Phil,
For the last five years or so, Joybubbles has had a column in Playback 
Magazine.  He certainly didn't talk like a child.  What a sad life!  Without 
the Lord, All is Vanity.
    Good to be back on.  Our server has been down since Friday.
Vinny
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phil Scovell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 7:43 PM
Subject: Fw: Fw: Famous phone hacker "Joybubbles" dies. (fwd)


>I heard this guy a few times on Denver talks shows when I first moved to
> denver.  He was a character, to say the least,  as you will read below.
> Thanks Todd and Lelia for sending this over.  It was fun to read some
> details about his life.
>
> Phil.
>
>
>                > >
>> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> > Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 01:59:25 -0700
>> > From: BlindNews Mailing List
>> > <[log in to unmask]>
>> > To: Blind News <[log in to unmask]>
>> > Subject: Famous phone hacker "Joybubbles" dies.
>> >
>> >
>> > Famous phone hacker "Joybubbles" dies.
>> >
>> >
>> > "Phone phreak" spent years in Denver,
>> > troubleshooting for Ma Bell.
>> >
>> >
>> > By Douglas Martin
>> > The New York Times
>> > Denver Post - Denver,CO,USA
>> > 08/20/2007.
>> >
>> >
>> > Joybubbles (the legal name of the former Joe
>> > Engressia since 1991), a blind
>> > genius with perfect pitch who accidentally found he
>> > could make free phone
>> > calls by whistling tones and went on to play a
>> > pivotal role in the 1970s
>> > subculture of "phone phreaks," died Aug. 8 in
>> > Minneapolis.
>> >
>> > He was 58, though he had chosen in 1988 to remain 5
>> > forever, and had the
>> > toys and teddy bears to prove it. The cause of death
>> > has not been
>> > determined, said Steven Gibb, a friend and the
>> > executor of the Joybubbles
>> > estate.
>> >
>> > Joybubbles, who was blind at birth, was a famous
>> > part of what began as a
>> > scattered, socially awkward group of precocious
>> > teens and post-teens
>> > fascinated with exploring the phone system. Foiling
>> > it passed for high-tech
>> > high jinks in the '70s.
>> >
>> > "It was the only game in town if you wanted to play
>> > with a computer," said
>> > Phil Lapsley, who is writing a book on the phone
>> > phreaks. Later, other blind
>> > whistlers appeared, but in 1957, Joybubbles may have
>> > been the first person
>> > to whistle his way into the heart of Ma Bell.
>> >
>> > Phreaks were precursors of today's computer hackers,
>> > and, like some of them,
>> > Joybubbles ran afoul of the law. Not a few phreaks
>> > were computer pioneers,
>> > including Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, founders of
>> > Apple.
>> >
>> > Joybubbles felt that being abused at a school for
>> > the blind and being pushed
>> > by his mother to live up to his 172 IQ had robbed
>> > him of childhood. So he
>> > amassed piles of toys, Jack and Jill magazines and
>> > imaginary friends, and he
>> > took a name he said made people smile.
>> >
>> > But he never lost his ardor for phones, and old
>> > phone phreaks and younger
>> > would-have-beens kept calling. Joybubbles loved the
>> > phone company, reported
>> > problems he had illegally discovered and even said
>> > he had planned his own
>> > arrest on fraud charges to get a phone job. And so
>> > he did, twice.
>> >
>> > Well before the mid-1970s, when digitalization ended
>> > the tone-based system,
>> > Joybubbles had stopped stealing calls. But he was
>> > already a legend: he had
>> > phoned around the world, talking into one phone and
>> > listening to himself on
>> > another.
>> >
>> > In an article in Esquire in 1971, the writer Ron
>> > Rosenbaum called Joybubbles
>> > the catalyst uniting disparate phreaks.
>> >
>> > Particularly after news accounts of his suspension
>> > from college in 1968 and
>> > conviction in 1971 for phone violations, he became a
>> > nerve center of the
>> > movement.
>> >
>> > "Every night he sits like a sightless spider in his
>> > little apartment
>> > receiving messages from every tendril of its web,"
>> > Rosenbaum wrote.
>> >
>> > Josef Carl Engressia Jr. was born May 25, 1949, and
>> > moved often because his
>> > father was a school-picture photographer. At 4 or 5,
>> > he learned to dial by
>> > using the hookswitch like a telegraph key. Four
>> > years later, he discovered
>> > that he could disconnect a call by whistling. He
>> > found this out when he
>> > imitated a sound in the background on a
>> > long-distance call and the line cut
>> > off. It turned out that his whistle precisely
>> > replicated a crucial phone
>> > company signal, a 2,600-cycles-per-second tone.
>> >
>> > Joybubbles' parents had no phone for five years
>> > because of their son's
>> > obsession. Later, his mother encouraged it by
>> > reading him technical books.
>> > His high school yearbook photo showed him in a phone
>> > booth.
>> >
>> > By the time he was a student at the University of
>> > South Florida, Joybubbles
>> > was dialing toll-free or nonworking numbers to reach
>> > a distant switching
>> > point. Unbeknownst to telephone operators, he could
>> > use sounds to dial
>> > another number, free. He could then jump anywhere in
>> > the phone system.
>> >
>> > He was disconnected from college after being caught
>> > making calls for friends
>> > at $1 a call. In 1971, he moved to Memphis, where he
>> > was convicted of phone
>> > fraud. In Millington, Tenn., he was hired to clean
>> > phones, a job he hated.
>> > In 1975, he moved to Denver to ferret out problems
>> > in Mountain Bell's
>> > network.
>> >
>> > He tired of that and moved to Minneapolis on June
>> > 12, 1982, partly because
>> > that date's numerical representation of 6-12 is the
>> > same as the city's area
>> > code. He advertised for people yearning to discuss
>> > things telephonic and
>> > weaved a web of phone lines to accommodate them. He
>> > lived on Social Security
>> > disability payments and part-time jobs like letting
>> > university agriculture
>> > researchers use his superb sense of smell to
>> > investigate how to control the
>> > odor of hog excrement.
>> >
>> > Joybubbles is survived by his mother, Esther
>> > Engressia, and his sister, Toni
>> > Engressia, both of Homestead, Fla.
>> >
>> > His second life as a youngster included becoming a
>> > minister in his own
>> > Church of Eternal Childhood and collecting tapes of
>> > every "Mr. Rogers"
>> > episode. When asked why Mr. Rogers mattered, he
>> > said: "When you're playing
>> > and you're just you, powerful things happen."
>> >
>> > Copyright 2007 The Denver Post or other copyright
>> > holders.
>> >
>> >
>> > http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_6669861
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
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