Hi there,
Well with all the lovely snow we are getting here over in the UK and of course island Britain can't cope with it and makes you wonder how did many years ago.
I does make you wonder if the news networks have not got anything else to talk about and I reckon that causes people to panic over here (no bread of milk in the supermarkets!)
I know our friends from WI and of course in Canada take it in their stride. Makes you wonderf hwo they would cope with it on the lower west side and down y'all south?
Time to and build a snowman :-)
Cheers,
John.B
When the frigid cold gets to the South and it snows in Florida
I do have a giggle at all of them who can't drive in it. I'm sure the car repair shops love it.
I would tell people we up here in Wisconsin we left the gate open and the weather got loose. Whoops!
We had about 5 inches of snow last week and it's about Zero degrees Fahrenheit or -18 'C
And nobody's cares. But it's nice to share it with our neighbors.
Kevin
I think you did leave the gate open. It's 16 F here this morning. It's not so bad to deal with though: just put on an extra layer and a big coat and some gloves, and I'm fine with it. No snow yet though.
Hi John,
Sorry to hear about your snow troubles as we already had our fill of that here in NJ.Already got blasted the week before Christmas but thankfully that's all gone.Right now we got very little snow on the ground but its very cold.At least the sun decided to show up today:)Cheers
Mark
We had at least a white Christmas - something that doesn't happen too often here in NJ. I had done all the shopping already online, so that I didn't have to go out in the middle of the storm Saturday before Christmas. The following Sunday morning it was sunny and nice, perfect weather for shoveling the snow (the old-fashion way with the elbow-grease fueled shovel, wearing only shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt as I tend to overheat) and for a snowball fight in the backyard with my older son, followed by a trip with him to the nearby rail line to do some train watching.
I don't watch too much TV and when I do it's local news for traffic and weather, or programs like National Geographic or Discovery.
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A Linux Longhair
When we got dumped on the week before Christmas I kind of figured a white Christmas was going to be in the cards.With it being so cold it was slow to melt until the rains came after Christmas and washed it all away.It wasn't too bad top shovel being the snow was very dry and light.I didn't know you were from Jersey though.
Mark
I moved in NJ a few years ago. Before that I lived in Romania, Yugoslavia (today's Serbia), Denmark, Sweden and Connecticut...
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A Linux Longhair
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Well I hope NJ has been good for you so far as there is a lot to complain about but it does have some good points.Close proximity to NYC being one good point if you like the city but rather not live there.You've certainly lived in quite of variety of places.Very interesting.
Mark
Everybody hates NJ, but somebody's got to live there :-)
Close proximity to NYC is good - at one time I was working in the city and I am living within walking distance of a NJT train station. Other places within reach for day trips are Philly, the shore, the Delaware Water Gap, Eastern Pennsylvania, the Seven Lakes in NY, just to name a few.
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A Linux Longhair
Ha Ha, yes that's a funny line but it's true somebody has to live there.
It's a shame NJ takes a back seat to all it's neighbors as the best
aspect of it is it's proximity to all those places you mentioned outside
of NJ.Will NJ ever be remembered for anything else other than being
known as "The Soprano State".lol
Mark
Count your blessings. Here all they talk about is:
1. The undiebomber, and what to do about his ilk. (Hint: You imprison POWs until the war is over and the treaty is signed. Duh. Does this even need to be discussed?)
2. Kids raping and killing each other.
3. The economy. (Do we still have one?)
4. Politicians who can't get anything done, because we keep electing people who strive to create problems instead of solutions.
5. And story after story showing happy little ghetto kids in an attempt to sweeten newscasts otherwise full of the first four items above.
Seldom do we see a newscast that doesn't have all five of the above.
Bill
With all the news outlets available today its amazing how similar they all seem to be.Can't any of them try and be different?They always end up tripping over themselves covering the same stories to the Nth degree!Maybe we need to go back to the good old days when we had what they sang about in that Pink Floyd song.That is ...Only thirteen channels of s**t on the TV to choose from.lol.Have a lovely day all and enjoy the sunshine:)
Mark
Or, you could try the Springsteen version:
Maybe we need to go back to the good old days when we had what they sang about in that Pink Floyd song.That is ...Only thirteen channels of s**t on the TV to choose from.lol.Have a lovely day all and enjoy the sunshine:)
While it lasts, anyway... and sorry for those without broadband.
Good song but I was never a fan of "the boss" and 5 hour shows lol!
When I was a kid we had 4 stations.And a black and white tv.I now have a 65" big screen and a 7.1 surround sound system.I think I have 130 channels.Still sometimes cant find something to watch.It's killer for gaming though.
Got a 3 acre pond in front of my house.Looked out there this morning and saw one of my cats walking across it.Never seen that before.
Arrick
Pink Floyd song.That is ...Only thirteen channels of s**t on the TV to choose from.lol.Have a lovely day all and enjoy the sunshine:)
I still like my old value b/w set! What does all this digital mean!
I don't know about back home in the UK, but here in the colonies there are no more analogue TV stations, they've all gone digital. The range is much worse, because the picture is either perfect or breaking up. We have a lot more trouble getting distant stations now, and even some of the local ones. However, each station carries either one high definition programme or multiple ordinary programmes multiplexed onto the same channel.
Ironically, most Americans don't even know that any of this has happened, because most of them have cable TV instead. The bigger irony is that a lot of cable systems are still analogue and don't have high definition, while I'm already watching digital and some high definition stations for free using an aerial (antenna for the Americans).
You just need a good antenna system. My other half is REALLY into this stuff, and he has our roof covered with antennas. Oh, you don't want to invest a few thousand dollars in aluminum, masts, guy wires, and rotors on your roof? [grin] Don't you know a man can never have too many antennas?
Stations are cramming more and more onto their transmitters and quality is suffering as a result. The ABC station here has two HDTV programs and one SDTV program, and it all looks like crap. One station here has FIFTEEN signals on it, and every one looks like a view through a muddy windshield. CBS is the best here for quality. They have their entire bandwidth used for the network's one program feed, and the definition is exquisite.
The two dish companies provide higher quality. But nothing beats "off the air" of course.
Actually, you can use both words here, although I heard "aerial" more when I was younger than now. But what NO ONE in the know calls the plural is "antennae". Only insects have antennae. Radios have antennas.
And yes, we get TV off the air. Being 3/4 of a mile from the tower definitely helps. We can see it from our living room window and from our roof, so pointing antennas is easy. The main problem is that all antennas are made to point at the horizon, and we need our to point up at a steep angle since the TV stations' antennas are 1500 feet higher than we are.
Well, one good thing about HDTV. You can actually see the people's hair!
Bill
Bill, you cannot get any closer to God's honest truth than that. Lately I've only been watching/listening to local news. Fortunately, our local radio station here (810 WGY) has phenomenal local reporting. Whenever they switch to Fox for national news, I try to pay attention to something else, unless they have something else.
Whenever I hear the alphabet soups yak yak yak away at the same old thing, it makes me want to shoot something.
Their West Coast sister station, KGO, also on 810, is here. The G in the callsigns stood for "General Electric" and the Y came from the last letter in Schenectady and the O was the first letter of Oakland. Ownership of the stations has since changed, of course, and KGO's studios are now across the Bay from Oakland in San Francisco, but it sounds like both stations are news/talk. KGO has been the number one station in San Francisco for decades. My husband worked there for several years and has said the job fulfilled a childhood dream of his to be operating a 50,000 watt AM station. KGO does get out - in 1990 we heard KGO in the Yukon. And so does WGY - we've heard it all up and down the East Coast.
Stations with three-letter calls
Bill K9AT
There's a radio station in Dallas Tx who's call sign is WRR.It is the oldest licensed station in Texas.Started in 1921 in the Dallas fire station.Is owned by the city of Dallas.Been classical music all my life.
Arrick
http://www.wrr101.com/?id=251
WRR not only has a three letter call, but there are only eight other stations like it that have three-letter W calls west of the Mississippi River. This dates back to the earliest years of radio, when the K/W line followed state lines near the Rocky Mountains rather than the river.
Bill
However, KDKA is the oldest station in the US, and yet it's a four letter call. It's also way on the wrong side of the Missouri to be a K rather than a W, because they hadn't invented that rule in 1928. The exception proves the rule.
Alun, N3KIP, aka G8VUK
There is some contention to that claim. Oldest commercially licensed station? Probably. Oldest radio station period? Nope. WGY wins that title if you speak in terms of first broadcast rather than first license. Many stations that have license grants between 1920-1922 fight over who was the first to get their grant. Just my .02
Chris, KC2NIJ
I still enjoy how Schenectady is home to the very first TV transmission, and THE oldest TV station in the country. WRGB TV6 has many many years to it's record. I think GE was experimenting with TV back when the radio stations were fighting over being the first licensee. But we digress...
And of course, here in San Francisco we have a local boy who we celebrate for the same achievement. Google "Philo Farnsworth".
As with any new technology, a lot of tinkerers get to playing with it at about the same time, and often they don't even know of each others' work. The sad truth, though, is the end result, which is that eventually large corporations take over the bulk of the technology's use. Just look at the Internet. MLHH was a social networking site long before FaceBook existed, but no one would argue that FaceBook is now much bigger. Some businesses are now actually getting a FaceBook page instead of their own web site. What will happen to those pages when FaceBook changes direction, or fades into obscurity? Have you looked at any Geocities sites lately? No, you haven't. This last fall, Yahoo shut it down.
MLHH has resisted being sucked into any large corporate site, and that has been a good thing. Such sites do come and go. Hey, we could have become a "Yahoo Club"! But we didn't, and now we're now here long after those "clubs" are gone. Quite a few longhairs have an aversion to being controlled by others, particularly large corporations, and that trait has served us well.
Bill
I listen to WRR 101.1 classical quite a lot, too.
- Oren
...and also KUT 90.5, the public radio station in Austin when I'm down that way.
Other 3-letter stations that I've listened to are:
KGB FM in San Diego, CA, KJR FM in Seattle, WA
Here in upstate New York, with temps not getting much above 20, and a few inches on the ground (a city in Vermont got the most EVER in weather history from one storm, 33 inches), it's no wonder how we even made it before. There still is, however, a whole list of ways I'm supposed to have died by now according to the TV.
I once took it in stride when living in New England. But now out here in the "Family area" of the West Coast, we don't get all that much usually. But when we do and I go out in it I dare say after a while I look like a walking Snowman! LOL :-)
Justin~