4 July 2011
Like old Tube Radios
Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special .
Well, what goes around, comes around. Remember in the old days of tube radios and TVs? You’d have to plan your viewing or listening pleasure ahead of time. You’d turn on the set, then sit around and let it warm up for a while before you could enjoy the program. Then came transistor radios and instant-on TVs. Push a button for instant gratification. Nowadays the good old days are back again. If I want to listen to the news via the Internet at the top of the hour from an Atlanta radio station, I first fire up a browser, the enter the url in the address bar, wait for the page to load, click on the ‘listen now’ button, wait for the player window to open and the player to load, connect to the station, then listen to the pre-roll commercial, then finally listen to the program I wanted to hear. How simple is that? Yes, it makes the old tube radios seem like a pleasure by comparison!
One Comment so far...
Dick Says:
20 September 2011 at 9:14 am.
Cheer up. It could be worse… What if your internet radio used tubes? Reminds of a day when I had just fixed something urgently needed by our field crews and quickly packed it up in a box and slapped a FedEx label on it. I dashed out to my car… 7:45PM… I had 15 minutes to get to a Federal Express office to send it on its way. I had no idea where the closest one was, but I knew it had to be toward the downtown area. So I started heading there as the GPS was “warming up.” (Yes Martha… no “Instant On” there, either). I finally located one. I should have pulled over, and written down the directions. But I didn’t. I just entered the “Route me and give me voice prompts” mode. As I got closer to FedEx I got closer to all those tall buildings. The lady “readied” me for an upcoming turn. But then she never said to turn. After what seemed like an eternity I looked at the GPS and realized it was looking for some satellite signals again. What?! So I did a U-Turn knowing that I must have passed my turn. She returned and said “recalculating” in a rather dry voice. For what seemed like the most tense 5 minutes in my life, I made “emergency” turns on my own to keep from being dumped on the freeway while all she could say was “recalculating”. Seems as soon as she figured out where I was, I turned and she had to start over. I was about ready to pull over to the side of the road and admit defeat when I saw a FedEx truck drive down the street. Two more minutes of insanity while I drove, yelling out the window the whole way, and they finally stopped and accepted my package. *Phew*
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