Coronavirus, Sasha found, still CAM... and a poll

[steve-in-kville]

Vote for all that apply and discuss as needed.

[steve-in-kville]

68 guests online? Really?

[mike]

68 guests online? Really?

You and me and 66 Russians

[MaxPC]

I wasn't sure whether our weather - EBS radio counted but we have one. It's really a necessity when traveling.

[steve-in-kville]

My parents had a weather radio that alerted them to bad weather in the area.

Remember fire/police scanners? If you wanted to know what was going on around you, you had to listen. No looking up dispatch logs on a smartphone! Now even encrypted channels can be livestreamed.

[MaxPC]

Counting me that would lower the Russian count to 65

[Josh]

163 votes? At least we know what the Russians are doing

[steve-in-kville]

In Soviet Russia, you don't vote in the poll, the poll votes on you!

[Ken]

I worked in the Peace Corps in rural Guatemala from 1987 - 1989 which was before the internet age (or at least the world wide web) and mostly before laptop computers and cell phones. As I was leaving a couple volunteers were showing up with primitive laptops but they were mostly just good for typing and games as there was no internet to connect to.

The only English-language news was if you could find a day-old Miami Herald in a larger town. Peace Corps had subscriptions to Newsweek for all volunteers but we got those about 2 weeks late. The only way to make a phone call home was to go to the GUATEL phone company office in a larger town, fill out a little paper form with your name and the number you wanted to call in the states, and then you would sit in the waiting room until your name was called and you would go to a little booth to receive your call. Big hassle so I only did that about once every other month. The nearest phones were about 1/2 hour from my house. In an emergency they would send you a telegram. All the rural post offices doubled as telegraph offices. You would pay a couple cents per word to send a telegram and it would have to be in Spanish. Some messenger kid would come find you when you received a telegram. I had a good friend who was serving in Niger. It took about 4 weeks for letters to travel between Guatemala and Niger so we had a hard time keeping in touch.

Now Peace Corps volunteers all over the world bring their cell phones and laptops/tablets and just buy local SIM cards from wherever they are. There is almost no populated place on the planet anymore that doesn't have cell service. Other than the food and scenery it's almost like you never left home. Everyone is still texting all their friends, doing social media, watching news and sports online. The world has REALLY shrunk in the past several decades.

[steve-in-kville]

Its funny, I think back to pre-smartphone days, like flip phones and even the early Blackberry sliders. I had the attitude that if you wanted to talk to me, call me don't text. Now, if the phone rings and I don't recognize the number, I hit ignore. Many times if it is someone I know, but its not an immediate friend of family member, I let it go to voicemail.

But then keep in mind, due to the nature of my work, I have two email accounts to watch, two phones plus text messaging to reply to plus actually have to talk to people in real life. It gets exhausting!