A Crummy Commercial

jacksonharbor@att.net was the email address I used for the beginnings of the kit business.  The island was still dialup internet service then.  I had signed up for ATT Worldnet which had an 800 number that you called into - they then charged you for every minute of connect time on a monthly basis.  I remember one friend emailing a greeting card attachment that cost me like $4 to download !  But overall it wasn't that bad a deal until ATT dropped Worldnet - there was no way to keep my old email address :(  I've mentioned this before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/04/when-internet-changes-its-usually-for.html So when I finally got this new cell phone going I thought:  hey, sign up for a free att.net email address !  I had never been able to try this before because you had to have cell service to get an att.net email address. So I tried it and got this: I then tried sending a message to jacksonharbor@att.net via gmail and got this: so I don't know what...

Previous mention: getting rid of DSL here: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/05/shedding-load-or-may-4th-be-with-you.html Although Starlink has already emailed that after my trial period the monthly rate will be increasing $5 to $55 per month :( But in happier news, May 20, 2026 was the last day of landline service from Frontier.  I finally was able to get my old home landline number transferred to Mint Mobile.  If I had known it was this much of a hassle I would have just dumped the landline number and gone with a new one.  Frontier got to charge me for another week or so of landline service, is any big company that mean that they would lie just to get a few more bucks ?  I hope not, probably just some disinterested employee ?  Anyway it's done ! Strangely I still have landline dial tone on May 21st but probably that will be gone soon. Having cell phone service is weird though for a first timer like me,  it's like the cell phone is a new body part that has ...

I *should* be doing any number of other things but I bought a trail cam.  A Muddy Pro-Cam 16 - it was the cheapest "name brand" trail cam I could find on Ebay that would mail it.  Nicely both batteries (8 AA) and an SD card were included as a bundle.   Here is my first shot - the quizzical look is because I was trying to set the date and time which obviously I hadn't done :)   Depending on how well it works I might buy another one as a sort of security cam, pictures being so worthwhile these days.  As with most anything there are zillions of options, many seem to be cut-down cell phones which can be hooked up to a wireless cellular network - but those are a LOT more expensive.  Here is my first deer, yesterday afternoon not too long after setting it up: At the very least I will get some exercise walking out to the camera every day to check for any pictures.  I used the included strap to belt it to a tree near a deer path.  Here is how it...

A Roz Chast cartoon in The New Yorker - the bearded prophet carries a sign which reads: "THE END OF YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM IS NEAR": source:  https://media.newyorker.com/cartoons/6a0387dc4ca8f0266f755ca3/master/w_1280,c_limit/a61789.jpg I thought of this in connection with both Android and Windows (what'll Windows 10 users do when the extra year of support on Windows 10 is up later this year ?). I just got a new Android device, it had version 15 - of course right away it wanted to update to version 16.  And I *think* I might get another version updated to 17 - and that's it. But the problem is that the apps are jealous of the latest OS version - they want it to be a certain level or that's it, no dice.  With a previous Android device support ended at Android 11.  December 2025 this broke my banking app.  So I wasn't able to deposit kit checks via the app, I had to mail them in to the bank :(   Now I can use the app again on the new Android device versi...

I just had to post this picture of Charles P. Steinmetz in his 1914 Detroit Electric car: Outside the car are Marjorie, William, Joseph Jr. and Joseph Hayden Sr. - they were Steinmetz's adoptive family.  Maybe Mom Hayden took the picture ?  :)  That car had a tiller and could be driven from the back seat.  It didn't go that fast or far but Schenectady wasn't that big a town then. Here are a few articles on the car, Steinmetz and GE: https://spectrum.ieee.org/charles-proteus-steinmetz   The original Steinmetz car was found and restored:  https://www.union.edu/news/stories/201404/Shifting-gears-A-new-home-for-Steinmetz-car A Steinmetz bio:  https://archive.org/details/steinmetzenginee00klin   The General Electric book,  Men and Volts : https://archive.org/details/menvoltsstoryofg0000john Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I was living in Milwaukee in 1957 but I was 2 years old so that's my excuse for not remembering this: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5ssyM57Kjo The first World Series played in Milwaukee - 7 games and the good guys won !!   I had seen Tony Kubek on all those NBC MLB games on TV and knew he was a Yankee - he often mentioned Stengel, Berra, Mantle and so on.  But I didn't know he was from Milwaukee.  He's still alive and living in Appleton, Wisconsin. The Yankees and the Braves played another 7 game series in 1958 as well but the bad guys won that one: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d15WrNtLTeg I've blogged on the Braves before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-bat-versus-ball.html https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/12/warped-perception.html https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/09/leaving-early.html but by the time I was old enough to be a fan the Braves were headed for Atlanta - they weren't all that good at the end in Milwaukee. Best R...

After mentioning the Video Toy Walkie Talkies yesterday: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/05/toy-video-walkie-talkie.html I remembered when I was a kid one of my friends had one of these: from 1965 xmas catalog, remember the need to buy the crystals and battery This was a superhet, better than the blue Knight-kit C-100 super-regen walkie talkie.  The C-555 also had a volume control and an earphone jack.  Well the problem was that I didn't have the money for either a C-555 or a C-100.  Here is the closeout price: Note that the buyer still had to buy 2 crystals and a somewhat unusual 9V batter so the actual price would inflate to this: you have to add $5 worth of crystals plus a 62 cent battery to the $8.95 sale price Even at the end of the C-555 product life it was just too much money.  Eventually my Dad bought me a pair of walkie talkies like this Midland: The ones he bought were from Olson Electronics and were white but otherwise the same.  They were 50 mW supe...