A LOUD Amber Alert for ALL of Ohio?!

[Buckeye_Democrat]

Are you f***ing kidding me?!

It was issued for the location: Ohio. (Not for some city or county, or even a group of counties.)

Gee, there's only tens of millions of people and their vehicles here.

Just how many HEART ATTACKS did this loud Amber Akert cause?!

[TwilightZone]

1. You could probably find out what it's for.

Like so -- here's the first result of a 30-second search:

Link to tweet

[Buckeye_Democrat]

2. Thanks, and that's actually somewhat close to me!

It would be nice for the Amber Alert to offer more than... OHIO as the location!

[iemitsu]

3. We have had Amber Alerts for the whole west coast.

Does seems a bit of a large drag net.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

4. Having my smartphone volume turned OFF offered me...

... no reprieve.

I'll have to look into changing something in the settings! Maybe even just turn off all such alerts if it comes to that.

My heart was RACING instantly from the loud alarm!

[iemitsu]

5. I turned off the alerts.

[FarPoint]

6. Yes.

I got mine too... Apparently a 1 year old, domestic dispute issues...51 year old male, Madison Two. Armed and dangerous

[Buckeye_Democrat]

7. I've seen the details since then.

None of those location details were offered in the alert!

I also happened to have the smartphone very close to me so I could hear any vibrations, given that I was trying to relax and the ringer volume was turned OFF.

I hope the child is rescued, obviously.

[FarPoint]

8. I'm working late...

In Centerville/ Dayton area. Doing an IV home Infusion... almost done.😇

[Buckeye_Democrat]

11. Bless you!

Now travel to my home in Northern Montgomery County and check my vital signs, please. Kidding!

[FarPoint]

20. Hahaha

I just got home...live in Clayton.... I had to stop and get take-out from the Buckhorn...

[OilemFirchen]

26. Since it's on your way, next time you're headed south...

could you drop off two pecan chicken breast dinners downtown? You pick the sides. No prob.

TIA!

[FarPoint]

33. Sounds good...

is pecan chicken breast made at the Buckhorn? I never noticed...

[OilemFirchen]

34. It's one of the best dishes in town.

Try it next time and report back.

[FarPoint]

36. We will...

[Buckeye_Democrat]

27. Sounds delicious!

I've ate there a few times in the past, even trying some of their "Rocky Mountain Oysters"... mostly just to say that I've done it! (They were quite good, actually.)

I've had no visitors in about a year, and I've not even went to a restaurant drive-through during that time. And at this point, given my past sacrifices to diligently remain uninfected, I'd probably only let you come inside if you could finally give me a vaccination! (Which I continue to patiently await for my turn.)

[FarPoint]

32. I also have not dined inside a restaurant...just take-out.

I have had my 2 Moderna vaccines...still practicing full covid-19 protocols...

I ordered the fried fish...they have a really good creamy tater sauce too...I have wine at home...They do have Liver and Onions....

[FarPoint]

9. I'm working late...

In Centerville/ Dayton area. Doing an IV home Infusion... almost done.😇

[Cirque du So-What]

10. I pooped a little

Now I want to change my phone setting to avoid that nerve-shattering tonal alert.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

12. Lol! I just changed my settings.

Went to Settings, then Notifications, and then toggled off only "AMBER Alerts" at the bottom.

I could also toggle off "Emergency Alerts" and "Public Safety Alerts", but I'll keep them turned on... for now. The insanely loud alerts never seem to come from those anyway, other than when tornados ripped through my area almost two years ago. And that was indeed helpful because they touched down at night when many people were already asleep.

If I ever become a regular driver, like a truck driver, then maybe Amber Alerts will be turned on again.

[Cirque du So-What]

13. Yeah, well, I haven't changed the setting yet

I might throw the phone against the wall, but I can’t bring myself to turn off the alert. Crazy, huh?

[Buckeye_Democrat]

14. I've been inside buildings outside of my apartment a total...

... of THREE times over the past year, and I rarely drive anywhere. Masked-up each time, timed to avoid others as much as possible, and one time was inside an empty post office lobby late at night to mail my ballot.

It's almost completely pointless for me to be notified about such things anyway. If and when my life changes, then I might participate in such alerts again.

Edit: The irony of trying to be "safe" at home... only to die from a shocking Amber Alert.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

15. Honestly? I don't understand why people have

their phones set to notify them of Amber Alerts, Weather Alerts, Traffic Alerts. A while back I was playing cards in a small group and one woman's phone went off, and noisily at that, about every three minutes. I was ready to strangle her and drop her phone in a toilet.

You really, really, don't need to be apprised of every trivial thing happening out there. If you live in the Midwest, the tornado sirens will let you know to take cover. Other than that, just stop worrying about everything.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

16. I think that you're correct.

I was indeed first notified of the multiple tornadoes that passed through my area by outside sirens. Only later did my phone repeatedly get noisy.

My eyesight isn't the best, but my hearing is excellent. I could still hear every tiny volume and pitch during hearing tests at my recent past jobs, more typical of a young teenager.

You've convinced me. I'm turning ALL of them off.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

19. I'm glad.

While the new technology truly is wonderful, there is a strong aspect of overkill.

I want to write a time-travel story in which someone from this year, or maybe even as early as 2010, goes back to about 1986 and spends the rest of the story complaining about no internet, no texting, no whatever else everyone is doing in the early part of the 21st century.

No plot, which is always my failing when I try to write.

I do love time travel stories and novels. Clearly, if you go to the somewhat distant past, at least before 1980, you'll already know you won't have modern technology. But still, if I were only a better writer I could have fun sending someone from now back to, say 1960. No decent access to photocopying. In case you are interested in that technology and how it has utterly transformed our lives, do read Copies in Seconds by David Owen, which is about Chester Carlson and how he invented photocopying. Honestly, I can no longer make a photocopy without remembering how it all came about, and how phenomenal the technology is. Essentially, this is the first invention since the wheel that does not depend on earlier inventions. Really. In the 1960s photocopying was expensive, and not really available to most people. I recall when I was first in college in 1965, photocopies were something like 25 cents each. A lot of money back then. Now? Pennies. And like a lot of people I own a machine that can print, photocopy, and scan a document to my computer. Talk about living in the future.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

21. Yeah, there's been huge advances in processing information...

... just in my lifetime. Sounds like you're about 20 years older than me, or about the same age as my much-older siblings.

Quite different from old science fiction that seemed to focus on future advances in ENERGY, which hasn't changed nearly as much in the interim.

My oldest sister worked as a legal secretary for nearly 40 years, and her "photocopies" from long ago were always from some kind of pressure-sensitive blue ink material that would allow her to type multiple copies at once. Lol! I still vaguely remember examining that material during some childhood visits to her office.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

22. I'm 72.

If she was calling those things photocopies, she was being obtuse. With all due respect to your sister.

I'm old enough to remember when secretaries typed up something with five or six carbon papers, to make five or six copies. Then there were those spirit copying things, that I recall quite well from high school.

The book Copies in Seconds goes into wonderful detail about all of those earlier copying technologies. It is truly one of the most interesting books I have ever read.

One of the things it talks about is how photocopying transformed offices. Initially, the Xerox corporation placed photocopiers in officers to see how the technology worked. When the went to take them out, so they could improve and upgrade the machines, they had to pry the secretaries off them. Photocopying was so vastly easier and more efficient than typing up multiple carbon copies.

I actually did office work for a couple of the biology teachers in my high school, back in the 1960s, and one of my tasks was to type up tests on the spirit duplicator master. I was an average typist at best, and so my typos were a bit of a problem. Here's a link to the Wiki article on this technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_duplicator

I am still in awe that I can own a small machine that prints and photocopies (plus scanning, which isn't part of this conversation). To me, it is genuinely astonishing. Recently I had to do a financial thing that involved printing out something, signing, it, then scanning to my computer so I could email it back to the originator. Took ten minutes, maybe less. In the not very distant past it would have involved either mailing stuff to me to sign and mail back, or fax stuff. I worked in offices with fax machines, so I remember that technology all too well. And not very long ago I would go off to one of the office stores to send faxes. Not anymore. I can scan and then email

I do love modern technology.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

23. I put "photocopies" in quotation marks for that reason.

She probably NEVER called them that. (She's 74, by the way.)

Carbon paper! That's the term! It was pretty much never used by the time that I graduated from high school.

Yeah, that type of work has been made easier in so many ways! And even the frustrating computer freeze-ups, with inexplicable errors that seemingly lost everything despite efforts to save work progress, seems to be much more of a rarity now too.

Edit:
Going back in further in time, NOVA had an excellent two-part program about the history of writing a few months ago.
One of the most interesting aspects of it, imo, was the invention of the printing press and how the cursive Arabic writing made it nearly impossible for them to emulate it. So they continued to write copies by hand while Europe was churning out copies of information at far faster rates.
Over the next couple centuries, more Europeans were reading books and obviously SOME of them had novel ideas that were inspired by earlier book authors. Then their new ideas were shared, and so on.
And that period coincided with Europe pulling far ahead of Arabia, knowledge and technology-wise.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

28. Oh, my. I would love to watch that program. Alas, PBS is VERY stingy

about allowing the great unwashed to watch them.

A while back I read, actually listened to an audio book, about the development of paper as we know it. Absolutely mind-boggling. For one thing, I learned that paper disintegrate, and we have almost nothing left from more than about a thousand years ago or so. Much of our ancient texts are copies of copies of copies. Maybe even more multiple copies than that.

This is one of the many topics that fascinates me.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

29. Wow, I found the second episode on YouTube!

Here it is, and I won't be surprised if PBS has it removed soon!

The part about the writing differences is near the end of it, so you could skip to about the 50-minute mark to see it.

Both episodes were excellent from start to finish, though!

Another interesting part, possibly from the first "A to Z" episode, stated that every known early written language used symbols to represent various concepts, not sounds. And that continued for millennia until someone finally had the idea to develop a phonetic alphabet. It's often credited to the Phoenicians, which makes sense to me because they traded with various people all over the Mediterranean Sea and beyond. So recording the SOUNDS of a different language might have been a way for them to later translate those languages. (That's MY hypothesis about it, not mentioned by those NOVA episodes.)

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

30. Can you send me a link to the first episode?

What you posted here plays, and I would LOVE to see both parts.

If need be, PM me. Please.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

31. I just found that episode on YouTube too!

The PBS websites always seem to require membership to view the entire episode, with only free previews available.

It was titled "A to Z: The First Alphabet", and it was more devoted to the very earliest known examples of writing around the world.

Update! I just found that episode on YouTube too! I recommend trying to watch them fairly soon because PBS might get them removed soon, like how NBC will quickly get SNL episodes quickly removed from there.

Here it is!

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

35. They don't leave their episodes up very long, that's for sure.

[captain queeg]

17. I got an amber alert last week. I guess I'm set up to get the texts but I keep my ringer off

I’m still waiting to get my first Covid exposure warning. I signed up for that in my state but have never gotten anything. Anyone else sign up for that and have you ever got a notification?

[Buckeye_Democrat]

18. I wanted to participate in Covid exposure alerts...

... months ago, but Ohio was one of the states that didn't allow it.

Oh, well... I can't imagine how I'd ever get alerted considering how I've basically been a hermit for nearly a year. (Which is sad in some ways, but still an improvement over being around of bunch of blue-collar, Trump-supporting morons at my typical workplaces.)

[Iggo]

24. But was it loud?

[Buckeye_Democrat]

25. Far louder and annoying than any capital letters, believe me.

[Leith]

37. I turned off Amber Alerts after a kidnapping in San Diego

The alert happened about 10 minutes after the kidnapping by the noncustodial parent.

I live a 6 hour drive away from San Diego.

Yes, the sound was most like every fire alarm went off simultaneously at 3:00am (which happened a couple months ago).

Sorry, but I was not likely to be the one who discovered the child.

[Politicub]

38. Amber alerts are so random in Atlanta. And rare. I wonder

what makes some cases Amber-alert worthy while others are just, “Meh. He’s tweaking on crack and driving a stolen Honda Civic, but he’ll bring her back.”