BY MIKE MOORE
ask@journaltimes.com | Posted: Monday, June 1, 2009 12:00 am
Ahem, you mean Channel 10.1. That change is brought to you by the upcoming digital conversion we're all tired of hearing about.
Anyway, if you're using an older, analog TV, hopefully that frame will grow on you.
"Filling the screen is no longer realistic," said Kevin Kukowski, manager of engineering and operations for WMVS in Milwaukee.
That's because there's no standard technical format for programs, he said. PBS typically films its programs in wide-screen format, so, if stations opted to fill a rectangular TV screen, viewers could miss what's going on at the edges. It might be something important, as Kukowski noted from a recent movie scene.
"All they saw were two noses talking to each other," he said.
Movies and programs are also shot in different formats that can look distorted on a sleek, new HDTV, Kukowski said. The station sees the frame as the better of two imperfect options.
If a bank folded, how would I get into my safe-deposit box? I'm not convinced it's safe.
A welding torch works wonders. But your key would suffice.
"You're not going to lose the contents," said Eric Skrum, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Bankers Association.
Though the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. doesn't insure the stuff inside the boxes, one of its roles is to make sure customers can get at them. The FDIC either finds another bank to assume control of the locations of the failed one or temporarily takes over itself.
Skrum tried to downplay the fear of cheesehead closures. Of more than 60 U.S. bank failures in the past year and a half, none has been from Wisconsin, he said.
The last was in 2003. Supposedly we have a more stable economy than those volatile coastal types.
I heard that people who are on disability won't receive cost-of-living adjustments next year. Is that true?
There has been some speculation that those who get any form of Social Security benefits might not get the increases, said Karyl Richson, a local spokeswoman for the Social Security Administration.
It's not someone's choice. The adjustment is automatically based on the Consumer Price Index, which measures how much stuff costs. This year, benefits went up 5.8 percent.
The announcement will come in October after the quarterly index is calculated, Richson said.
Mike Moore compiles the Glad You Asked column. Call (262) 631-1758 or e-mail: