Did something fun this weekend

Ignoramus9506 wrote: (...)

Hi Iggy,

Can you turn it back on in a hurry from anywhere in the house in case you need to dial an emergency call?

--Winston

I used an X-10 powering a multipole relay at the phone entrance lines so I can turn on or off the phones from multiple points including my bedside. Daughter never figured out why the phone went dead when her BF called at 3AM, often went dead whenever I was in bed ;) Committees of Correspondence Web page:- tinyurl.com/y7th2c

Do something smart, configure one phone to be available at all times for an outgoing call, you can disable the ringer and perhaps choose a place that is in the escape route of your house should there be a fire or other emergency. The idea of your kids fiddle f****ng around with an x10 tring to get a live phone line while you are in cardiac aresst ever occur to you?

To turn it on, all we need to do is walk to the family room and flip the switch on. We also have cell phones, usually on us. The safety issue is moot. The issue of SELF IMPORTANT PEOPLE "forgetting" that we have kids sleeping and waking them up (the one year old especially), and waking US up if we go to bed early, is a f****ng daily occurrence, it drives us absolutely nuts. If I go to bed early and someone wakes me up at 10pm, my night is absolutely ruined because my body thinks I just had a good nap and I cannot fall asleep until 2am.

I think that yes, we'll get one phone with ringer disabled, I agree on this one.

I read that it is painful to be on the 3rd shift... Must interfere with normal sleep patterns and all... Do you need to shut down the curtains to sleep well?

I put a second thermostat in my office where I used to work. The ones the girls cranked up only made them feel good. The one I adjusted made me feel fine.

Wes

i, Try living a life working third shift (aka turd shift). Call me at 3 PM and there is no way that I shouldn't be sleeping at that time.

Wes

It is hopeless.

Very nice. For now, I really like what I did yesterday, I am still reachable via cell phone etc. At this point I do not want to have landline phones working at all when the switch is off.

I am a little leery of the "wiring mess" types of proposals.

I once went along with what my wife wanted me to do regarding TV wiring. She wanted some Russian TV in some rooms and some other TV in other rooms etc. (I do not watch TV so I do not care). I asked her repeatedly what exactly she wanted. Then I did what she wanted exactly. Which was a big wiring mess with some SPDT TV switches etc. It did exactly what she asked me to do. Then it turned out that she needed something a little different. But we kept what I did. After a year we changed to satellite TV. Now we have a complete goddamn mess in the furnace room, like a spiderweb of interconnected coaxial wires. I am going to take all of it out soon.

In my case, hitting the "all lights off" button anywhere immediately enabled all phones. Committees of Correspondence Web page:- tinyurl.com/y7th2c

The first thing you need to do is to educate these "friends" as to when not to call...

But there's another thing you can do. Most telephone wiring in homes is four wire, i.e., can be used for two phone lines, but most of us have only one line. So, what you do is to get phones that have ringers that can be disconnected. This is easy in the older phones that actually have bells, not necessarily so easy in the electronic phones with "toodle-loodle-loo" ringers. So, you then connect the phones to one wire pair and the ringers to the other. Then, install a switch at some convenient location that ties the two pairs together. That way, you can turn off the ringers without disabling the phones.

I did something a little similar with my shop phone. I got a loud bell that I could hear over the sound of a machine running. Then, I connected it to the phone line through a relay that is activated by the lights. So, if the shop lights are on, the loud bell is enabled. The rest of the time, the neighbors don't have to listen to it...

Jerry

I'm a little surprised that PC-based telephone control isn't more popular. Something like this should be pretty easy:

- phone line goes direct to PC

- PC answers without any phone ringing

- recognizing the calling number using Caller ID; ringing your phone without connecting to the caller; announcing the caller's name, and allowing you to "pickup" or not

- when Caller ID is "out of area" or "private" ask: "Who's calling" with voice recognition of regular callers; others have their name given to you to answer or not

- "Who are you calling?", with special rings and/or selected phones-only ringing

- time dependent function. E.g., after 10:00, or when you tell it, only takes message, but enabled callers with the by-pass code could still get through in an emergency. Or, if you both work and the house is empty on a regular schedule, forward the calls to work.

- when you're going out, pick up a phone, dial a control code (e.g., *9) and calls are forwarded to your cell

- answering-machine functionality, of course

- voice recognition speed dial, like cell phone. Pick up phone, speak name & it dials for you

- lists of callers & callee's

etc, etc. Most of the stuff one pays the phone co for could be PC based. This just seems like such a ripe territory for a PC app. It could be like a private secretary. Or maybe I'm just too much of a technophile.

Bob

When I worked shift work SWMBO went somewhere one day just after I got home at 8:30 AM and got a sitter for the boys (5&6). I got very little sleep that day - things were too quiet, even the train forgot to toot behind the house. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Now that this stupid time change has taken place, I do.

Wes

A box fan blowing is very helpful for masking noise.

Wes

Yeah, that was easy. I'm still trying to figure out how to do the equivalent with the all-electronic thermostat we have now.

In the days of the first SWMBO I just bent the pointer of the bimetal thermometer on the thermostat and the mercury switch attachment too so both were about 5 degrees high.

"The warden" was satisfied that she was keeping the temperature where she wanted it to be, and I was cooler and more comfortable.

Jeff

You could have just tilted the thermostat off level to the 5 degree error. Of course this information is now obsolete with all-electronic thermostats. Bob

What you need is a little heater in the back of the thermostat, next to the thermistor. Calibration would be tricky 8-) . Bob