InsaneJournal

I'm posting from Oregon. We are visiting a family friend who lives a few miles from Siletz, OR. Just before we left, I had the presence of mind to slap a copy of emacs and my latest code onto my bulla. I collected 13 payphones so far.

44.75531 deg N
123.90110 deg W

My file manager program (latest project) is now to the stage where it displays a list of files with all the goodies (name, user, group, size, mode). The mode is just octal, not -rw-r--r-- or anything nice like that; the size is in unadulterated bytes; and the date is not formatted or displayed. In short, it just looks pretty. :)

Day before yesterday (last day of school), Marie, Collin, and I went to the Seattle Telecommunications museum. It's great. They have four (4) working mechanical exchanges: Step by Step (SxS), No. 5 Crossbar (5xb), No. 1 Crossbar (1xb), and Panel. The brochure says that their panel exchange is believed to be the only working one in the country. (!) All the exchanges are connected together, and every working phone in the building is hooked up to them (but not to the outside world). The museum is in the top two floors of a working exchange in Georgetown.

I found the crossbar exchanges most interesting. It's fun to stand inside a working relay computer. I never thought I'd have the opportunity. You can hear streams of activity shuttling around the space surrounding you, and each stream makes a kind of grinding/chewing sound, even though an individual relay is just capable of making a clicking sound. I plan to organize another trip (or 3) this summer, and need at least ~5 people to get them to open the museum on a non-Tuesday. Since I'm working Mon-Fri, it will most likely be on a Saturday. I hope to go soon. Prospective customers: Collin, Rob, Alex, Marie, parents of above, etc. Reply if you're interested.