Diving into the Dovetron MPC-1000R Mark II RTTY Terminal Unit

Sometimes you see something that just…you HAVE to have it. Especially if it scratches an itch regarding the interest of the week: RTTY and Teletypes. Earlier this year, I came across the Dovetron MPC-1000R(ish) Mark II and thought it looked so bad ass that I had to have it. It would add a RTTY cross display to my setup as well as maybe add some features? Anyway it came packed well, so lets dig into this thing and see what a nightm..fun time we’ll have with it.

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Like MA BELL…I got the ill communication!

Bell System Logo

So I guess this will be my first test of my Junknet > Mastodon integration. Hopefully it works!

Life has certainly been interesting lately, at least in the social media realm. With Twitter potentially circling the drain, I have set up an account on Mastodon as a backup. While the performance is a little lacking yet, which I totally expect from the likely-unprecedented number of Twitter orphans looking for a new home, I’m really impressed with it so far.

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Another Patch Night, another Long “it broke” night

It seems every couple weeks when I schedule some downtime to do updates and go over things, almost 50% of the time I get stuck on something where a patch or update breaks something, and often in some crazy way. With virtualization, there’s an easy fix: snapshots. But what happens when you test something, looks good, and delete the snapshots? Oops.

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Health Update

Just wanted to put up a quick post; after seeing a couple docs for follow-ups so far, while I have to have more tests done yet, things seem to be OK and no cause for concern. Whew!

Since my last update I’ve improved a ton, to the point that I’m more or less back to normal, save for the bruising and weird leg yet.

“Something’s Wrong”

Back in 2014, when work started doing “wellness initiaves” which included a blood test, I was remotely surprised when some of my tests didn’t come back so great. Nothing major, just more “yellow tags” than I expected. While I was still considered “young”, I was definitely into adulthood, and had zero qualms about eating fast food every other day of the week, and things like my daily coffee was thick with sugar.

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Franklin Institute – Very Early Member Letters

Just when you think finding 70 year old stuff is cool, finding 111 year old stuff is even cooler! These two letters were both addressed to the same person in Philadelphia, as they were likely a “member” back then. The postmarks on the cards match the dates seen.

Just to put things into perspective, if you’re familiar with the Franklin Institute, the older of these letters pre-date the current 1936 building by more than two decades! At the time, they had a building on 7th Street, which is actually still there and had housed the Philadelphia History Museum after the Franklin Institute moved to the current building.

In this first letter, they mention the outing at Woodside Park, which was an amusement park located just outside Fairmount Park in Philadelphia.

Letter from Franklin Institute – Dated August 1911
Franklin Institute Letter dated October 1928; the mention of “car” likely refers to a Trolley

And with a quick search or two, I believe this may have been the grain elevator the second letter refers to! I’m assuming there was a park or place nearby?
(Image from the Philadelphia Free Library)

Postcards – Early Wanamaker Organ & Store, Philadelphia

I was going through some postcards I recently acquired and thought I should post these up. These are the only postcards of the Wanamaker store and Organ that I’ve ever found. The Wanamaker organ is the world’s largest fully-functional musical instrument, and is still at the former Wanamaker’s Store (now Macy’s) in Philadelphia. The organ has been fully restored, and the facade was restored in 2020.

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