Youtube hearted comments of roachtoasties (@roachtoasties).

We need the rain after several weeks of no rain. After years of drought, it will take plenty more of this to make up for it.
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Those are the old TSPS positions. The lower right corner is where an operator's right hand would spend most of its time, typing in phone or calling card numbers. Above that there were two rows of buttons for the type of call (collect, third number, person-to-person, etc.). From what I recall, the red lights on the top row indicated the call coming from a pay phone. White lights, the call was from a non-pay phone. An operator could hold three calls in those slots where paper tickets could be held for active calls and vertical buttons in the middle. Most all calls, though, could just be let go (released), and not held at the position. To release a call, the button was near the lower left. The display was just numbers. I believe these positions faded from use in the late 1980's. Now, an operator, has got to be a person in front of a desktop PC with a couple monitors, just like the rest of us. I can't even remember the last time I called an operator. There might be an office or two of telephone operators somewhere in the U.S., but technology and the business has long moved on.
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Lots of earthshaking work is being done in high rise office buildings. What would we do without a perfect photograph of a spoonful of cornflakes? This reminds me of my first job at Taco Bell. Once in a while a customer would come in and ask for their food to look like the picture. One time we had some old display pictures in back, and I gave the customer that. They didn't think that was funny. I managed to work my entire life in Los Angeles (mainly I.T.) without being in a building that was over three floors, and the highest my office has been is the second floor. It's been a low rise life for me.
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I just got the card yesterday. They no longer send it in the sliding box. The card came in a dark envelope and was glued to a piece of paper. Nothing fancy at all. I thought it was junk mail before I opened it. If you really want one of those slide boxes, I got one with another debit card last year (Revolut). I threw that box out, as I have enough crap in my house.
4
I think I've reached a point in life where I don't have to choose a hotel on East Hastings. Actually, a couple years ago I stayed at the Pan Pacific on Canada Place. The price wasn't bad, mainly because I was traveling off season in early December. If you can swing that, and don't mind the weather that time of year, just do it. I've even stayed at the Hyatt next to RBC Royal Centre in late October. It wasn't horribly expensive either. Good video.
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I think the writing was on the wall in the 1980's, but nobody was sure when telephone operators would basically vanish. Technology and the business basically created a slow and agonizing good-bye, as operator offices slowly closed and remaining operators either had to transfer to another office (which might require moving) or being laid off. The final nail in the coffin came in the 2000's as smart phones and VOIP technologies evolved. Now people don't even want to answer the phone since most are robocalls. We communicate in other ways. Even assistive technologies evolved for users who need them. That left the operators either needing to learn a new skill, maybe working at the cellphone store, being let go or retiring early. Resistance or denying this was happening doesn't work. It's best I keep my brief experience working for AT&T (less than three years) to myself, but I felt no love or feeling important from AT&T managers. It was like "now that we hired you, lets figure out a way to fire you." I eventually moved on to an information technology career elsewhere, with AT&T just being a distant memory for me.
3
I got off the waiting list a week ago. Toward the end the list was advancing at over 15,000 per day, so things have sped up enormously. Of course, now that Robinhood is crashing, I have doubts more than ever about the service. To be safe, have other brokerage accounts, and only keep a tiny portion of your stocks in Robinhood.
3
I have a couple old Radio Shack scanners that usually sit unused in a closet. In the 1990's you could scan frequencies in the 800 MHz range in the U.S. and listen to cellular calls. As you mentioned, using a scanner you'll only get to listen to a small portion of the call until it was handed off to another frequency. Listening to bits and pieces of calls quickly became boring.
2
Not worth it. With restaurants closed, aside from the McDonald's drive up, hotels closed, tourist spots closed, airlines closed, etc., etc., etc., who needs it.
2
I watched this again after a year. An interesting perspective of the time. It wasn't only voice recognition that basically ended the need for telephone company operators, but it was how the business and technology evolved, to the smartphone and beyond. It must have been in the late 90's when I called a department store. An automated voice asked me what department I wanted to be connected to. I kept saying "televisions." After three or four tries, I got an automated response saying "connecting to foundations" (women's undergarments). I still laugh about that.
2
We'll never have a paperless office, so forget the predictions. Everyone where I work has one or two PC's (maybe more) and two monitors, with networked all-in-one printers/faxes/scanners/photocopiers everywhere. They're churning out paper all the time, and will be, until the world is out of trees. We also have a supply room, like where you interviewed this woman. Any employee can go down to it to pick up forms, and even more paper, along with stuff to help you with your paper (folders, staplers, notebooks, paperclips, pens, etc., etc., etc., etc.). In fact, there's an old storage closest next to my office. It's big. It ends up being a dumping grounds for paper and supplies that are no longer needed or forgotten. There are items and documents going back farther than when this video was made (1979). The stuff can be thrown out, but nobody has the motivation to do it.
2
Good video. Us from the U.S. haven't been allowed in Canada since March 2020. Hopefully that ends soon, so I can travel again to Vancouver.
1
The tapping is totally stupid. Not worth it as every other brokerage that offers a cash management account (Schwab, Merrill Edge, TD Ameritrade, E-Trade, IBKR Lite, etc.) offers a debit card with no wait. If you want something near 1.8% interest at those places, just find a money market mutual fund within the account and move your money into it. Another reason the tapping is more than idiotic, is if everyone tapped 1,000 times a day, the net result of that would be a zero effect on what place anyone has in line. We're all spinning our wheels for nothing. I've moved up from about 205,000 to about 178,000 since October. It will be a long time before I can apply. I'm estimating they process about 2,000 - 2,500 applications per business day. The line is now over 1,000,000. At this rate, customers near the end of the line will need to wait for something like two years. Anyway, since no-commission stock trades have become the norm, and other brokerages offer more investment options than Robinhood, the main reason to trade with Robinhood (free trades) has faded.
1
There's no need to wear our your fingers tapping every day for the debit card. The wait list has been advancing by about 17,000 per day. Things have sped up. This morning I'm at 38,000. If things keep moving like this, I should be able to apply in a few days.
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