[TheForge] OT - Snow in NJ

[Bruce Freeman]

I STILL have pulse-dial phones!

I had rotary-dial phones in '80 when I left CA and moved to NJ.  When
I got to NJ I found I couldn't call into Ma Bell anymore (tho I think
it still existed then) and order up a telephone.  I had to visit a
sleek new "Phone Store" at a strip mall instead.  Get to the store,
and, to make a long story short, the clerk there tries to get me to
take all sorts of features I don't need in a phone.  Finally, she's
got it down to a push-button phone.  Then I ask the question, "Is this
more expensive per month than a rotary phone?" Reluctant answer,
"Yes."  So I ordered up a rotary-dial phone.

I kept that for years and probably still have it somewhere, but when
Ma Bell broke up everybody and his brother started selling phones.
Many of these are dual-function tone-dial and pulse-dial.  I simply
switch to pulse-dial for dialing, and  back to tone-dial for those.

The funny part is that Verizon has to have hardware to decode my pulse
phone dialing.  It would probably be cheaper for them to switch to
all-tone dialing.  But then the bastards would be giving me a "free
upgrade", and they'd never do THAT!

On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 9:12 PM, Mike Spencer <mspencer at tallships.ca> 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.
>
> 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/                        ^^-^^
>
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-- 
Bruce
NJ