? Dot wha?" Fair question.	
	
Braille consists of six dots, They are arranged in two vertical columns, side by
side. Sort of like the print capitol letter "H" with the horizontal bar removed.
now they are numbered from the top down. The column on the left is dot one, dot
two and dot three. The column on the right is dot four, dot five and dot six.
These six dots, and the combinations thereof, form the entire Braille language.
For those of you who know how to do a factorial can calculate just how many
possible combinations can be made. Send your answer to me off list, please.		
	
So using dot #5 in front of the letter "F" means the word "father". You can
append to this, such as the word "fatherhood", as dot #5F+hood. But you can not
precede a shortform, as in "forefather". Armed with this bit of wisdom, now what
was on this address label?  	
	
Just a bunch of random dots punched into a mailing label with what may have been
a hand held battery powered sewing machine thing! After I spent thirty-eight
minutes trying to read this collection of assorted zits from every angle I could
think of, trying to figure out if it was in some foreign tongue, if it was from
a blind Ham who was very bad at writing Braille or? I came to the conclusion
that one of you sick and warped Hams has a sense of humor as bad as mine! It
said absolutely nothing intelligible! Just a bunch of dots with no da's! Well,
almost.   			
	
The postmark is Northridge, CA have fun figuring out who sent me this! 	
	
The person joyfully punching these holes in the back of the mailing label to
cause raised dots on the opposite side to create their prank to confuse and
confound me, did actually generate one symbolic shortform. What was it? How
about "QRM"! And they were right too!	
	
DBF