Our neighborhood took a direct hit. POTS never hiccoughed. Yes, we've got a couple of phones that don't require power to work, such as a beautiful shiny black 500 series Western Electric phone with a rotary dial.
Cell service became spotty when the cell tower near Chatham Rd and Wabash was out of operation. We were without power for a week and cable/Internet for 10 days. I love my generator. It came in handy for the ice storm, too.
We plan on keeping POTS for the present. Our alarm system uses it, too. Yes, we also have cell phones.
Morse code. We needed to know the International Code. Morse was used on landlines. It's similar, but has a number of differences. You still have to pass a minimal, 5 words per minute, code test to operate on HF (Shortwave).
when it's in my pocket being transported. It's a years long habit going back to slipping a zip drive in my shirt pocket as I headed out the door for the other location.
I used to carry my email client on it, too. First Eudora and later portable Thunderbird. They actually ran from the flash drive rather than the local HD. Nowadays I use gmail and access it via the web with Thunderbird running on my backup server at home so I have a local backup copy.
I carry a 16 Gig USB flash drive with my working files on it. I've using this method since the days of 100 Meg Zip drives and just keep upgrading the media. My flash drive is automatically backed up to my backup server at home in the middle of the night so, if I forget it at the office, I'm only a few hours behind. Besides, I can use free Logmein to log into the office computer and transfer a file if it's got new and important information on it. It works the same way in reverse if I forget it at home. Since my working files are on the USB drive which is also compatible with my Linux machines, it really doesn't make much difference which machine I plug it into. Did I mention encryption? That's a good idea in case you lose the drive if you've got any sensitive information on it.
I've got a working TI-2500 Datamath, the version with the 3 separate internal circuit boards and the very rare TI-150 handheld with the 0.2 inch plasma display. I was an Engineer in the calculator division from 1972 to 1975.
I've got a Hammarlund HQ-129X from 1946 that still receives just fine and sounds great as does my 1952 Collins 75A-2. On the transmitting side, my original Heathkit DX-40 that I built in 1957 still gets fired up occasionally and does the same job it did back then.
I've taken so many safety training courses, I've lost count.. Refineries, chemical/drug plants, steel mills, brewery (Beer, beer everywhere, but not a drop to drink). The insurance companies and lawyers make them do it.
I design elevator controllers and write the software for them. I've gotten to go all sorts of "interesting places. Besides the industrial places there have been mental health facilities, jails, prisons and public housing projects in places like East St. Louis and South Chicago.
The most physically uncomfortable places are the steel mills. You get the extremes there. The hottest was 140 degrees F at the top of a boilerhouse. You work in there for a few minutes and then get out on the roof to cool off. Grabbing any metal with your bare hands can burn you. The coldest place is down the street with the wind blowing off Lake Michigan when the temperature is below zero and you're in a tin shed 170 feet in the air on a catwalk off the top of a blast furnace. Oh, and to get there, since the elevator wasn't working, you had to ride up in a bucket hoisted by a crane.
I know I'm leaving out some good stuff like passing out from chemical fumes in a chemical plant and seeing a drive-by shotting near the housing projects.
Still, I'm not complaining. I raised 5 kids on my salary, been able to see a lot of interesting places and have worked with some really nice people.
The conditions on the shortwave bands seriously suck right now! I miss those "wet noodle" days that AI1P, Mr_Perl mentioned where you could work Australia with 4 watts into a mobile antenna on 20 meters and get a 589 report.
As people start to get movies and TV shows via the Internet, they're moving away from cable TV content. Cable wants to maintain their monopoly. It's time to get the Justice Department looking at this.
They still do it, but it's foolish to use it, IMO. I webmaster for a newsletter that is read by over 1.000 people. We get several changes of email address notes from people moving from DSL to cable, or whatever. Why would you want to go through the hassle of notifying everyone that your email address has changed because you went with a different ISP? Then there are the people that you forgot to notify and the people who forget you've changed... Bah! Get a separate email address like gmail or on your own domain and avoid the hassle.
Yes, in answer to the question about backing up my gmail, I do. Like some of the other comments, I use Thunderbird. In my case it's Thunderbird Portable running on a 16 Gig Flash drive that I carry with me so I have it at home or at the office. It's further backed up at Midnight each night to a backup server at home and to Carbonite.com. My wife also uses a similar setup, but her Thunderbird runs on the backup server and she only accesses her gmail via the web.
There are quite a few old tube radios around that are more than 50 years old that still work. I've got a Hammarlund HQ-129X built in 1946 that still works with the original capacitors. It's been fired up often enough that the electrolytics haven't de-formed. You might nit-pick that it's not a consumer product, but it was built for the short wave listener and ham radio operator, not for the government or commercial users of the time.
Her first computer was a 486 and, yes, she used AOL. She stayed with AOL dialup for a long time, but now she's got DSL here in the Midwest and at her Winter place in Arizona. No, she doesn't use Myspace or Facebook, but she does a good job keeping in touch by email.
She didn't want a computer at first and didn't know what she'd do with it, but I set it up anyway. Once she had it, she loved it.
That was one of my concerns when I decided to go with Gmail to take advantage of their spam filtering. I set up Thunderbird on my print/backup server. It runs continuously collecting all the messages so it won't evaporate if google pulls the plug. Yes, that machine is backed up two places, one local and one off-site.
I have family photographs that are over 150 years old and quite legible. They're daguerreotypes of one of my 3rd great grandfathers and his grandfather, who was born in 1771. The photographs were taken in 1853 give or take a year. That's pretty good archivability.
elevator controls. I know where there's a 3 stop basement traction elevator in a private home that was installed in 1917 and still in operation with all stock components where the control relays are immersed in a tub of oil. The relays are mounted to the lid which can be raised up via a small chain hoist.
on the desk behind me and another in the basement connected via buried POTS to the CO and a backup dialup account I can access with the laptop. It served us well when we were without power for a week after a direct hit on our neighborhood by a pair of F2 tornados two years ago. The cell phone was spotty at best because the nearest cell tower didn't survive. POTS just works.
We've got UPS for the backup server and router. No sense having it for the cable modem since cable was out for longer than the power. We've got a 5KW gas generator and enough stored gas for a full 24 hours continuous running or several days if we nurse it.
I've also made good use of the generator during two ice storms within the past two years. It's nice insurance and is enough to run the essentials in our house. Essentials meaning furnace blower, sump pump, freezer and refrigerator plus a few lights. I use Stabil in the gas and exchange it for fresh every few months. The generator gets run every two months.
I'm surprised that I've not seem mention of Ham Radio in this discussion. When all else fails, there's HF radio and several digital modes now, including WinLink that can handle emails.
The old black and white Silver halide prints last for a very long time. I've got a 11X14 family print of my GG-grandmother and her children that is exquisite in it's clarity and quality. It was taken in 1893. Color prints from the 1950s haven't fared nearly so well. The dyes fade.
I have family photographs that are over 150 years old that are quite legible without being stored in a hermetically sealed container. They're glass plate Daguerreotypes, but early paper photos almost as old still look fine, too.
DOS 3.3 worked well, 4.0/4.01 flopped and 5.0 rocked. Kinda like the difference between 98 and XP with the dud WinME in the middle.
Just like the situation with Vista and XP, people buying new computers that came with 4.0 would ask to have 3.3 installed since it didn't have the data loss problems of 4.0.
Slashdot Mirror
Our neighborhood took a direct hit. POTS never hiccoughed. Yes, we've got a couple of phones that don't require power to work, such as a beautiful shiny black 500 series Western Electric phone with a rotary dial.
Cell service became spotty when the cell tower near Chatham Rd and Wabash was out of operation. We were without power for a week and cable/Internet for 10 days. I love my generator. It came in handy for the ice storm, too.
We plan on keeping POTS for the present. Our alarm system uses it, too. Yes, we also have cell phones.
Morse code. We needed to know the International Code. Morse was used on landlines. It's similar, but has a number of differences. You still have to pass a minimal, 5 words per minute, code test to operate on HF (Shortwave).
when it's in my pocket being transported. It's a years long habit going back to slipping a zip drive in my shirt pocket as I headed out the door for the other location.
I used to carry my email client on it, too. First Eudora and later portable Thunderbird. They actually ran from the flash drive rather than the local HD. Nowadays I use gmail and access it via the web with Thunderbird running on my backup server at home so I have a local backup copy.
[French_accent] I fart in your general direction.[/French_accent]
I carry a 16 Gig USB flash drive with my working files on it. I've using this method since the days of 100 Meg Zip drives and just keep upgrading the media. My flash drive is automatically backed up to my backup server at home in the middle of the night so, if I forget it at the office, I'm only a few hours behind. Besides, I can use free Logmein to log into the office computer and transfer a file if it's got new and important information on it. It works the same way in reverse if I forget it at home. Since my working files are on the USB drive which is also compatible with my Linux machines, it really doesn't make much difference which machine I plug it into. Did I mention encryption? That's a good idea in case you lose the drive if you've got any sensitive information on it.
I've got a working TI-2500 Datamath, the version with the 3 separate internal circuit boards and the very rare TI-150 handheld with the 0.2 inch plasma display. I was an Engineer in the calculator division from 1972 to 1975.
I've got a Hammarlund HQ-129X from 1946 that still receives just fine and sounds great as does my 1952 Collins 75A-2. On the transmitting side, my original Heathkit DX-40 that I built in 1957 still gets fired up occasionally and does the same job it did back then.
I've taken so many safety training courses, I've lost count.. Refineries, chemical/drug plants, steel mills, brewery (Beer, beer everywhere, but not a drop to drink). The insurance companies and lawyers make them do it.
I design elevator controllers and write the software for them. I've gotten to go all sorts of "interesting places. Besides the industrial places there have been mental health facilities, jails, prisons and public housing projects in places like East St. Louis and South Chicago.
The most physically uncomfortable places are the steel mills. You get the extremes there. The hottest was 140 degrees F at the top of a boilerhouse. You work in there for a few minutes and then get out on the roof to cool off. Grabbing any metal with your bare hands can burn you. The coldest place is down the street with the wind blowing off Lake Michigan when the temperature is below zero and you're in a tin shed 170 feet in the air on a catwalk off the top of a blast furnace. Oh, and to get there, since the elevator wasn't working, you had to ride up in a bucket hoisted by a crane.
I know I'm leaving out some good stuff like passing out from chemical fumes in a chemical plant and seeing a drive-by shotting near the housing projects.
Still, I'm not complaining. I raised 5 kids on my salary, been able to see a lot of interesting places and have worked with some really nice people.
"Think of your worst day - hot, dusty, grimy, no showers - now add the possibility you'll be shot at."
Sounds like my days working on embedded software for elevator controllers at the Chicago Housing authority on the South side... seriously.
The conditions on the shortwave bands seriously suck right now! I miss those "wet noodle" days that AI1P, Mr_Perl mentioned where you could work Australia with 4 watts into a mobile antenna on 20 meters and get a 589 report.
Unintended Consequences
As people start to get movies and TV shows via the Internet, they're moving away from cable TV content. Cable wants to maintain their monopoly. It's time to get the Justice Department looking at this.
Some of us carry it one god further.
They still do it, but it's foolish to use it, IMO. I webmaster for a newsletter that is read by over 1.000 people. We get several changes of email address notes from people moving from DSL to cable, or whatever. Why would you want to go through the hassle of notifying everyone that your email address has changed because you went with a different ISP? Then there are the people that you forgot to notify and the people who forget you've changed... Bah! Get a separate email address like gmail or on your own domain and avoid the hassle.
Yes, in answer to the question about backing up my gmail, I do. Like some of the other comments, I use Thunderbird. In my case it's Thunderbird Portable running on a 16 Gig Flash drive that I carry with me so I have it at home or at the office. It's further backed up at Midnight each night to a backup server at home and to Carbonite.com. My wife also uses a similar setup, but her Thunderbird runs on the backup server and she only accesses her gmail via the web.
There are quite a few old tube radios around that are more than 50 years old that still work. I've got a Hammarlund HQ-129X built in 1946 that still works with the original capacitors. It's been fired up often enough that the electrolytics haven't de-formed. You might nit-pick that it's not a consumer product, but it was built for the short wave listener and ham radio operator, not for the government or commercial users of the time.
Her first computer was a 486 and, yes, she used AOL. She stayed with AOL dialup for a long time, but now she's got DSL here in the Midwest and at her Winter place in Arizona. No, she doesn't use Myspace or Facebook, but she does a good job keeping in touch by email. She didn't want a computer at first and didn't know what she'd do with it, but I set it up anyway. Once she had it, she loved it.
That was one of my concerns when I decided to go with Gmail to take advantage of their spam filtering. I set up Thunderbird on my print/backup server. It runs continuously collecting all the messages so it won't evaporate if google pulls the plug. Yes, that machine is backed up two places, one local and one off-site.
I have family photographs that are over 150 years old and quite legible. They're daguerreotypes of one of my 3rd great grandfathers and his grandfather, who was born in 1771. The photographs were taken in 1853 give or take a year. That's pretty good archivability.
elevator controls. I know where there's a 3 stop basement traction elevator in a private home that was installed in 1917 and still in operation with all stock components where the control relays are immersed in a tub of oil. The relays are mounted to the lid which can be raised up via a small chain hoist.
Correct. That would be 42.
in 3, 2, 1....
on the desk behind me and another in the basement connected via buried POTS to the CO and a backup dialup account I can access with the laptop. It served us well when we were without power for a week after a direct hit on our neighborhood by a pair of F2 tornados two years ago. The cell phone was spotty at best because the nearest cell tower didn't survive. POTS just works.
We've got UPS for the backup server and router. No sense having it for the cable modem since cable was out for longer than the power. We've got a 5KW gas generator and enough stored gas for a full 24 hours continuous running or several days if we nurse it.
I've also made good use of the generator during two ice storms within the past two years. It's nice insurance and is enough to run the essentials in our house. Essentials meaning furnace blower, sump pump, freezer and refrigerator plus a few lights. I use Stabil in the gas and exchange it for fresh every few months. The generator gets run every two months.
I'm surprised that I've not seem mention of Ham Radio in this discussion. When all else fails, there's HF radio and several digital modes now, including WinLink that can handle emails.
The old black and white Silver halide prints last for a very long time. I've got a 11X14 family print of my GG-grandmother and her children that is exquisite in it's clarity and quality. It was taken in 1893. Color prints from the 1950s haven't fared nearly so well. The dyes fade.
I have family photographs that are over 150 years old that are quite legible without being stored in a hermetically sealed container. They're glass plate Daguerreotypes, but early paper photos almost as old still look fine, too.
DOS 3.3 worked well, 4.0/4.01 flopped and 5.0 rocked. Kinda like the difference between 98 and XP with the dud WinME in the middle.
Just like the situation with Vista and XP, people buying new computers that came with 4.0 would ask to have 3.3 installed since it didn't have the data loss problems of 4.0.