Seems easy, right? Just…pick up your phone, and carry it out of the room. Well, not so much! Recently I realized that my phone habits were getting a little out of control, and in order to dial it back a bit, I thought that by taking my phone out of my bedroom would mean I actually SLEEP (whatever that is). While it’s mostly true, it’s not so easy…
Continue reading “Removing your Smartphone from the Bedroom”Franklin Institute – Very Early Member Letters
Just when you think finding 70 year old stuff is cool, finding 111 year old stuff is even cooler! These two letters were both addressed to the same person in Philadelphia, as they were likely a “member” back then. The postmarks on the cards match the dates seen.
Just to put things into perspective, if you’re familiar with the Franklin Institute, the older of these letters pre-date the current 1936 building by more than two decades! At the time, they had a building on 7th Street, which is actually still there and had housed the Philadelphia History Museum after the Franklin Institute moved to the current building.
In this first letter, they mention the outing at Woodside Park, which was an amusement park located just outside Fairmount Park in Philadelphia.
And with a quick search or two, I believe this may have been the grain elevator the second letter refers to! I’m assuming there was a park or place nearby?
(Image from the Philadelphia Free Library)
Postcards – Early Wanamaker Organ & Store, Philadelphia
I was going through some postcards I recently acquired and thought I should post these up. These are the only postcards of the Wanamaker store and Organ that I’ve ever found. The Wanamaker organ is the world’s largest fully-functional musical instrument, and is still at the former Wanamaker’s Store (now Macy’s) in Philadelphia. The organ has been fully restored, and the facade was restored in 2020.
Continue reading “Postcards – Early Wanamaker Organ & Store, Philadelphia”Telephone Collectors Show 2022
Despite being wedged into a packed couple weeks in my early summer calendar, I managed to get over to the Lancaster area to attend the 2022 Telephone Collectors International (TCI) show, something they haven’t had since before the pandemic.
Continue reading “Telephone Collectors Show 2022”Life Marches On
I always said that perhaps some, if not most of us Gen Xers are still stuck in our childhood. For us, nostalgia is STRONG, given the chaotic and uncertain times we’ve been thrust into recently.
Continue reading “Life Marches On”Summer Radio Silence
So yeah I tend to forget to keep the site updated with the latest goings on, so I figured I’d post up a quick update with real-life things. Many of my projects have been put on hold for summer fun, although it’s been so hot out that I haven’t really done much anyway. Here in Eastern PA it’s been in the 80-90 degree range for nearly 3+ weeks now, and we’ve barely seen any rain in the last 5+ weeks. I don’t think we’re alone; I watch some social media even from places like London who seem to be in the same boat. Yet some states down south seem to be dealing with a lot of flooding; go figure. I haven’t cut the grass in over the month, although recently we got enough rain to make it grow a little (in patches) so I guess I have to bust out the mower at some point.
I was going to say I haven’t done much, but I can’t really say that; since my last post, I’ve camped 3 times, attended Field Day with the Phil-Mont Radio Club (where I also brought a Teletype Model 32 back to life and got it on the air), had some out of town friends come for a visit, did up my front yard for the Shapiro Superhero Run, entertained a friend’s kid for a week, picked up some more nerdy bits and #Teletype junk, and got to go to the Telephone Collectors show as well as a couple hamfests.
Lately though things have calmed down to a crawl, which I’m not too fond of sometimes lol. Again it’s been too hot to get anything done outside to the cars or even ride the motorcycle, so I’ve mainly been messing around or driving around in the AC instead. Part of me is looking forward to the fall, but part of me doesn’t wanna give the summer up either.
Anyhow…I’ll try to backfill some of the events and highlight a few things, so look for some more posts in the near future.
ADT-233 Update – Coupler Connected!
Well that was…easy! Yesterday I posted about my unusual Teletype ASR-33, and mentioned that I saw an unused connector stuffed into the UCC…
Continue reading “ADT-233 Update – Coupler Connected!”Teletype ASR-33..er…Anderson Jacobson ADT-233
So yeah, after a 16 hour round trip last year to acquire a Teletype ASR-33 that has since been patiently waiting for me to drum up the courage to disassemble and fix the keyboard, I recently acquired ASR-33 #2, however although this one is more or less an ASR-33, its branded as an Anderson Jacobson ADT-233, and has an interesting feature…
Continue reading “Teletype ASR-33..er…Anderson Jacobson ADT-233”Aruba CX, IP Phones, and PC Ports, oh my!
I’m still getting used to the Aruba CX switches, as they’re definitely humbling me despite me not being a network “expert” per se. One interesting battle I had recently was trying to get the “PC Ports” on some Mitel IP phones to work. In my case I’m messing with Mitel 5xxx and 6xxx series phones, and while the phones themselves work fine, and the PC ports are enabled, they just…don’t do anything!
The PC ports on these phones are basically a daisy-chain port; they allow an IP phone and a computer to share a single network drop by basically daisy-chaining the computer through the phone.
Continue reading “Aruba CX, IP Phones, and PC Ports, oh my!”Microsoft Teams prompting for Sign-In Daily (Bad SSO) after Endpoint Manager/Intune Registration
In doing some searching for this issue, I see a handful of people searching for the issue with varying degrees of successful answers. Since I ran into this recently, I figured I’d post up my own experience with fixing this.
Continue reading “Microsoft Teams prompting for Sign-In Daily (Bad SSO) after Endpoint Manager/Intune Registration”