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Phone of the Day: Nearby Kohls | Undisclosed location

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This was taken at a local Kohls, just a little north of where I live. This is located in massively redeveloped area of box stores when it was just all trees. I can’t remember when it was built, I’m going to bet before the 2009 bankruptcy of Nortel. (Remember a similar post of noticing Mitel sets of their alleged “Do we stand by our man?” post bankruptcy mentality across any former Nortel sites.) Newer stores went with the “screw them” approach of building new stores with Mitel and older stores still run Avaya Blue.

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Rants: at&t Acquires TimeWarner (They THINK They Can)

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AT&T (nee SBC, nee Southwestern Bell) dropped a story Friday evening while some of the East Coast was disrupted by the DDOS attack that they had intentions to acquire Time Warner, the owner of CNN (the Cheap News Network), HBO, Warner Pictures, etc. for about $85 billion dollars.

Of course, this is subject to approval by the Federal Communications Commission, and similar to the NBCUniversal/Comcast acquisition from GE in 2010; expect concessions and terms of sale to also follow.

This deal however, does not include Time Warner Cable (historically branded for it’s Road Runner triple play services) which was spun off several years ago, but kept the name and the “sight and sound” logo.

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POTD: Avaya Red 8410 DCP Telset Attitash Grand Summit Resort | Bartlett, NH

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This was taken at the front desk at the Attitash Grand Resort Conference Center in Bartlett, NH. This area in the building is where you can only spot the digital sets. The nearby bar, conference rooms and rooms use analog sets. There is no evidence of any attendant consoles ether.

I’ve frequented this facility during the spring time over the last four years for an annual conference. I no longer attend, and I like the place, so I went for the vacation this week. The people I used to see at the front desk were not working (or is no longer working there) to see if I could see the switch room.

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POTD: Western Electric Crank Telephone | Cannon Mountain Tram Station | Franconia, NH

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This is another crank telephone I spotted at Cannon Mountain. There is at least three of these and after Monday, I might had spotted and have at least a capture of them all from my visits over the last couple of years.

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As you can tell in this second picture, there is a Shure like gooseneck mic, I wonder if phone is really a wiring box for intercom as my state government is known to be very frugal.

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Avaya Windstar Van – Lego Edition – 2008

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I have not shared my Lego creations or my passion on this site, but because it blends into this subject, I’m posting this.

I built this around 2008, about the time I finished school and had some time on my hands.  In my grandmother’s basement (where I used to live) was where my Lego stuff was at that point in time. As with any bustling little Lego community, fire trucks, police cruisers, news gathering vehicles and street sweepers, construction vehicles and interconnect vehicles. (I own at least a hundred kits, at least a couple dozen “bulk” buckets and/or storage containers featuring Lego pieces and not to mention buying bulk pieces at the Lego Store – read below and acquiring early American pieces on eBay or thrift shops.)

This vehicle represented Avaya at that time. Most of Avaya’s support fleet were white colored Ford Windstars with the Avaya logo located on the side and back. Using Avery labeling, I printed them out that way. (I strongly suggest printing in photo paper on a photo printer for better results.

When I was about twelve, I broke a in house rule of keeping kits seperate to any other bricks I acquired separately. As a result many kits that I had as a preteen were already wrecked and rebuilt into other things. The reason was there was no Lego Store at that time and there was no such thing as Pick a Brick where you could fill up a cup that could look like candy and getting random Lego pieces. (Its not the bricks that matter, its the special pieces.

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No foot long boards or Merlins living in the back of this truck sadly, mostly was driven empty.

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As you could tell, the back were just regular 1×2 stud bricks attached on a hinge piece that I didn’t have many spares to. The vehicle is not even remotely close to a Windstar. But talking to professional Lego people, and employees of a local indoor Legoland, the “minfigure” scale is very difficult as they are by default 6 feet tall. (In recent years, they made petite size figures – ones with no moving legs, and finally other figures like infants have come to the world of Lego.)

The van has since been wrecked because a) Avaya has changed their decals shown here; and b) most minifigs in my little world don’t use Avaya or even Cisco, they have their own little vendor called Clicktel. They had already given up on Avaya way before the real world finally cried “surrender!”