Dave Smith

How about a hit upside the head with a history lesson in telecommunications?

You’re still here?

Okay, buckle up. In the late 1800’s, a paranoid undertaker from Kansas worried that human operators were routing phone calls to his competitors. You see, back in the day an operator (usually female) would manually connect your phone calls for you. No dialing. If you’ve ever watched an episode of “Lassie” where Timmy falls in the well, you’ve seen this in action. So you would pick up the phone and ask the operator lady to connect you to a certain person or business. If you asked for an undertaker, for example, she was free to route your call to whichever undertaker she liked the best. This really torqued off our heroic undertaker, Almon Brown Strowger, who, rather than just blogging about it, set out to solve the problem.

Strowger invented a new kind of relay (which is EE speak for a fancy switch) that could be operated remotely by sending it electrical pulses. The relay could connect phone calls automatically based on what you dialed on your rotary phone. By hooking a bunch of Strowger relays together, you could route calls to any other phone, without the need for a human in the loop.

You’ve probably seen these old phones with rotary dials. That’s why we have ‘em. All because a disgruntled undertaker saw a problem and decided to fix it.

What torques you off? Why don’t you go out and invent something to fix it?

A couple weeks ago I sent my Spektrum AR6000 receiver to Horizon Hobby’s service department because it was losing bind on the ground (especially in cold weather). Oddly, I could never reproduce the problem on the bench. It only happened at the flying field, and only on hand launches. Very weird. I was nervous that I would destroy my plane if it ever lost bind in the air, so I finally decided to send it in for service. I didn’t have much hope that Horizon would be able to see the problem since I could never make it happen on the bench, but they graciously took my word for it and replaced it free of charge. All I paid was the $5 to ship the receiver to them, and they replaced it and shipped the new one back to me free of charge. This was after they failed to reproduce the problem after 15 attempts. Way to go Horizon! I’m now a loyal customer for life.

P.S. Larry Weddle did the service, and decided to send me the new AR6000. Good work Larry!

For the first time in my life, I installed Linux on a laptop and every feature worked out of the box: video, sound, wireless network, mouse, keyboard, desktop effects, everything! I am blown away. I’m running Hardy on a Dell D630, and I followed the upgrade path after installing Kubuntu originally with Gutsy (and then got rid of the KDE garbage). Tomorrow I’ll test out docking station and dual monitor support.

It may be time for me to start recommending Ubuntu to family and friends.

Recently I pulled my FICO score after not having checked it for five years. For those that don’t know, banks use your FICO score to decide how credit worthy you are. Seeing my score gave me a great sense for just how broken our banking industry is!

Five years ago, my wife and I bid a fond adieu to our alma mater with barely a penny to our name. The last five years have been very good to us: my salary has increased, we’re saving for retirement, and our house is half paid for. You wouldn’t know that from my FICO score, though: Today it is 50 points lower than it was five years ago. That’s right, the average bank would rather lend money to me as a starving student. Thanks to the FICO algorithm, which apparently has Kool-Aid for brains, I’m a credit risk.

Of course I was curious. Why was it lower?

A little detective work revealed that my score sunk mostly because of a $150 clerical error. Amazing! One hundred fifty measly bucks, and even though I’ve never missed a house or credit card payment, and even though I make much more money than I used to, I’m less credit worthy.

After I pay off this house, I hope to never borrow money again. Fair Issac and Company: you can keep your credit score. With any luck I won’t be needing it!