Remember when phones where free?

[ilikegunspdx]

That's amazing Mapquest still exists. Last time I heard it mentioned was around the year 2001. I used it around that time.

 

[DeanMk]

Sorry, forget I am getting old, $100.

...wait....trevi was asking because he didn't know what a "c note" was?
I thought he was saying he was amazed at the price.
...let's hope no one ever owes him 2 bits or a sawbuck.

 

[Alexx1401]

Mapquest is still around. I have it on my phone because it's not Google. Works fine.

Wow, I had no idea it still was around. I have gotten so used to Google did not know. Since I use an Android phone all the google stuff is of course there when you get the phone. Kid of surprised they did not just buy it.

 

[ilikegunspdx]

Wow, I had no idea it still was around. I have gotten so used to Google did not know. Since I use an Android phone all the google stuff is of course there when you get the phone. Kid of surprised they did not just buy it.

I noticed Tomtom is still around in one form or another also. If you track something using an itag for example it uses tomtom as the map. We have an itag on our dogs collar.

 

[Alexx1401]

I noticed Tomtom is still around in one form or another also. If you track something using an itag for example it uses tomtom as the map. We have an itag on our dogs collar.

Damn, that's another one I had not seen or heard about in a hell of a long time. Brings back memories of those stand alone GPS units that used to be so pricey. Wife is blessed with the same ability to get lost as me
so I bought her one of those units that could move from vehicle to vehicle. We had a couple of them over the years. Funny looking back on what we paid for them back then and it just comes on even the cheapest phone now.

 

[made in china]

On a related tangent....

99% of the calls I receive on my smartphone are spam or dead line, and all are spoofing my 425 area code to trick me into answering.

What sucks is I can't just ignore every call. I can report them as spam and block, but they constantly change their phone number

 

[Mikej]

On a related tangent....

99% of the calls I receive on my smartphone are spam or dead line, and all are spoofing my 425 area code to trick me into answering.

What sucks is I can't just ignore every call. I can report them as spam and block, but they constantly change their phone number

I have a land line that gets boo-koo spam calls. I've come to the point I answer them some times. With...Let's Go Brandon, only not exactly. it's pretty funny, but I feel it's got my number remoed from some lists.

 

[Alexx1401]

On a related tangent....

99% of the calls I receive on my smartphone are spam or dead line, and all are spoofing my 425 area code to trick me into answering.

What sucks is I can't just ignore every call. I can report them as spam and block, but they constantly change their phone number

I get a few weekly on both of my phones. I have a separate ring for work and Wife. So those are the only ones that I will hear when I am trying to sleep. I gave up blocking the spam as it seemed to do nothing. Guess they do some kind of generated stuff to keep the robot calls coming in? A few of them stay on long enough for the voice mail to pick up the tail end of the call. I have to guess the rest disconnect before the voice mail starts to record and they just show up as missed calls.

 

[Flopsweat]

On a related tangent....

99% of the calls I receive on my smartphone are spam or dead line, and all are spoofing my 425 area code to trick me into answering.

What sucks is I can't just ignore every call. I can report them as spam and block, but they constantly change their phone number

If they're not in my contacts I don't answer the phone. Plus my new phone labels all of the spoofed numbers "Spam Risk" so I just tap a button and the ringer mutes. Eff 'em.

 

[DeanMk]

Wow, I had no idea it still was around. I have gotten so used to Google did not know. Since I use an Android phone all the google stuff is of course there when you get the phone. Kid of surprised they did not just buy it.

If you have a PC and use Bing as the search engine, I believe the maps they use are Mapquest.
Sure as heck ain't Google Earth.
I'm a Google guy. I like using Earth....maybe I should change my name to Barney.

 

[Alexx1401]

If you have a PC and use Bing as the search engine, I believe the maps they use are Mapquest.
Sure as heck ain't Google Earth.
I'm a Google guy. I like using Earth....maybe I should change my name to Barney.

Other than using Windows as I never learned anything else, I tend to avoid MS. I certainly hate the what the google boys do with their money but its like Amazon. Its just so easy I just roll with it for now. I did a while ago try that Duck Duck Go just to "try" something else. It screwed up all kinds of stuff and I had to remove it. Suspect google purposely made their stuff not play well with it but I am too lazy and uninterested to try to find ways to work around it. Since my cell phones are google I have always just used them for directions. That google earth thing I have played with some at work when had free time and it is amazing. Looked up places I used to live decades back and could often find them and see what they look like now. It was pretty damn impressive.

 

[Member 52301]

That's right. The telephone company (there was only one, Ma Bell) used to own all the phones. When you discontinued service, they used to come get it. I don't remember exactly when you were first able to buy your own telephone. Sometime in the '70s? @Catherine1, I bet you would know. Few people remember how it used to be. Long distance calling was really expensive. You counted the minutes and kept your calls short. Nowadays people think nothing of talking to someone anywhere in the country for as long as they want. Of course, you pay much more up front for basic service. But, taking inflation into account, maybe not so much more. Things have definitely improved in terms of personal communication, at least technologically, except that it's much easier for them to eavesdrop on you.

Here's an interesting article for you youngsters who have no idea how it used to be:

Breakup of the Bell System - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I do not know if the telephone company came and took the old telephones. (Rented way back when (?) or bought OUTRIGHT from 'them' with ONE FLAT FEE = one purchase price way back when before I was born.)

You could just MOVE the telephone to your next home IF your new home was with the same EXACT telephone company in the same vicinity. I remember that in MD.

I do not remember the NY telephone company since I was one year old when we moved to MD.

We had the same telephone company (C&P) in Maryland so when my parents sold the big house when my Mom couldn't do the stairs without putting in an elevator - they moved to a one level home - they took that telephone with them. Same C&P telephone area in MD.

They took the same one BIG black telephone with them. Later on, my Mom got another black telephone to put in my parents bedroom.

When I was a USN - Nam Era bride and I lived in the tiny beach cottage across from the water in VA - I did not hook up a telephone. I walked a block down the way - same side of the street to a public telephone. I wrote letters and I still made a few telephone calls. C&P Telephone Company was IN Virginia at the time too.

When I built the house in the early 70's in my late husband's home state - farm/lake country - Great Lakes region... I had a white WALL telephone with a ROTARY DIAL put on the kitchen wall close to the den, dining room, downstairs bathroom and it was a LARGE kitchen. I picked white so I could change the color in the kitchen if I ever wanted to change it. I had a LONG telephone cord on purpose too. It was a curly cord not a straight cord.

It was a TINY telephone company and just about EVERYTHING WAS LONG DISTANCE including the COUNTY Sheriff's Department HQ, etc.

The dividing LINE was one rural TOWNSHIP road which SPLIT up 2 different townships and anything SOUTH of that one road (Middle of the road!) was with ANOTHER telephone company too! I was NOT used to that crapola at all!

The telephone book was the SIZE of a small book and THIN like a bunch of menus put together!

I could GET a PRIVATE LINE and that cost more but I got it. I NEVER HAD a shared line aka a PARTY LINE growing up. But in the tiny village close to me, 2.5 miles from my rural house, it was common from what I gathered at the time. So it was common in the tiny VILLAGE and in rural areas in that part of the state!

Early 70's - I only built one house with my late husband back in HIS home state.

(OUT west, I built this all alone.)

The wall telephone back in the early 70's that I got was from the TELEPHONE COMPANY and I paid for it outright on one of my telephone bills. I did not 'lease it' or rent it. I did have LINE COVERAGE and at the time it was FREE with them. There was FINE PRINT there too!

I honestly do NOT remember being able to BUY telephones all by themselves until years later on especially when they FINALLY WENT to push button telephones which MOST STATES and in big cities had LONG before what was AVAILABLE in my rural area.

Early 70's: I did REQUEST and got UNDERGROUND LINES put in when I built.

UNDERGROUND ELECTRIC AND TELEPHONE lines were put in.

They had NO natural gas lines 'there' in the boonies shy of one big gas line on one big rural COUNTY road. I did not want natural gas or propane fuel anyway.

That one big rural county road natural gas line did supply some but NOT all villages too.

They did have natural gas lines in the CITIES and in suburbia but I did not live there or decide to build in those areas. I built close to my late husband's tiny village that he lived in from 1953 and on when he came to the USA. Two and a half miles from his old rural village. I decided to give IT a chance in his home state.

I paid EXTRA MONEY for my underground electric and telephone lines but it was not that much. ONE TIME FEE. My late husband and I wanted that done due to the WIND and year round storms especially in the winter time. Blizzard country and ice storms - HIGH snow drifts even with snow fencing put up. NE storms, Canadian storms and lake front weather issues.

They brought in a BRAND NEW BIG telephone pole to put on the edge of my one acre of land on that narrow township road.

They had NOTHING but rotary dial for a LONG TIME even though some other places went to the PUSH BUTTON telephones for land lines.

IT took us some time to even get 911 so you DIALED THE ZERO for the operator. I have NO clue when 911 came in SPECIFICALLY where I USED to live even though some larger cities had IT in use in that area and in the same STATE YEARS before me. I CRS now on the exact year!

Plus it was in Maryland and New York (I can't remember Maine now.) because when I visited there - they already had their PUSH BUTTON telephones and 911 system long before I did. I had to STARE at the telephone when I went to use it. LOL BUT those friends had a BELL SYSTEM in their rural area and in the SUBURBS/CITIES and not some dinky JOKE of a telephone company where if it rained too hard - your telephone MIGHT not work! I am NOT kidding you here!

I do remember dialing ZERO for the SD HQ for a deputy 2 times in 30 plus years as I stated!

When my late husband and I completely finished the second floor and moved our main bedroom - sleeping area from the DOWNSTAIRS DEN to upstairs... I did BUY a second black land line from the telephone company to PUT on the second floor in the master bedroom. I did NOT have a telephone in the full basement, big garage or small barn. Same 70's time frame.

Years down the road, the PUSH BUTTON telephone system went in even though it was much later that other telephone companies. So the OLD telephones went bye bye. I think for a time frame that I could still use the OLD one but I CRS now.

When that time frame came, I bought the PUSH BUTTON telephones from OFFICE MAX which was/is like a STAPLES office supply company in the city.

One for the wall telephone - kitchen. One for the living room. One for the upstairs master bedroom. I did have EXTRA telephone outlets PUT IN when I built the house too. I had extra outlets throughout the large house but I only USED 3 total in the house later on.

The ONLY people that I saw who had BIG normal sized telephone books lived closer to the cities even in some rural areas back in farm/lake country. I did BUY one big telephone book up there, had it mailed to me, and the rest of them were given to me when my friends got their NEW big telephone books. One of my former bosses who was originally from PA gave me one of his extra LARGE LOCAL in state telephone books too.

Don't laugh too hard but I lived in my former house for SEVERAL YEARS before I was given a HOUSE NUMBER for my rural road. I was just RURAL ROUTE such and such and the town's name and state with the ZIP CODE.

The local township fire departments and, later on, EMT squads with them once they were actually FORMED used to say the person's name or farm and such and such ROAD by such and such intersection road. I know that due to my late husband's time on the squad and his teaching there and in even in some OTHER counties and as his time as a VOLUNTEER Captain/Secretary/Treasurer/etc. time frame. He was with them shy of his military time (Overseas.) from the age of 18 years old.

A bunch of ladies and I were Volunteers with them (We had our own name/group.) but I did NOT drive a truck or an ambulance but we did help out.

We did run some drills (Water using hoses and lots of running!) at some events but the trucks and tankers were already there.

Plus my late husband and a couple of firemen helped build - FINISH UP - CUSTOMIZE a WATER tanker truck after it was delivered to the station one year.

They REBUILT and fixed up a really OLD fashioned fire truck for the fair and more as the ANTIQUE truck too.

Many times - J ran a radio at the base. We went in and got coffee and food and took it out in bad weather and at all times of night too. NOT just on sunny days! We did a BUNCH of Volunteer stuff there, many fundraisers, plus I did a lot with the library too.

ADDED MORE HERE:

My OLD rural telephone company, back east, has changed it's name several times since the early 70's. It changed ONE TIME when my late husband was still alive but that company did NOT keep it long.

It changed it's name several times since he died and after I moved out west.

I heard that the company does NOT want to fix their old land lines from some old friends back in that same area too. They get NO help from the RURAL telephone companies or from their public utility folks in charge - .gov folks.

MOST OF THOSE PEOPLE QUIT THEIR LAND LINES DUE TO POOR SERVICE or they basically keep one land line but NEVER USE IT AT ALL and it is there for the OLD TIMERS my age. They keep their cellular numbers PRIVATE and do NOT give them out.

Old Lady Cate

 

[ilikegunspdx]

Thank for that offer! I'll have Wifey do a little search and see if there's something free that will help us know a little more.

Fyi I found these on some weird Amazon sale for $26. See post here:

Good night vision monocular for $26

I have one of these and they are very good (for budget night vision I mean). Can see in total darkness up to about 100 yards (ie it uses built in IR flashlight). Can see satellites and stars you can't see with naked eye. Must hold about 10-12" from your face though, can't hold next to your eye...

www.northwestfirearms.com

 

[DeanMk]

*in reference to Catherine's trip down memory lane*

I still have a white Trim Line with a rotary dial. Made in 1978, according to the ink stamp on the bottom.
It's been my "power outage phone" for years now. For those times when the fancy schmancy one with the built in digital answering machine won't work because no electricity,
I can still dial a number with it, too.
...of course, these days I also have a cell phone, so I haven't used that one in a while now.
Mom and Dad put a phone in the basement some time in the 80's. My dad's shop was down there, so it was easier than coming upstairs and getting greasy hand prints all over the phone in the kitchen....that phone, btw, was also a black dial phone.
We had one of those bolt-on shoulder holders for the hand set, too, for a while. They really worked! =)

Phone in the basement (its a pushbutton)



Example of the old kitchen phone (I'm sure this will be familiar to many of you)