Diamond Dave’s Blog

Sorry for not updating the rant page in a while. I was back up at my old stomping grounds in Pittsburgh taking care of my father’s house and such for the last couple of weeks while he is in the hospital. Hopefully he will be home soon. My older brother flew in from the left coast to take over for a while.

And sorry for the Diamond Mine being off line for most of the last two weeks. Seems that the step daughter didn’t realize that the computer stays on 24/7/365.

Lots to talk about. Thank goodness Miers dropped out. And now we have Cheneygate. Aren’t Washington politics wonderful?

Went to Pittsburgh to see my father (Diana and Heather went with me). Hadn’t seen him since May, and hadn’t been back to the ‘hood since last Christmas. Lots had changed since I was gone. Its a growing area by leaps and bounds.

Saw my friend Fred (aka Psycho - his BBS handle from years ago) who was recently in a motorcycle accident and broke his left leg in three places. He’ll be out of commission for several weeks until his leg heals. I hadn’t seen Fred in several years, it was nice to see him again. Just wish that he had a landline phone, so I could have donated an old computer and have him on the BBS again.

Managed to take some photos of central office buildings in North Pittsburgh territory and one in neighboring Verizon territory for the Telephone World site. Got all the North Pittsburgh ones but one (Curtisville). Hopefully I can get that one at Christmas (and this time I’ll remember take the Mapquest map!). It was interesting.. when I took the pic of the Wexford CO, some lady came out and asked me if I was with a real estate company. I told her no. She thought that the phone company was going to be putting it up for sale! Uh… sure, you COULD put all those customers on some sort of digital loop carrier system.. but you’d still need SOMEWHERE to put the DLC box. Granted, the Wexford CO is a host to the Criders Corners (Cranberrry Twp.) remote, so the chances of rehoming both Wexford (WEstfield-5) AND Criders Corners (PResident-6) central offices would be… remote! (sorry, telco humor!). Yes, it is a big ugly red brick building… but NPTCo selling the building? Uh.. I really doubt that.

now know that more and more people are listening to XM Radio. Case in point - when I was driving to work today, I was listening to XM 41 (da Boneyard - the hard rock channel) with my XM Roady, which rebroadcasts the sound onto your FM radio (defaulting to 88.1 MHz). At a traffic light, I decided to turn off my unit and go back to terrestrial radio for a couple of minutes. Instead of static, I heard the SAME song still playing.. yes, my unit was off. Obviously I was listening to someone else’s XM Roady! What are the odds that someone next to you at the SAME traffic light was listening to the SAME XM channel AND at the same FM radio retransmission frequency? Definately shows that people are sick of the same old crap on regular radio.