Thursday, April 1, 2010

Goodbye to our Analog Keyboards.


Hello All,
In my last letter from Cloverdale I wrote about our village’s transformation from analog telephone to digital, touch tone phones. The switch over has been rather painful but one we all knew was necessary if we wanted our little village in the land between nowhere and somewhere to stay current and modern. In addition to the new touch tone telephones many of us are being forced to do away with our dialing computer keyboards we’ve grown so fond of over the years. Dialing your phone while on the computer was always a nice feature offered by Confederacy Telephone and Telegraph. Mind you, it was a feature we paid dearly for, but such a convenience. One click and the telephone line was connected, then you dialed your number and, as if by magic, the person’s voice you called was heard through your computer’s speakers. Of course the technology wasn’t advanced enough to talk through the computer. Once someone answered your call with a “Hello”, necessity required you to pick up the actual phone to carry on a two way conversation.

Everyone will be gathering at the village centre tonight to turn in their old rotary dial phones and keyboards. A truck from “World Rotary Relief” will be parked to collect our old technology for delivery to third world countries that still use rotary phones. I hear such phones are no longer produced in many countries and places like North Dakota and the Yukon are desperate for assistance. Of course, there is always a need for our phones in China and certain suburbs of Paris.

After tonight’s ‘analog cleansing' of Cloverdale, Confederacy Telephone and Telegraph will host a “Welcome to the 21st Century" party at the village's two pubs, The Kicking Donkey and The Hairy Lemon. Villagers will be treated to drinks and pub food. Along with demonstrations of touch tone dialing there are rumors CT and T will have the internet connected to one of the pub’s monitors to demonstrate internet speeds much higher than we are accustom to over dial up.

Many in the village think this transformation is moving ahead too quickly. They wonder if we are losing our traditional values, and with those a part of who we are, in the process of ‘getting connected’. Some in the village have sworn off technology all together. All of that is OK. Cloverdale can accommodate everyone’s viewpoints. We are an accepting village that prides itself on staying ‘informed’, even if informed means just learning that men landed on the moon!

All the Best,
Victor

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Sign Spotting in Cloverdale

Dear Readers,

One of my hobbies as a life long resident of Cloverdale is Sign Spotting. I'm sure you've heard of Train Spotting and Plane Spotting where rabid enthusiasts of a certain genre take their cameras on excursions to capture on film images of what they've spotted on their journeys. Well, I'm a sign spotter. I enjoy long walks through the village looking for unusual signs put up by people on purpose, hoping to illicit a certain effect or innocently and not realizing their sign may have other meanings.

Below are the first of many signs in my slowly growing collection. I hope you enjoy seeing them and realizing that the people of Cloverdale are a bit off center at best and off the charts at worst but all very lovable and eccentric in their own way.

Taken on the back fence of the Tealer Bloswell Software Company. Their software firm sits on the Coastal Highway four miles outside of Cloverdale.

This pictures was actually taken at Tamworth on Tide and not Cloverdale as I may have led you to believe in the introduction to this letter. It's a sign near one of the picnic areas near the beach on the Sea of Sorrows. I really have no explanation, which makes this sign one of the best in my collection.

A sign on one of the digging roads you find in the hills around Cloverdale. I think its a Confederacy of Dunces original. It's awesome, wouldn't you agree?

And of course this sign I found at St. Bartholomew's fund raising Jumble Sale a year ago. I thought it was for sale and asked the woman sitting at the table next to it for the price. She told me it wasn't for sale, it was to remind parents that their children needed to be attended to and not allowed to wander through the Church "Bringing Satan into a Holy Place," as she put it.
You could tell by her appearance that life hadn't been kind. Her face was drawn in like she'd been weaned on a pickle.

Anyway, I'm hoping you enjoyed a few of the signs found in a walk around Cloverdale (and surrounding communities).

Simply,
Victor