Reply #6: Let me put this in perspective... [View All]

I knew a gentleman that was sent to Yale University at the young age of about 21, for a several month long crash course in the hardware (not a codebreaker, I don't think) behind communications systems...he served his country in New Guinea and the Phillipines and only reported back to his family on WWII that the people on those islands ate rats as big as cats and never again did he want to see or taste a coconut. This gentleman taught me the Whiffenpooh song and bits of Morse Code (LOL) before I could sing the Star-Spangled Banner, and allowed me to light his cigars.

This fellow had a long career at Ma Bell and poured over LD routings all day long...sort of an LD lineman for the country. He knew from transmission mappings where the little wires and big cables were going beneath the ground and where the transmissions flew through the air.

In light of this report, it isn't surprising, therefore, that he refused to get a color television until they were "perfected", that he refused to sign up for cable network TV programming, or make use of the Internet, let alone use VOIP, a technology that he may have had to tinker with in its infancy, long before it went mainstream. He even resisted making long distance calls to his out-of-town family except for holidays just to say hi, even though free LD was a retirees' perk. Although this gentleman loved fooling around w/short-wave radios and scanners, he never that I know of, got an FCC HAM's license to transmit --chalk it up to paranoia? Then I guess it's genetic... -- My Dad!