[TheForge] Re: OT - Snow in NJ

[Mike Spencer]

PF wrote:

On 1/3/2011 8:26 AM, Andrew Vida wrote:
>>
>> williamsiron at comcast.net wrote:
>>> Dad still has rotary dial phones and no internet.
>> 	Bless his heart.
> I'd bet than no smartphone would survive regular use that long.

We had roatary dial phones until 5 or 6 years ago. I had this little
script on my computer that would force the modem on-line, emit a
single dial tone and go off line, which took care of those &#@%%!!*
"For service in Tok Pisin please press 1" menu things. Then, when we
got 60hz hum on the line so bad that we couldn't use the net, it
happened that the service guys and linemen were on strike.  Heh.

Various management, accounting and marketing guys made 4 or 5 visits,
easiliy concluded that, yes, the problem lay outside the demarc, but
couldn't figure out the source.  Finally, one management guy took off
in a snit (well, actually, in the service truck) to a switchgear
cabinet several miles away at the other end of the road, yanked a
circuit board and stuck in another one.  Zap, all fixed.

Um, but also Zap: pulse dial no longer supported.  I felt sorry for
the poor, clueless dudes, at least one of whom didn't even know how to
strip the end of a wire.  So instead of complaining, we just wired up
the 2500 sets my son had been collecting up for us for a few years.
And they quit making those when?  Circa 1986, I think.  No cool
features but pre-divestiture indestructo hardware.

Dragged kicking and screaming into the early 80s.


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^