What I'll be doing when the TV goes dark

The radio hams among my valued readers will know that the "sk" that I whimsically ended my last post with means "silent key". Sk is used by hams to sign off at the end of a transmission, or, less routinely, to refer to a deceased fellow ham. For example, "Silent Keys" is the name of the obituary section of the American Radio Relay League's magazine "QST".

My dad's call sign as an Extra Class ham is K3DM. I say "is" rather than "was", because based on the last time that I checked his licence at the FCC's website (earlier today), the FCC doesn't know yet that he's a Silent Key. And, based on what I'm suddenly beginning to learn: Shhhhhhhhhhhh! Each day that it takes them to find out, gives me that much more of a valuable delay in the start of a two-year countdown to a formidable deadline that I'm about to describe.

The only way to get that short of a call sign is to be Extra Class, which is the hardest-to-earn, most elite ham licence of all. There are very few Extra Class hams around, but my dad and I knew of one other one here in Susquehanna County.

This other Extra Class ham started coming around here to the Frost Farm in the last few days, telling me that I'm first in line to get the call sign K3DM and that I should try to get it before somebody outside the family snaps it up. Once the FCC learns that it's a Silent Key, I'll only have a two-year window in which to meet the important other (i.e. besides who I am) requirement for getting it. That other requirement is, I must become Extra Class.

Well that's a _very_ tall order. I, KA3CZN, have been sitting on the duff of Novice class ever since the 1970s, partly because my cows knocked over the dipole, but also largely because I considered the mere thought of trying to learn enough to upgrade to even _General_ class to be _intimidating_.

But several things happened in the last few days that have made me decide to accept the challenge. In particular, I've had it up to my _eyeballs_ with the various aspects of modern technology that are similar to the phenomenon that I vented about earlier on this blog, about how nose-ring-generation-type, text-messaging punks don't even know that what they're doing is way more complicated to learn than, and inferior to, Morse Code.

In one example, there was an editorial in yesterday's Scranton Times-Tribune that sounded as if _I_ could have wrote it; that's how much I agreed with it. It was by a guy bashing the governmental requirement for the switch to digital TV. The guy didn't bash the _concept_ of switching to digital; just the fact that it was being done by too-central of planning (which, for example, neglects localities that won't receive the digital signal even with the best equipment) and with the coupons for the converter boxes keeping the price of the converter boxes artificially high.

The editorial, together with other recent snippets from other sources, also confirmed my suspicion that the coupons are indeed a government subsidy to the industry. So, that settles it: I'm _not_ going to bother getting a converter box; not until maybe after my TV has gone dark for a few months and the converter boxes start showing up at flea markets for $5.

Another example, also from yesterday, was the straw that broke the camel's back:

I was trying to hang up on a recorded telemarketing call. The phone that the Frost Farm has been using for the last 10 or 15 years is pretty modern in my book, but it took that whole 10 or 15 years to apparently discover this thing about it: Right after hanging up, I picked it up again just to check that I'd indeed hung it up - which I had; the button had indeed gotten depressed and I didn't hear anything, and then I picked it back up and the button popped back up - but when it popped back up, instead of hearing a dial tone, I heard a resumption of the same recorded telemarketing call! I did the same thing several times, and every time, when the button popped back up, the telemarketing call was still there!

I was _infuriated_! For about the first minute, I thought it was some new insideous trick by the company making the telemarketing call, to prevent you from being able to get rid of them. I began scheming of tracking the company down and going there and _barging_ into their office.

Then after about a minute, the thing that I was infuriated _about_, changed: It dawned on me that more likely, it's the _phone_, and that perhaps it was designed to not terminate _any_ call, even when it's hung up, unless the party on the other end has also hung up. Or something like that.

I began fuming about the implications: If I'm correct in that theory, then it might not be as safe as people generally think it is to cuss associates out behind their back immediately after ending a phone conversation with them, because _what_ _if_ the other party can _hear_ you after you've hung up (even though, in my unintentional experiment yesterday, _I_ couldn't hear _them_ during the time that the button was depressed)?!!!!!

Granted, I almost never do cuss associates out or otherwise talk about them behind their back after ending phone conversations with them (I don't recall the last time that I did; I guess it was 10 years or so ago); but, it's the principle: Once that button is depressed, there's an expectation of privacy (and although I _guess_ they _can't_ hear me, "expectation of privacy" requires something _simpler_ such as _call_ _ended_).

And since it _took_ me the whole 10 or 15 years of using that new-generation phone to _discover_ that hanging it up (including making sure that the button is depressed, shutting up the voice on the other end) doesn't necessarily end the call, I'm wondering what _other_ back-stabbing tricks modern devices might be doing to me that I _haven't_ discovered.

In short, _screw_ _all_ other-than-good-old-Morse-Code, electronic communications technologies.

Or more precisely: Bothering to become any more computer literate than I am, is going to have to take a _back_ _seat_ to studying _ham_ _radio_, and studying ham radio _vigorously_ enough to have a _fighting_ _chance_ of becoming Extra Class in time to beat other hams to the call sign K3DM. (The still-living Extra Class friend has told me that these other Extra Class hams will be swooping in like vultures the _instant_ that the 2-year time window expires; call signs that short are _very_ coveted; the FCC doesn't issue them to _even_ Extra Class hams anymore except after the holder of one dies.)

And that's why I've reneged from what I said at the end of my Feb. 11 post, about how I'd give related updates (like my two posts of today) by doing an expansion of _that_ post - which, as it turns out, can't be done with this old Mac. Only the "New Post" field works; the "Edit Posts" field doesn't appear, but who cares.