We recently received a flyer about a fundraiser for David Shawley and his family and would like to help to spread the word.

David was diagnosed with leukemia in early January and is currently undergoing chemotherapy. The community will gather together on February 4 at the Hatton Hall in Hatton for a soup and chili supper starting at 4 p.m. There will be a silent auction, a raffle and live entertainment by the Red Hill Bluegrass Band with Fred Perkins. You are invited to come and help to raise money for David, Joy, and their children, Kelsey, Jacob, and Taylor Shawley. Your support is appreciated!

I found this little gem of an article on the website ARS Technica, http://arstechnica.com/, and knew it was begging to be shared. Here you go, folks…

“Trojans—they’re not just for hackers anymore. German police, for instance, love them; a scandal erupted in Parliament last year after federal investigators were found to be using custom spyware that could potentially record far more information than allowed by law. The story made headlines, but it lacked a certain sense of the bizarre.

Fortunately for connoisseurs of the weird, Der Spiegel revealed a stranger story in its magazine yesterday. According to the report, a top German security official installed a trojan on his own daughter’s computer to monitor her Internet usage. What could possibly go wrong?”

To find what DID go wrong, visit http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/top-german-cop-uses-spyware-on-daughter-gets-hacked-in-retaliation.ars.

Rural Telecommunications Industry Collaborates to Provide
New Scholarship Opportunities to Students From Rural Communities

 Arlington, Va., (January 10, 2011) – The Foundation for Rural Service (FRS) announces the FRS Staurulakis Family Scholarships. The four new scholarships are fully funded by Manny and Leo Staurulakis of John Staurulakis, Inc. (JSI) in honor of their parents, John and Chresanthe Staurulakis, and to celebrate 50 years of service to the rural telecommunications industry.

The FRS Staurulakis Family Scholarships will provide four $5,000 awards and will give preference to students in rural communities with an interest in science, math, medicine or engineering.

These new scholarships will build on the existing FRS College Scholarship Program, which currently provides 30 $2,500 scholarships to students from rural communities  —$2,000 from FRS and $500 from the local telecom company sponsor.

“The FRS College Scholarship Program has helped to advance educational opportunities of nearly 300 rural students annually. With the generous addition of the FRS Staurulakis Family Scholarships  will be able to offer nearly $100,000 annually to help rural students obtain a higher education,” said FRS Executive Director Elizabeth Crocker.

FRS sent the 2012 FRS College Scholarship Program applications to telcos in October. Students with a focus in science, math, medicine or engineering will be automatically considered for the new FRS Staurulakis Family Scholarships. All scholarship recipients will be selected by independent reviewers who judge the applications on merit. The postmark deadline for the scholarship program is March 1, 2012. Recipients will be announced on May 1, 2012.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,600 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Privacy Control/Do Not Disturb is one our newest features and, I think, one of our most useful. It is actually two features in one, and the duo puts you in control of who you speak with on your landline phone – and when you speak with them. In short, if you don’t want to be bothered by incoming phone calls, you won’t be! That sounds good, doesn’t it? We all have times when our personal priorities take precedence over random interruptions. At the same time, we don’t want to miss really important calls. This feature lets you pick and choose, giving you more control than any of our other previous calling features.

Privacy Control intercepts telemarketers, unknown callers, and callers who have their number blocked from displaying on Caller ID. The first facet of the feature is the Allowed List. Kingdom has an established local calling area which Privacy Control considers to be Allowed Numbers. Callers from outside this local calling area or unknown callers will hear the Telemarketer Screening Announcement. Once a caller has pressed 1 after hearing the announcement, they will be automatically added to the Allowed caller list and will not hear the announcement on subsequent calls.

The second part of Privacy Control deals with Private Callers. It addresses numbers that are shielded from Caller ID service. The announcement gives an additional option for the caller to press 1 to reveal their Caller ID information which will allow the call to be completed.

Finally, Privacy Control includes the Blocked List. If a number has been placed on your Blocked List, calls from that number will hear a message telling them that you do not accept calls from that phone number. I’m sure we can all think of a nuisance number – or several numbers -  we would like to block.

Privacy Control/Do Not Disturb gives you a lot of bang for your buck. In fact, we’ve only just talked about the first half of the dual feature. Let’s move on to the second half, Do Not Disturb. Do Not Disturb allows you to designate quiet times, blocking callers unless they have a 4-digit PIN override access number. This would be especially handy for folks who work second or third shift and don’t want to be disturbed during the day or early morning when sleeping. Give the PIN out to close family members so you will always be available for them when a call is necessary.

This powerful feature is only $5 each month. Call one of our CSRs at 386-2241 if you would like more information or would like to order Privacy Control/Do Not Disturb.

Are you a typical Internet user? In May 2011, the Pew Internet and American Life Project surveyed adult Americans and found that 77% of us use the Internet on an average day. The following is a list of the top fifteen daily Internet activities and the percentage of users who go online to accomplish them.

1. Send or read e-mail – 61%
2. Use a search engine to find information – 59%
3. Get news – 45%
4. Use an online social networking site like MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn.com – 43%
5. Go online just for fun or to pass the time – 38%
6. Check the weather – 34%
7. Look online for news or information about politics 30%
8. Look for info on a hobby or interest – 29%
9. Look for information about a product or service you are thinking of buying – 28%
10. Watch a video on a video-sharing site like YouTube – 28%
11. Do any banking online – 24%
12. Do any type of research for your job – 23%
13. Send instant messages – 18%
14. Look for information on Wikipedia – 17%
15. Get sports scores and info online – 15%

The ad above appeared in the Auxvasse School yearbook of 1942, the Saber Tooth. It’s hard to imagine a time when people were encouraged to phone instead of write a letter! Letter-writing has definitely been in decline in the last twenty years, and it’s a safe bet most of us haven’t taken pen in hand too recently. Times have changed so much, in fact, that phoning is becoming a thing of the past. Teens today text message fast, furiously – and nearly continually, it seems. It is their preferred method of communication.

Texting is a subject for another day. Since we have this neat little piece of local history in hand, let’s go back to a time when F.M. Holland was the “proprietor” of the Auxvasse Telephone Exchange. Holland, by the way, was also president of the Security Bank of Auxvasse. World War II was still in its early stages, at least for Americans. Japan had attacked us without any declaration of  war on December 7, 1941. Just a few days later, on December 11, Germany and Fascist Italy declared war on the United States.

The Saber Tooth is loaded with references to the war. Each chapter in the book is preceded by a page announcing its subject and decorated with a hand-drawn graphic of three bombers with the slogan “Keep ‘em Flying.” Mary E. Baker, principal and science teacher, titled her yearbook essay, “Now or Never.” She had this to say, “Now, as never before the American nation needs the fundamentals of science…Science must be a science of management if we are to win this war and set this  “messed-up” civilization back on the feet of the real. Youngsters, learn all you can, do all you can with the scientific knowledge at hand and set this world at right. We will win – NOW.” Her passion about the winning the war rings out from the page.

It was Mary Baker’s students, who, a bit more than a decade later, joined together with other students of other years to create the Kingdom Telephone Company cooperative. In 1942, they were more interested in blondes and basketball. Freshman Richard Coil commented that “There’s too many pretty girls in the Freshman class!” Basketball, if popular, was an endangered sport. Physical education teacher, Lucy Roberts, warned that “due to the shortage of tires, due to the war, we may not get to carry out our regular basketball schedule next year, but we will no doubt play here at school.”

The chapter on Humor often lapsed into the obscure. A lot of it fell under the heading of “ya had to be there.” For instance, “We wonder why…Cynthia likes traveling salesmen so well?” and “We wonder why… Miss Bunning likes physical education?” I imagine there are very few people who know the answers to those questions! How about this knee-slapper? “Mussolini is a sort of material used for lady’s stockings.” Then there is the socially incorrect, “A parasite is the murder of an infant.” And, lastly, the one I like best…”When Mr. Craig (the superintendent) dismisses us in assembly, we wonder what he means when he says, “Now, you may pass out!”"

Thanks to Ron Whanger, Plant Manager, for bringing the Saber Tooth in for us to enjoy.

We’re happy to announce the addition of searchable Kingdom telephone listings to our web site. This is something we have wanted to do for quite some time, and we hope you find it a useful and handy tool.

To use the online phone book, go to our home page at www.ktis.net. In the upper right corner, you will see four icons under a phone number for Internet support. The icons are as follows from left to right: Facebook, Twitter, the blog and phone listings. When you click the listings button, a new tab will open allowing you to access the directory. All names listed in our printed phone book are listed in the online phone book. The directory draws on our billing database on a secure server, and names are listed as they appear on phone bills. A picture of the listings icon follows.