Tuesday, January 03, 2006

 

"Central? Get me high-speed Internet!"



Oh, Lawsy. I have done it. I have done gone and done it. I've done it, doggone it. Doggone if I haven't done gone and got high-speed Cox Internet.

Dude.

Nothing to keep me from posting millions of pix now, of Ice-T the cat! (Except that I am, yea and verily, a word man.)

On the other hand ...

Heres a pic of what's left of the second-to-last radio station(s) I worked at, at the edge of some woods in rural eastern Oklahoma, dang near totally overgrown with growth. Worked there in the summer of '86 the last time, I think. Took this picture last summer.

Crystal, ain't it a shame!

--ER

Comments:
Woo hoo, hoo! And I can testify that of the (OK, a relative handful of) tech support people I've ever dealt with (not counting for work, at work), the Cox people I talked to tonight -- David twice and Mohammed once -- were the easiest to deal with, which means they were patient and tolerant of myself, which is SAYING A LOT.
 
Now I've seen everything! I can die in peace!
 
Two longs and a short on a partyline to highspeed internet in a half century. I was talking today, by e-mail, to a guy in the Czech Republic about selling me an envelope with 1933 postmarks on it. When I was ten I would call my best friend, the preacher's son, by ringing three shorts and a long. Sometimes I just marvel at technology, then I remember that for all the magic, all new technology ever really does is compress time and space, it doesn't change the esscence of what we do, it just lets us do it faster and go farther.
By the way, why did they call it the "party line"?
 
Oh...wow...now that jars loose some memories...

Do you have any pics of the church?
 
You know for something as central to our life as that church was, I don't think we ever took a picture of it. But I do have a drawing of our old church and our new (1955) church on a plate somewhere that I got for attending 20 straight Sundays in a row.
 
Is three shorts and a long early caller ID, or was that to indicate which household on a party line the call was for? Sorry, party lines were a bit before my time. :)
 
Hey, ER, I remember visiting you one time at that radio station and I experienced something that I didn't know whether to laugh at or feel disillusioned about. But I remember during a song, you walked out the back door and looked at the sky. When you came back in, you announced after the song that it was, "sunny, with a few scattered clouds." All that time I thought DJ's had some sort of access to a national weather station and all y'all were doing was stickin' your head out the door! Here's hoping things are a little more high tech now. :)
 
Dr.lobojo, are we, uh, talking about the same church??
 
Crystal, I have one pic of the church -- Drlobo, she is talking about the church that once stood in Paw Paw, OK, over on my side of the state -- but it is not digital, and I am in the middle of it!

Drlobo, I reckon they were called party lines because more than one household was party to the line. Our ring when I was little was two shorts.
 
Frenzied, it was the second thing. Sort of a callee ID. :-)

If party lines were before your time, then they shoulda been before my time! Truth was, my neck of the woods was just behind the times!
 
Oh, and Crystal, the funniestt hing was the promo I played before each weather break: Fanfare, important-sounding music and then "Z96! Weatherscan!" -- followed by my personal observations from over the pasture out back. Note that I DID have information from the weather service, for forecasts. :-)
 
Crystal, if yours was in PawPaw, it is not the same church. This one was in SW Oklahoma in Tillman (True Love) county.
On party line: I had to look it up in several places to get past the simple definitons and down to the origin. In esscence you're correct,a party is a part of a whole (French origin). Thus each telephone loop would have a number of parties for that one loop.
I only worked my station in the dead of night so I couldn't see the clouds. If I could see stars it was clear. If not it was overcast. The outside thermometer gave me the temp, and if the thermometer was wet it was raining.
Frenzied, not only did you know your personal ring but so did the 20 or so other people on the loop.
So when you got a call they all knew it, and could pick up their recievers and listen in if they wanted too, and they often did. Sometimes they would even join in on the conversation. My very last "party line" was in Arcadia Oklahoma in 1972. It had three parties on the loop.
 
Congrats!!! High-speed rocks. And serioulsy, ER, I want to start whining that you SHOULD post more pictures of the precious kitty. :-)
 
If it makes you feel any better, ER, I started life in southern California, so I'm sure we were up-to-the-minute in our technology. ;)

THEN we moved to small-town Oregon and another-small-town Utah. I both of those places we had our own lines, but you didn't have dial the whole phone number to call locally--just the last four numbers. :)
 
You have been using dial up all this time? How on earth were you getting those rapidfire comments and observations on to the page without high-speed?
I think we might be in some trouble now.
 
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