system
A chat on subreddit /r/pcmasterrace
human
Blowing trunk was, as far as I understand, was dead by the time I started phreaking. But I knew a guy from the 2300 club (not the 2600 club, the King Blotto 2300 club)  who could whistle 2600.  


There was a dtmf dialer one could modify into a red box, but I used recordings made from Phone Man and my Walkman. The last time I red boxed was 2003. My GF at the time, who was also the aforementioned sysop from the 80s, and I had a habit of testing payphones to see if they could be redboxed from by inserting a quarter and listening for tones. Found on and went back to it with a Walkman. Redboxing was blocked on almost all payphones I encountered by the mid 90s.  


I dont recall what this was called, but in payphones you could cross 2 wires and it stopped calls from being made and didn't return the coins. Uncross the wires and the money would be returned. 3 of my friends and fished the wires, connected switches where they couldn't be seen. This kept us with late night coffee money for a summer. Right around the corner from this phone and the diner, is an att CO... We used to dumpster dive there.  


I've literally been on a laptop, with an acoustic coupler connected to a payphone outside of a theater, calling BBSs in the early 90s. Calls made using hacked LD services.  


I wrote a code hacker that would hack multiple carriers, with different parameters. Nothing like it existed at the time. I grew up in the projects... the NID/MPOE carried the feed for 2 units. I had the neighbors line connected to the other pair, and splitter to split them out. I'd start the program at 2 and it would run until 5am. I had some friends in apartment builds that gained access to their buildings telco area and did similar things.   


We used to sell LD and conference codes to Russian immigrants (Mayfield ohio has a huge concentration of them) so they could call home.  


All of these things were impressive to certain type of people, including women. Women came to the Cleveland 2600 meetings, as did at least 2 married couples.  


All of that is also how I ended up in IT... local reputation and friendships with people who started ISPs or who were contractors.
gpt
Not sure what's going on, or what half these words mean, but I'm really enjoying this storytelling.