Usenet

When Speakeasy was taken over by Megapath, my Usenet service stopped working. As I was otherwise preoccupied, I didn't get around to calling them for a while, but after some persistence I managed to get an answer from someone who told me that it still worked, but the username and password had been changed. The only problem was that the new credentials don't work any better than the old ones did.

At that point a pack of work problems pounced on me and I got distracted. More months passed, until last week it occurred to me to see if there might be a news server somewhere out there I could use with my ancient text-mode newsreader, nn.

There is: 202.177.16.121. Tracerouting suggested it is in Japan, but it's actually in Hong Kong. So, at a time when I have people pressuring me to join F***book, I am back on Usenet.

Television is only a fad, Norm Ruby, a late colleague of mine at WUNR/WBOS, used to say thirty years ago.

Emotional parabola

Something happened to me a couple months ago that had me thinking I was on my way to orbit. Unfortunately, the third stage failed to ignite a few days ago, and I crash-landed in eastern Siberia last night.

I'm staggering a bit, but they say any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

Now, which is the way to Krasnoyarsk?