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P.S. A Column On Things

BY PAUL E. SCHINDLER, JR. I am from Portland, Oregon, Beaumont '66, Benson High '70, MIT '74. Some things are impossible to know, but it is impossible to know these things.

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Dormphone Days

All of my memories of Dormphone are fond; it was a major formative experience in my life. I know it is now Dormline, but when I was there, it was Dormphone, or formally the Dormitory Telephone System (DTS).

Dormphone never had to recruit technicians; instead you were “tapped” by an existing technician, in my case Kenneth T. Pogran. It was a process akin to being tapped for a secret society, minus the humiliation of initiation.

Or perhaps not.

When I started, I spent a lot of time using a special tool to remove the dust from Strowger switches in the exchange (switch), located in the basement of Walker Memorial next to WTBS.  The switch was bequeathed to MIT by John Hancock Life when they upgraded their internal system.

The dusting job was made easier by listening to Bye, Bye Miss American Pie among other hits from 1971 on the WTBS line that ran through the exchange.

One of my other early jobs could have been considered initiation; I was assigned the task of placing the weekly updates from the Bell System into a multi-volume set of loose-leaf binders called the Bell System Practices. They contained instructions on every aspect of running a phone system, often including lavishly well-crafted illustrations.

As as person who was thrilled by learning arcane information, I enjoyed (among many other things) learning the color coding of the 25-pair cable used to install five-button office phones.

And I will never forget the first time I stood in the exchange and listened as the marvelous machine that was a step-by-step exchange loudly translated a set of rotary dialed numbers into a telephone connection.

Of course I also enjoyed walking or crawling through the bowels of the Institute, sometimes drilling through two-foot thick walls to get phone lines where they needed to go; other times just pulling cable, like the 500-pair cable that ran under Mass. Ave.

It was the perfect term-time job for a person who held a First Class Radiotelephone Operators permit and who felt that washing dishes or shelving books was beneath him.

The greatest thing about Dormphone as a job was that you got to decide when you worked and for how many hours. If you needed a few extra bucks for streetcar fare, a movie ticket and some popcorn, you came to school early and worked an hour or two before class. Or in my case, instead of class.

 I needed the money, since my parents only contributed $800 (the cost of an education at Portland State) to my $2500 MIT tuition bill (hello $10,000 in debt). Dormphone covered my room, board, books and incidentals, once I ran through the money I made selling my comic book collection.

Dormphone wasn’t all work and no play. Repairing phones allowed you to view a wide variety of interesting dorm rooms, including one full of marijuana plants and another full of partially assembled “black boxes,” handheld devices that allowed a person to make free long-distance calls.

And there was the amusement available in the East Campus dorm (I no longer remember which one) where the telephone junction box was in the shower room. The steam was constantly ruining connections. I don’t know how many showers we delayed or shortened there.

Other than the switches and the BSP pages, there was never a dull moment and often an interesting one, which is why I am fond of my time at Dormphone.

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Paul Schindler On TV

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    my 1972 appearance on WBZ-TV's public access show.

    and my 1974 appearance on WGBH (explaining the Alcator nuclear reactor),

    I've been on local and national TV numerous times, mostly as a game show contestant (I appeared on the game shows Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Scrabble , Win Ben Stein's Money and Merv Griffin's Crosswords) and as an author.
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    Pictures of my game show appearances Here are my journal entries for three of my game show appearances:
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    Paul On The Computer Chronicles

    I was the weekly software reviewer for the late PBS program The Computer Chronicles (1984-1992), as well as a commentator (1987-88) and a regular on what was the Christmas show and became the Annual Buyers Guide show (1985-1999). The show went out of production during its 20th year, in December, 2002. 

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Blogrolling

  • Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American
    An historian offers a calm daily look at the news.
  • Brendan Leonard: Semi-Rad
    A runner/travel writer's consistently brilliant three-dot blog with funny artwork
  • Richard C. Gross at Counterpunch
    Lucid commentary from a former UPI colleague
  • Phil Albinus
    The personal, professional and political musings of my friend and former colleague of the same name
  • David Strom's Web Informant
    David Strom offers IT industry news and analysis.

Favorite Movies

  • My all-time favorite movie:
    Groundhog Day. I have created a fan site that is universally acknowledged to be the best on the Internet dedicated to this work of art.

    All the rest of my favorite movies (Deadline USA, The Paper, CitizenKane) are Journalism movies.

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Paul's Permanent Content

  • East Side Boy

    East Side Boy

  • Dormphone Days

    Dormphone Days

  • Jon Carroll Cat Columns

    John Carroll Cat Columns

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    Byte Week in Review

  • Paul on the Top Five List

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    Richard Parker Tribute

    Edwin Diamond: An Appreciation

    Edwin Diamond at INS

    Ross Snyder Valedictory

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  • Elsewhere at Schindler.org

    Paul's Prairie Home Companion Script

    Paul's Lo-Cal Peanut Buttter Substitute

    Paul on Merv Griffin's Crosswords

    Paul on Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune

    PS...ACOT BACK ISSUE archives

    Journalism Movies

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    You COULD Pay For This Column

    Journalism Books

    Larry King: Letters From Europe

    Kevin Sullivan on Teaching

    My Prarie Home Companion Script

    Groundhog Day: Best Film Ever

    Women in Journalism Movies

    Larry King: British Journalists

    Paul's Tales of Teaching

    Sam Patch, The Greatest Story Ever Told So Far

    The New Eugene Oregon Show

    Audio Editing Hacks

    Fun with electronic editing. At WTBS, these were called hacks. Back in the 70s they were done with spliced magnetic tape. Now they can be done with electrons.

    Alphabet Medley

    Frank Sinatra/Ella Fitzgerald Duet: I've Got A Crush on You

    Alphabet Song from single sung syllables

    Ian Shoales: The Internet Years

    Schindler Jingle/Dream of a Lifetime

    Parodies By Paul... and Robert

    Yes, I am the Paul Schindler who predicted, in 1985, when the Macintosh was a year old, that it wouldn't be a success in business. I stand by that opinion. You can see Paul Schindler Pans Mac .

    I did an audio summary of my career in radio and on podcasts: 35 Years Before The Mic .

    I won Karl Kassel's voice for my answering machine because I won the listener limerick challenge on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me .

    I, Paul E. Schindler, Jr., am driving my stake in the ground right here. I invented the podcast in March 2000 when I worked at Byte.com for CMP Media.

    Index of Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe appearances in PSACOT .

    See how I looked in a Computer Systems News house ad in 1979

    Paul Schindler Quote Page .

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