Telephone Service

[mm]

If I had a two-line phone, I'd feel obliged to get a second line. Does that make me obsessive compulsive? (I wouldn't get one, but I'd feel like I should)

I have a few, probably enough for the rest of my life.

I have one in the basement, at my workbench. A different phone, but I have the same shoulder bracket on it that my mother used in 1956. Some of the rubber has smudged, I'd call it, moved like modeling clay. It must have undergone some chemical or strong physical change to do that.

I don't have kids over, but a friend 15 years ago had one on the wall in the kitchen and she told me that her 12-year old kid's friends didn't know what it was.

[mm]

I'm not contradicting your date, but interewstingly enough, in 1956, my friend's father took us to the Lawrence County farm show, in western Pa., New Castle. and they were demonstrating touch-tone phones.

Actually the one they showed was also programmable, sort of. It had no memory, but it came with plastic cards, two by three inches or a little bigger, about an eigth inch thick, with maybe 7 holes in each row (at least more than 4, which is all that is necessary to represent number 1-0. the other holes must have been there for things planned and not yet planned.) and enough rows for a 10 digit phone number, I think. The centers of the holes were not totally connected to the cards, only with "spokes" and could be pushed out, to represent the number to be called. There was a place at the top to write the person's name. You pushed the card in the top of the phone and pushed a button and iirc it popped out, a number at a time ,but quickly, as it dialed, but with tones.

They have a lot of lead time on these things.

Here too. There was an hour on Friday. And once for two days.

[mm]

I keep mustard in the fridge, but then I am on the smae jar of mustard for 26 years now. I only keep it for company, and what little company I have has never asked for mustard.

When I got an aparment in college, I told my roommate the ketchup had to go in the fridge and he told me the can of hershey's syrup had to go in teh fridge. We each told the other, No it doesnt'.

So we ddidn't put either in and it was fine.

I think restaurants don't put ketchup or mustard in the fridge but I"M not sure.

Hershey's will get moldy if you leave it uncovered some of the time and wait maybe 3 weeks, but a) it rarely lasts that long, b) you can cut off the lid and spoon out the moldy part, which is only the very top millimeter or two, and the rest is fine and tastes the same. DAMHIKT, but I did it quite a few times.

Haller, if you're home you can turn the water on a tiny bit and the pipes won't freeze. If the whole house gets close to 32, I guess you have to turn on all the faucets, and yes that would be a problem for the clothes and dish washers.

BTW, it was explained here that hot water pipes freeze sooner than cold water pipes do. It was explained why.

[mm]

You have UPSes that will power something for a whole day? A computer, they power? Or something that uses as much currrent? I thought mine wity a new 4AH battery would only work for about 10 minutes.

I bought my first one at 80% off at staples and I liked it. When it broke I bought a famous brand, the leading brand, at a hamfest, but the power switch is not big enough to work with my toes like the other one was.

[mm]

Good to know, about my house, but I'd never get around to changing it when I was someplace else. I'd have to be being chased by killers, like in the movies. Then I'd do it.

I realize you are making a point that it's as good as a regular telco wired phone, and better I guess than a cellphone, where you iiuc you can't do that.

[mm]

Yes, thank you. I did miss the point, even though I read the part about boost.

Do you think my UPS would have boost? I have a Tripp-Lite UPS I bought used probably 8 or 10 years ago. It was surplus from some office, so I'm guessing it's 15 years old at least.

When I lived in NY during the big period of brownouts around the nation, late 70's or early 80's, I took some fairly big transformer,

5x5x4 inches, with a 12 volts output among others iirc and I think I connected the output in series with the input so that I could add the two together and get a boost. and when the voltage dropped 10 volts, I could get the full voltage to power my tv. It worked. I figured I wasn't defeating the purpose of the brownout, because I only ran the tv on the boost voltage, nothing else.

I barely used it and still have the thing. Do you think it would run my desk computer during a brown out?

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, ?????, I got transfered out there in the spring of '70. I live in Calgary AB, and I can count power outages with my one hand since. Longest was ~30 minutes once when grass fire knocked off pole carrying main line for the neighborhood. Others few minutes or just a blink. How come power is so unreliable down there? Utility wires are all underground in my neighborhood.

[TD]

mm wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I have a MagicJack. It has terrible reception.

[mm]

Is this the same thing advertised under a differnt name on tv, that they say is the secret the phone company doesn't want you to know about.

[Don Wiss]

Maybe it was 1974 as you had a rural phone company, but the touch tones were defined in the early 1960s and I have two touch tone Trimline phones here that date from 1969-1971.

Don (e-mail link at home page bottom).

[HeyBub]

Do you even HAVE brownouts?

Reducing voltage to cope with demand is not common in most parts of the country.

Actually, most parts of the country don't HAVE excessive demand or have made arrangements to handle the situation.

The more common conditions are reclosure time - that is the time the automatic switches take to re-route power when a truck takes out a pole - and sub-station faults. The first loses power to the customer for up to half a second, the second drops power for a few minutes.

[HeyBub]

Many reasons. Lack of infastructure, environmental concerns, unexpected growth, silly political decisions.

I live, fortunately, in Texas which is not connected to the national grid. A zombie infestation in New Jersey or a jellyfish flood in San Diego cannot affect us.

[willshak]

on 9/27/2009 1:45 AM (ET) mm wrote the following:

What about a medical emergency?

[willshak]

Everything advertised on TV is some secret that somebody doesn't want you to know!

[George]

Connecting to the grid means nothing. All it takes is a utility that thinks beyond harbor freight class designs. Our local utility belongs to the PJM interconnect and also generates more energy than it uses. After a few blackouts ago they designed our interconnect ties so that when all of the other outfits go down like dominoes they disconnect us. There is a great night satellite shot after the last big blackout where NYC, NY, NJ and Ohio were dark and we were still lit up.

[aemeijers]

That is why I also mentioned that I wish I was on city water. I'm on a well- so no power, no shower, and you can flush each toilet once. That alone tempts me to get a small genset, and put the well pump on a pigtail, and rig a passthru to the back yard so I can run the generator out in the shed 50 feet away. But as seldom as extended outages happen around here, the hotel down the road is probably a more cost-effective solution.

-- aem sends...

[bob haller]

toilets break when the traps freeze, washewrs dryers and everything with liquids would freeze and break, let alone humans trying to live in such conditions

[mm]

Well, no, not yet. Not since the 70's.

We have a lot of those, but I doubt we have many trucks hitting poles.

Thanks.

[mm]

I would never get around to planning for one of those. I'm wasn't saying that's good, just that that's how I am.

[George]

You may want to. A relative of mine died and is alive today because of

911. He came home before his wife, felt bad, dialed 911, dropped the phone and died. The paramedics and police are automatically dispatched on such calls. They got his heart started and he is still going strong.

I don't know how VoIP 911 works and how much I would depend on it. My understanding it is some kludge and doesn't work like "normal" 911. In "normal" 911 the phone switch includes information about your lines location and it comes up directly on the comm centers screen. I think the VoIP systems just make an automated call to the regular comm center voice number.