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

I think he was drawing an analogy.

I think he typed it, but whatever. 😁

Which is a real shame. They were truly comfortable AND the sound was crystal clear. Thank you, Western Electric.

I understand how time zones work!

But I got it at 20 after plus a few seconds, not 18 after. Of course this depends on how accurate the time on the phone is, and we discussed that a while back.

Micky, did you forget that Maryland drivers licenses can indicate that you're an organ donor by putting a heart symbol on the license? You won't need a separate organ donor card. I have too many things I need to carry in my wallet without carrying something redundant. However, I suspect you have to ask each time you get a renewal because I just realized that my current license no longer has the symbol whereas all my earlier ones did going back to the 1980s.

Kids these days don't know the origin of the term "dial tone" because they've never heard of or seen a telephone with a dial. We oldsters also remember phones that didn't have a dial. They had a crank that you turned to alert the operator in the local office that you needed them to make a connection for you. When you wanted to speak to someone out of town, you had to ask the local operator to connect you to a long distance operator. Sometimes the wires were so congested that you had to get in a queue and was given an appointment time when your long distance operator was likely to be available. We've come a long way since then!

I attended kindergarten in the New York City public school system in either 1950 or 1951. We had to learn and recite the pledge of allegiance, sing My Country Ti's of Thee, play time with the toys in the classroom, hand painting, song singing and the dreaded nap time which never made sense to me. The "day" in kindergarten was only for 1/2 day. I was never sleepy and usually misbehaved out of boredom. To this day I still can't nap even if I've had a lousy night's sleep The only exception: I'm sitting at a theatrical performance or movie that bores me to frustration. If I were alone, I'd just leave. However, my other half accuses me of passive-aggressive behavior by falling asleep because usually she talked me into going with her and I think she transfers her guilt to me.

I had both of those before I finally moved up to the Esterbrook fountain pens that had a pull down lever on the side of the barrel that squeezed the ink bladder when the lever was pulled down. At least for me, all 3 models leaked. I was thrilled when ball point pens came out although many of those also leaked! That's what I like about keyboards; no more leaks!

Retirednoguilt snipped-for-privacy@fakeaddress.com wrote

Probably nobody here is so young as to not know what the modem tones sounded like but the kids won't realize we would dial the number to connect to the mainframe and then when we heard the scrambled eggs, we'd physically place the telephone handset into the modem (at something like 300 baud).

This is something like a decade or two before US Robotics modems debuted.

I got it about a minutes after my wife did. Clearly they cannot send them to everyone simultaneously. They were scheduled for from 2:18 to 20 minutes later IIRC.

My son and his wife were here at the time. All three were going off together. Maybe your local tower could not handle the load.

I believe you're right that these alerts are broadcasts, which is different from SMS. Above, when I was talking about infrastructure that can handle millions of hits, at that moment I was thinking of SMS. I may have muddied the waters there.

I skipped kindergarten. Probably why I am insufficiently socialized.

I'm not old enough to remember a cranked phone but it was a big deal when we went from a party line to individual service. Of course if someone else was using the line we would never, never eavesdrop. Honest. More than one kid in a hot conversation with his girlfriend got ratted out like that.

My first grade teacher made me chew gum once.

There were a couple of bursts at work. I think it's by carrier. I'm on T- Mobile while others are on Verizon.

Why did they schedule the test for 20 minutes?

YESSSSS!

My MIL was THE night-shift Long Lines operator in White Plains. No matter where you lived in the US if you wanted to call England in the middle of the night you talked to her back in the 70s. She said Elvis used to call up in the middle of the night just to chat because she had a friendly voice. She recognized his voice because she was a big country music fan and met all the big guys when the played the Palomino in North Hollywood when she lived out here.

Somewhere I have two of those. Xerox, in boxes, absolutely virgin. We took them on one cross-country trip in case we needed to use a pay phone to contact my office for email or something. Never happened, of course.