[TheForge] OT - Snow in NJ

[peter fels & phoebe palmer]

On 1/3/2011 6:12 PM, Mike Spencer wrote:
> 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.
Groan; I had a friend with perfect pitch and a facile voice who could 
sing telephone numbers
  into the receiver and get the party he was trying for most of the time.
> 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.
Back when i was making a lot of finger cymbals, i used to encourage the 
belly dancers
to steal the bells out of old phones so i could flatten them out and 
reshape them.
Never found out what the alloy was, but it sure was superior.
>
> - Mike
>