TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: How is Your Holiday? Mine Sort of Bittersweet

How is Your Holiday? Mine Sort of Bittersweet

TELECOM Digest Editor (ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu)
Mon, 30 May 2005 15:15:59 EDT

To the USA readers, how goes your Memorial Day weekend holiday? You
may recall here I mentioned a couple weeks ago about the relevance and
pertinence for many of us in the 'Amber Alert' program. That really
hit home for me about a week ago regards my younger sister when we
_finally_ after some intensive searching discovered she was _still_ in
Orlando, Florida where she wound up after having left home at the age
of 16 almost thirty years ago. We got a phone call from her (now 23
year old) son about a week ago. It seems she had died -- on the
street, the usual 'home' for homeless people -- she had been cremated
and the ashes given to her son, as 'next of kin' on March 5, 2005, in
other words about three months ago. Her son -- also a street person by
choice, had not been easily located by authorities in Orlando, but in
a sort of unceremonious way, when they finally _did_ locate him, the
authorities handed him a little plastic baggy with ashes and said
"here is your mother". I asked Justin (her son) to please either bring
the ashes here _or_ ship them in the mail mainly so that _my_ mother
(his grandmother) could see some closure in the matter. I had hoped
the ashes and/or Justin would have been here over the holiday, but no
such luck. Now I am told the ashes are en-route from Orlando, but
we shall see about that.

Meanwhile, _my_ brother Dan, along with his wife and his son came into
town for this non-occasion Friday night, and are going back to their
home in Chicago either tonight or in the morning. To 'celebrate' this
non-arrival of the ashes and/or nephew Justin, my brother Dan insisted
we all go over to Austin's (the local 'rowdy young guys, hard-rock,
semi-gay bar' here in town; the equivilent of Dalton House down in
Coffeyville.) I _hate_ the place, being far too noisy, far too full of
cigarette smoke, drunks and assorted characters.

The last time I was at Austin's was when Lisa Minter and two of her
boy friends forced me to go there with them last July 3. If you recall
when I wrote about that last summer, eight or ten blocks of West Main
Street was totally torn up for sewer repairs/rebuilding, Austin's
parking lot was inaccessible (as a result of the work on Main Street)
and everyone was entering/exiting the place off of Maple Street, the
next block south. None the less, the place was very crowded; standing
room only. I knew before we left that this year would be the same way,
being a holiday weekend and the night before the holiday. I hated it
last year, I hated it again last night, particularly the police cars
and sheriff cars roaming slowly through the (now functioning since
Main Street repaired) parking lot; every one of the officers looking
hateful as if they were saying, "oh, please, won't some one please
screw up, so we can crack open some heads for fun and relaxation.
We want to have fun also."

Like last year, this time Dan took me out of here screaming and
kicking; I would have been perfectly happy sitting in my parlor with a
book and the computer; we stayed at Austin's until closing time (2 AM)
and like last year when Lisa and her friends took me there, this
weekend's bunch kept putting more and more and more drinks in front of
'uncle Pat' (I guess they consider me the family patriarch or
something) while they all kept running around doing whatever it is
that kids do in places 'like that'. All I remember is they got me back
home a little after 2 AM, I fell asleep immediatly and woke up today
feeling _terrible_.

So how was your holiday weekend?

PAT

Path: telecom-digest.org!ptownson
Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 21:58:31 UTC
From: Danny Burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: 25 cps Power, was: Tie Lines was Re: Foreign Exchange (FX) Lines
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In <telecom24.238.14@telecom-digest.org> bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com
(Robert Bonomi) writes:

> I don't know when the last 25-cycle power was phased out. Keokuk, Iowa,
> had a 25-cycle hydroelectric plant -- driven by the Mississippi River,

25 cycle/second power was still in use for portions of the NYC area
transit facilities until about a decade ago. While the subway trains
ran, and run, on 600VDC "third rail" power (until very recently there
were big advantages to operating large motors off DC), some of the
commuter railroads had legacy stuff.

(The newest subway motor controllers actually take that DC from the third
rail and transform it to 3-phase AC before feeding it to the motors.)

Parts of some passenger stations tapped into this 25 cycle grid for
use by the incandescent lamps. This led to quite noticable flickering
whenever the temperature dropped ...

(All primary lighting is now courtesy of the regular 120/208/240v
utility grid feeding fluorescent fixtures. There's a modest amount of
incandescent stuff around for small areas.

Also, some emergency, backup, and area-work circuits feed a "five
pack" of 120V incandescents off the 600VDC third rail.)

_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

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