adespoton

@adespoton@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When is it okay to drop out of college?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  As someone who does IT interviews, the degree (any bachelors degree) is what gets you to my interview, unless you’ve got a really good portfolio and a decade of experience.

  At that point, the only things I care about are: what do you know, how well do you communicate/work with others, how do you learn and what motivates you. The degree just shows that you have demonstrated critical thinking skills and the persistence to work the system.

  If you can do that without the degree… well, you can try wrapping up the courses you’ve got into a certificate or five (often the courses taken can count towards multiple certifications) and then focus on what you actually want to do.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the thing that resembles a camera shoe under the handset holder found on telephones with a handset used for?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Exactly this. It’s called a “hook” and when the phone is “off the hook” that’s the thing it is off of. Being off the hook means the phone is powered up and connected to the local loop. When the phone is “on hook” that means it is disconnected from the loop and awaiting the pulsed ring signal.

  Desk phones have a reversible hook so that it keeps the button depressed when the phone is in the cradle but doesn’t catch when you attempt to pick it up.

  On modem signals in the old days, the + was equivalent to “flashing” the hook, or quickly disconnecting and reconnecting to the loop, and the AT command H1 told the modem to go “on hook” while H0 told it to go “off hook”.

  Back before the DTMF network, when everyone used pulse modulated phones, the “pulses” were caused by going in and off hook in a specific pattern. You could actually make a phone call from a rotary payphone by flashing the hook in the pattern that mimicked the rotary dial pulsing the line as it rotated back to home position.

  In the really old days, the hand crank served much the same purpose, but actually supplied electricity to the local loop; when the phone was on hook (which was a big metal thing the earpiece sat in) someone else turning the crank would make all the phones on the loop ring; you picked up if the ring matched the number of rings for your extension.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨So uhh.. how often should I be washing me towels?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Which towels are we talking about, and how frequently do they get used?

  Bath towels, hand towels and dish drying towels will all get dirty at different rates, and get/stay wet at different rates.

  Towels should smell clean (clean, not perfumy) and be dry and not feel like they’ve got something on them. The more time a towel stays wet, the more often you wash it. If it gets noticeably dirty, you wash it. This could be anywhere from once a day to never, if it’s just decorative and you never use it.