November 3, 2006
Appelle-moi
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to turn on the phone line in my apartment. When I moved in, my roommate had only used a cell phone. I thought it would be so au courant of me to do the same thing. But after six months of dropped calls and missed calls and aggravation trying to convince Cingular that their ad campaign in San Francisco (which touts the fewest dropped calls in the Bay Area) was a piece of horseshit, I caved and called AT&T...from work, of course. So I turned it on, bought a cordless phone, and thought I was hot shit. But when the cordless phone didn't work because of interference from the wireless broadband connection in the apartment—which I would never get rid of—I bought a corded phone and then everything worked out great. And now, when I get home from work, I find four or five new messages per day, all of which are spam. WTF, Maynard? Spam phone calls? OK, not all of them are junk like we find in our e-mail inboxes nowadays, but several of the dozen so far are geared towards lowering my mortgage rates, clueing me in on yet another way I can make money on the Internet, and such like that. The rest of the messages are all political ads exalting so-and-so and decrying someone else. Last night, as I was putting the finishing touches on my new Windows installation, I heard the phone ring three separate times in one hour. I crossed the room to see who could possibly have this number so soon, and was wholly discouraged. It's not enough that they litter our telephone poles with their propaganda and mudslinging, they have to litter our telephones themselves with the same crap? What ever will they think of next?
Just a rant for a gloomy Friday afternoon.
