sanding off chip markings?

Hello Spehro,

For how long? The whole time? Did the towers have generators?

Ah, but a steak just ain't the same if it didn't come off the charcoal barbie.

"Taste the meat, not the heat." Hank Hill

too

My cordless phones are on the closest UPS, and there is at least one regular phone in each building that has telephone service. Three at the moment, soon to be five. ;-)

Hello Graham,

too

Our first one was the best, from Cincinnatti Microwave. Unfortunately the stuff from smart companies often seems to vanish from the market. It had a spare phone battery that was kept charged inside the base. When the power went this battery took over as a UPS. Of course, that would have only worked for a few hours I guess.

Wired phones: Ideally at least one should be a plain old phone with hardly any electronics in there, even a rotary still works in many places. Or keep a 2nd one in the garage that is connected after the outage happened. Sometimes when lightning was the culprit for an outage this might have taken out some of the connected electronics.

dies too

Wired phones are the way to go, when giving credit card and social security #s over the phone... are the digital spread spectrum cordless phones as secure? All my cordless phones are analog...

Hello Michael,

Our very first one was true spread spectrum, the others still use digital schemes that are hard to decode. But plain old analog ones can be dangerous. I remember when a former neighbor (that was in Europe) called her doctor, got a quick appointment at 9:00 am and right after that the burglars began to loot their home. In broad daylight. We went over there later because the police gave hints about securing homes better. That's when I asked her whether she had used that phone. "Umm, ... yeah ...... oh drat!"

So it's not just credit card info that's dangerous to communicate. Talks about vacation plans can be especially damaging. But the eaverdroppers would have to know where the talker is located and whether there'd be enough to loot. Either talker, not just the one on the analog phone.

dies too

I've seen this too. In fact the first cordless phone I bought had this but it used primary cells which wasn't the best idea.

I still have one rotary. Hasn't been used in years though. My first 'electronic' phone gave out dial pulses rather than tones too.

That's a very good point. It takes a lot to fry a rotary phone.

Graham

Hello Graham,

We have one that's almost guaranteed to be fry-proof: Western Electric from 1927, in the kitchen (works!). It has a separate ear piece and a horn in front so you have to stand at attention while speaking. It's got a crank so I guess it could be considered rotary :-)

Of course I have disconnected the generator behind the crank.

Now that cheap coin cells are available (1 euro per 24 - 6 types at 4 of each) I'm not too worried about coin cell prices.

Lithiums are more expensive, but depending on the vendor go for a euro each or a card of 5.

Thomas

brother-in-law

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any...

My guess is that the next step, if it is not already out, is that it can play mp3 from dual layer DVD+/-rw. Probably go for a week (24/7 = 168 hours) without repeats.