OT: Paid my DTV tax ...

I had no idea. We had a nice plastic card sent and were allowed two boxes using it. It's only $40 each and I couldn't find any at exactly that price, locally. So I had to pony up the rest, plus the cost of an antenna. But it helped.

I believe Congress has re-extended the program and people who missed the earlier cutoff can re-apply for a short while, yet. However, you are saying something new to me -- that they have red-lined districts where they won't accept a mailing address. Don't you know a friend or acquaintance whose address you can "borrow?" Too late, I suppose.

Yeah.

I just had an interesting discussion with my brother, who is living in the LA area. Seems like CA is in big trouble, budget-wise. I just said, "Well, let loose all those in jail for marijuana offenses not involving violence." Or else, "Raise taxes on those with jobs, still. As unemployment rises, keep raising taxes even more on those who remain at work." He laughed, said: "Yeah. People will eventually see they'd do better just quiting and getting in line. Then 100% unemployment." It's a possibility, I suppose.

He wants to start by cutting funding spent on non-US-citizens in CA and giving straight-up pardons to anyone costing a lot, medically, in CA prisons. (I think he was thinking about people with AIDS, with seriously expensive issues.) Kind of like, "You are costing us $10k per day in expensive medicine. You get a free pass. Bye."

Actually, he didn't know what to do. Sounds like a lot of problems.

Here in Oregon, the governor ordered a prioritized list of cuts from every department, to a 30% cutoff figure. I've looked over the list from a couple of departments and it really looks as though they are prioritizing their own jobs as first on the list to cut -- before cutting services here. So I suppose that shows reasonable choices in setting priorities.

Well, there is that. When they do, I suppose the dollar will fall to the point where other folks are willing to buy it up. Market forces, and all.

Jon

I wonder how many are there, what will they do when they leave ?

don

Another report I just saw, yesterday, put the figure at $35k/yr. That one puts it at $31k/yr. My brother told me he'd heard $40k/yr. So I'm guessing the error bars here aren't too bad. Call it $35k/yr.

A lot of Californians who commit various traffic violations leave and come up here to Oregon. One I spoke with told me he'd come up because he had some 'hundred or so' traffic tickets and figured it would be better to just move. I don't know much about incarceration here in Oregon except that it costs us billions more in Oregon to pay for prison than it does for the entire education budget. So if looking for cuts, I'd look to release non-violent folks with an eye to prioritizing those who are more likely to accept some guidance and training and at least have a modest chance at success.

No idea. For those smoking marijuana, I suppose they may go back to smoking it. So? I don't really care. I'd legalize it, anyway, and be done with the associated corruption of police and legal system, violence, and so on. It's not worth the costs, by a long shot.

In fact, maybe CA could just legitimize the crops and tax and sell them. Might pay the bills, even.

I'm way past "done" as far as keeping it illegal. The price is way, way too high.

Jon

Since Rich bought it already it's too late I guess.

Or when the Laffer curve hits. In CA it already does.

Keep in mind that legal non-citizens pay the same taxes and shall have the same rights. As for sick inmates, they'll just show back up as another budget line items, standing in line at the local ER and getting "free" treatment. Unless they land a job with benefits, chances of which as slim.

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

I think he was speaking of the illegal variety. I don't know how things work in CA, so I just listened. But he seemed to suggest, as I read him, that there are services which are available to folks here without going through the various processes. I wouldn't know.

Does that come just as completely from the State budgets? Or do the hospitals have to "foot" some of that? And are some of the services in any way of different quality?

So what's the plan for CA? I see the plans forming here in Oregon. Not good, but at least I can see serious engagement with the details and movement that will cope with a variety of possible outcomes. (Of course, our entire budget probably fits into CA pocket change.)

Jon

Oh, my! This Island Earth. I need to go rent that one and refresh my memories! And I loved the early days of MST3K.

Jon

There's also a large illegal immigrant prison population. Cost cutting measure is to ship them back to whence they come.

One of the scenarios seems to be that the wife gives birth as quickly as possible because AFAIU then only the husband can be deported (as least for a while).

Mostly MediCal, a welfare type program, some tax bucket. The rest works like this: The uninsured get socked with very inflated bills, easily 5x to 10x what reimbursement rates are. Probably in hope that some of this "sticks", IOW that at least collections can squeeze out as much as possible from some people. The rest is in the end landing squarely with the insured who pay more than needed and thus higher premiums than needed.

But IMHO the real problems are a totally twisted tort law leading to ridiculously high E&O premiums which, of course, get billed through. Then a quite inefficient administration. Been for a visit in a hospital lately? It's mind-boggling how many nurses are permanently on computers and paperwork behind a huge counter versus ones doing actual patient work.

They become bad for everyone, in the form of long wait times and way too brief visit time. For example, I was never told by any doctor that my back problems can greatly be eased by taking a cheap magnesium supplement. A CPA told me, and boy did that work.

It's gone way too far because the previous CA administration and governor caved in to unions. Just one example: A typical fire truck driver makes about $140k/year according to a recent press report. Plus fat pension benefits. Probably the only way to solve it is to privatize some services, and layoffs.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

Ah, yes. China never forgets her wayward daughter, the 35th province. About the rest, I don't know. But yes, Taiwan is, to China, merely temporarily detached. As a country, China has millennia of history and much patience.

Jon

Start studying Mandarin.

Did the re-tune on one converter box yesterday night, on the TV and one converter box this morning. Some strange things happened:

Yesterday I picked up a (very nice) financial TV station, stock exchange info and all that. Sounded almost like Bloomberg-TV but since we are in the west I guess that can't be. Says channel 9, whatever that means these days. It did cut out twice but only for a few seconds. The TV and

2nd converter box of same type did not find that station this morning, same antenna, professional home run system with buffer amps and the whole nine yards.

Now for the real strange thing: TV said it picked up two analog (!) stations. Ch3 and Ch6 were still blazing but with still images and audio telling people how to transit to DTV. And I thought they had to be switched off. When going through the channels with the up/down buttons I found the TV had caught five analog signals, two with great classic movies running at 7:30am. Amazing. Maybe leakage from cable TV? However, the images are very snowy so won't be useful.

What I hate is that these "modern" tuners don't let you look by hand. In the good old days you could tune TVs by hand and decide on your own which stations came in good enough to warrant a spot in the presets. Now all that has been dumbed down :-(

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

Well, I got my converter box a couple of weeks ago, and an indoor/outdoor amplified antenna. I had planned on mounting the antenna out by the wallbox where the cable used to come in, but there is no power convenient out there since the power supply is indoor only! So, I set it up here in the office up on a shelf.

I have a little color TV here in the office, and used it as a quick test to find I get about five stations out of the converter box, including the local CW station which isn't on the satellite!

I then split it, and put it into the home wiring. Very poor results. The box in here became very noisy, and didn't get much on my HDTV (after waiting a hour for its autoprogram sequence...)

Waited till this morning, and took out the splitter here in the office, since I don't need to watch TV in here anyway, and replaced the four way splitter in the box outside with a two way splitter to the bedroom and the living room. Put the converter box in the bedroom on the old analog TV. It is up and running, and I now even have a local weather channel on a subchannel for the local ABC affiliate!

Still waiting on the HDTV, to see what it will be able to pick up. That hour wait is the pits...

Charlie

I noticed a reverse benefit this morning. In spite of the house being wired with RG6/S (tri-shield), over-the-air channels 3 and 5 would sometimes produce video beat notes against the cable feed (I'm only 2 ridges south of the towers). Always seemed to be leakage at the F-connector to the set... jiggle and the problem would temporarily stop.

This morning, crystal clear!

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |

Leftist weenies think that Letterman is hilarious with a degrading
"joke" about Palin\'s teenaged daughters.  Wonder how funny they\'d
find it if Letterman said something like, "Michelle Obama has a
big butt and a face to match" ???

I think that\'s a VERY funny "joke" ;-)

Some of them, e.g., BestBuy's Insignia brand NS-DXA1-APT (and, presumably, the Zenith DTT901 that it resembles under the hood), have a menu option to step through all of the digital channels while displaying the "effective" channel number, signal strength, and picture (if any). Gives one the opportunity to fiddle with the antenna, just like the old days ;-), to try to bring it in.

But yeah, a lot of them are just auto-scan only. I've got an APEX DT250 that works that way; quite annoying.

--
Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

I just got one of those dtv coupon converters. I had thought I'd put in on the spare bedroom CRT TV and use it to tune digital cable. Nope. It's crippled to only tune of an antenna. It picked up zilch off the cable.

No problem. I'm a hair away from dumping cable as they only offer about 3 channels unscrambled that I can't pull off the air. Phone service got replaced by freepbx/VOIP ($30/mo-> $5/mo), HDTV is going this week (and the two converter box, totaling $60/month), and the everything else but internet access will go as soon as I can stream discovery, comedy central and the history channel and record with mythtv.

Jim Thompson wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I made a quad bowtie UHF antenna from plans I DL'd from Make TV. Uses coathangers,a 3x20x1 pine board,10 screws and washers,and a balun. It was easy and had great reception;3x better than my old UHF loop. I don't even have to adjust it's orientation for different channels.

I receive many more stations than I could in analog xmission. Lots of subchannels.

improperly tightened F-connectors is probably the Number One cause of most cable problems.Or improperly installed F-connectors. Read it in a cable industry magazine years ago.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net

After the late-morning/noon news Ch2 & Ch4 started that. At 10:45PM, KTLA 5 (the oldest TV station in CA) made a big deal of the transition, having old hand Stan Chambers "throw the switch". After a short bit, they too started with NAB's DTV how-to. (So, all the low band stations were doing it; I don't think there are any conflicts with new assignments there.)

At midnight, (Spanish language) Ch22 started that. It's after 4PM here and they're all still at it.

"See Which TV Stations You Can Get on a Map" shows a separate table of available analog stations. YMMV

I can still get 6 analog channels: 3 shopping; 3 religious

--all quite weak.

Ours is from BestBuy (Insignia). But it was like when tomatoes are on sale in Moscow, everyone gets in line and you must take what's there. No selection back then. Wanted to buy the box from Walmart but the guy said "Even if I'd call you when the truck arrives you'll need 30 minutes to get here and by then they'll all be gone".

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

I can imagine they'll just let old analog channels 3 and 6 lay fallow when they switch off.

Doesn't work out here. Strong multipath, two streets farther down it'll all be different. And when the Fedex freighter sails in many digital channels cut out. That's the price to pay for digital, instead of seeing ghosts wobble through while still being able to see a degraded image DTV just shows a blue screen with a "No Signal" message.

So it ain't a total cut-off then I guess.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.