Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Everyone with a Nextel phone, please stand up.

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2002 06:27:42 -0500

Everyone with a Nextel  phone, please stand up.

By Jason Carr
An ABC12.com Exclusive — (6/28/01) --
OK, that's it. Everyone with a Nextel  phone, please stand up.

Congratulations, you were just nominated
to stand in front of the Curmudgeon's
verbal firing squad. Assume the position
so my henchmen can cuff your hands
behind your backs and place blindfolds around your heads -- with your
Nextel phones stuck to your ears, naturally.

Ready ... aim ...

What's that? Your last request is to know why I'm being so evil? All right.
I can answer that.

For the witnesses present who maybe don't know, Nextel phones are
really two-way radios (which used to be called "walkie-talkies") disguised
as regular old cell phones. Every time one person radios another person
on these phones, they BEEP-BEEP! ... followed by unintelligible garble
so fritzed that it makes Charlie Brown's teacher sound like Sir Laurence
Olivier playing Hamlet on stage.

A sample Nextel exchange, overheard at a restaurant the other day:

BEEP-BEEP!

"Tdfkgjhdlfh nddi gfpwojg huuotppp lkkk uuoobma deegrah."

"What? Say it again. It's crowded in here."

BEEP-BEEP!

"I SARGHH, WHAARRGFULLO GUVVEET LKKK UUOMMNA
DEEGRAH?"

"Huh?"

Stop! For the love of all that is holy, please, Mr. Guy At The Next Table,
stop subjecting all of us around you to the torture that is your
"conversation." I mean, people on cell phones talking loudly to a party on
the other end (whom we can't hear, which prevents successful
eavesdropping) are bad enough. I am guilty of that myself.

But we definitely don't need to hear BEEPS and gibberish and "What?
What? What? What? What? What? What?"

AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHH!

Just contact the person using the telephone feature! Remember the
phone? Dial a number and a voice answers? Stop acting out your
walkie-talkie Smokey and the Bandit fantasies with the rest of us as
your captive audience! If you didn't hear your Nextel buddy the first four
times, you're not likely to understand him the next 46 times.

Ready ... aim ... fire -- at the phones!

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

And the beeps have gone silent. Oh, joyous day. Can I get a witness?

http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/features/062801_FT_curmudgeon.html

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---

From: "Richard E. Willimon" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 09:34:00 -0500

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20021105_531.html
 Using a high-energy laser weapon developed by TRW Inc., the U.S. Army said
it shot down an artillery shell in flight on November 4, 2002 for the first
time ever in a test over New Mexico

Whats next?

Richard W.

---

From: "Todd Ellis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 10:06:22 -0500

Semi-related, Lockheed Sanders in Taxachussetts has for several years
manufactured artillery radar systems that were used to track incoming rounds
so that computerized return volleys could disable an opponent's battery
before they were able to range-in.  Now we have the 2002 version of "shields
up, Mr. Sulu!"

What was even cooler to me was JOINTSTARS.  This is, if my memory doesn't
fail me, a Boeing 767 with synthetic aperture side looking radar that would
permit ground mapping.  You could actually pick out formations of soldiers,
tanks, artillery batteries, and anything else being covered by netting,
triple jungle canopies, etc.  Call in the F15Es from North Carolina's own
Seymour Johnson AFB to drop some ground-to-mud cluster munitions, and sleep
another night.

Todd Ellis
  -----Original Message-----
  From: Richard E. Willimon [mailto:[email-masked]]
  Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 9:34 AM
  To: [email-masked]
  Subject: [NEXTEL-1] http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20021105_531.html

  http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20021105_531.html
  Using a high-energy laser weapon developed by TRW Inc., the U.S. Army said
  it shot down an artillery shell in flight on November 4, 2002 for the
first
  time ever in a test over New Mexico

  Whats next?

  Richard W.

  Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

---

From: Jack Daniel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2002 07:10:42 -0800

Duck hunting will never be the same......

==============================================

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From: "Gerard G. Cook" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 10:25:45 -0500

and some idiots somewhere want to get froggy with us?  we would have to lock
up the technology if possible.
  -----Original Message-----
  From: Todd Ellis [mailto:[email-masked]]
  Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 10:06 AM
  To: [email-masked]
  Subject: RE: [NEXTEL-1]

  Todd Ellis
    -----Original Message-----
    From: Richard E. Willimon [mailto:[email-masked]]
    Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 9:34 AM
    To: [email-masked]
    Subject: [NEXTEL-1]

    http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20021105_531.html
    Using a high-energy laser weapon developed by TRW Inc., the U.S. Army
said
    it shot down an artillery shell in flight on November 4, 2002 for the
first
    time ever in a test over New Mexico

    Whats next?

    Richard W.

        Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
              ADVERTISEMENT

---

From: "Bill Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 15:47:58 -0500

What was even cooler to me was JOINTSTARS. 

That canoe stuck underneath JSTARS for the Synthetic Aperture Radar
doesn't look nearly as cool as the AWACS rotating Radome though..