Emergency alert to be tested on US cellphones, TV and radio on Wednesday

Everyone got it at the same time. Timezones don't change that, only what you CALL it.

And beautiful wrought-iron legs like the ones on my grandma's treadle Singer sewing machine holding the whole thing together. I remember the teacher filling the right-side (didn't notice if any of them were for lefties) inkwell from a big bottle with one of those metal-tube anti-spill things like they put on liquor bottles.

I never understood the appeal of gum.

The Real Bev snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote

In our school, the teachers wouldn't let us chew gum, which we would chew anyway but sometimes the teacher would come around & we'd have to hide it.

Luckily it tasted just as good when retrieved as the moment prior to safekeeping under the desk.

Meanwhile... I worked at the local movie theater and I had the pleasure of being told by the manager to clean up the floor gum with a cold spray.

Yuck.

The "phone" icon on my smartphone looks like a telephone handset, a shape almost no modern phones have.

An Amber alert might be of use if you're in a vehicle or a public place. Its just annoying in the middle of the night, when you're home and asleep.

Wouldn't be surprised if a company did that for "the nostalgia". I mean, Nokia literally did that a while ago.

Mark Lloyd snipped-for-privacy@all.invalid wrote

Or when you're in a state the size of California, which is bigger than most countries are... there are so many of these... you start ignoring them.

Sam E snipped-for-privacy@all.invalid wrote

That was my point of using the x. :)

But the good news is we agree everyone received it at the same time.

On the technical side... Jim Joyce's response that the bouncebacks must be queued up makes sense.

If we put our tinfoil hat on, they just got a census of most of us. However, they already had us.

So not to worry comrade.

Not in the schools that would not let left-handed people use their left hand. My sister was one of those.

I started kindergarten in 1950 and I guess our schools were enlightened by that time. Never had a problem being left handed.

If not allowed to use my left hand, puberty would have been much different.

Where-on-earth did you have kindergarten in 1950 ? It was a mid-60s thing here - and not widely accepted. Left-handedness was considered a minor thing - but not insignificant - what with fountain pens and script writing and olden coarse paper .. The lefties would need to curl their wrists - big time - in order to drag the pen across the paper - and try to impart the proper slant on the script or print writing. John T.

I'm glad I came up during the 60s. No fountain pens. It was all ballpoint by the time I leared cursive.

My teachers weren't that picky. I still ended up with ink on the side of my hand.

You should get and carry an Organ Donor card. That's what keeps me alive. I should be so lucky as to be young enough when I die to donate any scarce organs.

(I'm already too old for them to want my bone marrow, even though it seems to work for me.)

I used to have one hanging in the bathroom, between the tub and the toilet. When I find it, I'm connecting it again, right next to my desk. Currently the handset that came with the phone machine gives me poor sound, but its speakerphone often gives the other side poor sound. I expect a Western Electric handset will be perfect, even if it's 50 years old.

I'm only 3? years younger than Ed and they had kindergarten in New Castle, Pa. when I lived there.

That would have been 1951-2.

Right. I didn't go. My mother felt I already knew how to play well with others. That is, I had one friend, who lived across the street. I spent a lot of time with him, so I didn't need kindergarten. He didnt' go either.

In those day iiuc it was just one long play-period. Now they expect people leaving kindergarted to know how to read, or almost. Weird.

To avoid blurring the ink.

We may have had inkwells some years but I don't remember left-handed ones. (My friend, mentioned above, had two of these desks in his attic, with the seat attached to the desk behind it, so I don't remember if I only saw them there or in school too.)

By 1960 I was in Indiana and for the Indiana State High School Achievment Contest, 5 kids per subject from each school, they asked if you were left-handed or not, and if you were, for the 3? hour test, they assigned you to a seat at the left end of the table so that your arm wouldn't bump into someone to your left.

Mayfair Public School in Philadelphia. First grade was in the Catholic school though as they did not have K.

AFAIK it is a broadcast, a single message sent, not millions of them, one per phone.

Same as TCP/IP broadcast, you send a single message to 224.0.0.0 and everybody gets it. Or 192.168.255.255

Cursive was not easy for a lefty and the first couple of years it was a fountain pen. Finally, 5th grade I got a ball point and it made a huge difference. I was finally able to read my own writing.

As an adult though, I often used a fountain pen and have a few of them. Back in the early 80s, I had a job that I was on the road all day. When I stopped for lunch, I always had a lined pad and I'd write to a friend, a bit every day until I had three pages and then I'd mail it. Did that for some years.

Now retired, I still write to her but on the computer. A letter can take weeks and now I do two pages and can insert the occasional cartoon or something. She still looks forward to them so I keep writing.

Did you ever see a Schaeffer Snorkel. It's worth all the pain of the

And you probably never saw cartrige pens. You unscrew the bottom and there is a tube the shape of a Pillsbury Biscuit Tube, but smaller, that was once filled with ink. You replace it with another but you don't get ink on your hands. A true marvel. Cartridges were sold in packs of 5 and I still have some plus 1 or 2 pens still in their bubble pack, with extra ink.

My gosh I miss the 50's. Maybe I can find the pens in my desk and relive those days.