MadMup.com

More phone stuff… You’ve been warned.

It used to be that phones were pretty simple: you called someone and the phone either rang or you got a busy signal. If it rang, they either answered or they didn’t, in the which case you could let it ring a hundred times if you wanted.

They were simpler times, but people wanted more.

First, people were stuck to where the phone was connected. Even a longer cord still meant you had to worry about it getting twisted or decapitating someone who was running through the house too quickly. The answer, of course, was to go cordless. With the early ones, you couldn’t go very far, and the person on the other end could usually tell you were on a cordless phone, but it cut down on the beheadings. The cordless phones have gotten better, and there are cordless phones that let you walk a mile or better with a decent connection still. I’m all in favor of that, but why not just get:

A cell phone. The ultimate cordless. Go anywhere, and nertz to the base station part of it. Drive, eat, annoy people – these are just some of the things people can do while on a cell phone. They’re a blessing and a curse, I think. A cell phone’s the only thing I have, phone wise, but I do like the fact that I can shut it off occasionally.

Phones (both cell and landline) have tons of “features” these days:

• Call Waiting – the most hateful and deplorable invention ever conceived of by mankind. Jerry Seinfeld used to talk about losing the “phone face-off.” You’re on the phone with someone, they get a call on the other line, and when they get back, they tell you they “really need to take this” and you’re done. That’s it. How depressing to realize you’re not the most important person in their life, even if you already knew it. Confirmation can be a terrible thing. I actually don’t really mind if other people use call waiting. It’s fine. I don’t even mind losing the face-off, but I won’t use call waiting. Especially not since there’s
• Voicemail – Best. Invention. Ever. Answering machines were cool, but only worked if you weren’t on the phone already. Now, if you’re on the phone or you’re not, voicemail picks up. Sweet! This is my favorite phone feature of the last 300 years, aside from the actual invention of the phone.
• Three-Way Calling – a cool idea, but potentially embarrassing, especially tied in with the call-waiting. Let’s say you’re a Mob boss and you’re ordering a hit on a guy. Let’s call him “Al.” While you’re on the phone with Jimmy “Fishface” Garbanza, Al calls on the other line. You switch over, talk to Al for a few seconds, then tell him you need to go and switch back over to Jimmy…only you don’t. Instead, you accidentally initiate three-way calling and Al learns about your plans. Then he “flips,” becomes a witness for the government, and brings down your whole organization. See? Bad idea.
• Text messaging – now we’re getting into the realm of “cell phone only” features. This is a good one, too. Want to send someone a note but don’t have the time for a conversation? Text them! “Hpy Brthdy 2 U” can be a worthy replacement for an actual birthday card in this Internet age, and (in my opinion) can be better. I mean, it shows you’re thinking about them right at that minute. A card means “I knew your birthday was coming up, so I got this and sent it to you several days before your birthday.”
• Camera phones – not really a phone feature, more a merging of two neat things. Now I have a camera with me wherever I have my phone with me, which is pretty much anywhere. Now I can take a picture of the truck with “I have magical kung fu powers” painted on it the minute I see it, rather than trying to describe it later to people.
• Games – having a portable game system (Game Boy, PSP, etc.) us great, but not necessarily the handiest thing to carry around. Having a simple game or two on your hone is quite possibly the handiest thing in the world. Standing in line? Play a few holes of golf. In the waiting room at the doctor’s office? Bowl a little. There are even phones that are being marketed (though not very well) as gaming platforms that allow for multiplayer gaming between phones. Mortal Kombat in the parking lot after church probably isn’t the best choice, but is at least an option now.
• Ring tones – I’m not sure why it’s so fun to have a specific ringtone for a particular person, but it is. I really only have one special ringtone for one person, a sort of chirping sound. Everyone else gets “Calico Skies” by Paul McCartney.
• All sorts of other things – cell phones can almost replace a PDA these days (especially if you get the cell phone/PDA combo units), what with the scheduling, alarm, and contact info capabilities they have. They are wonderful and everyone should have one.

Two over-long posts about phones. Weird for a guy who only gets calls from like, five people. Huh.

My parents still have the same phone number at their house that I had growing up – at least, from age six on. That’s when we moved to the town they still live in. We lived in two different houses in that town, and they still live in the house we moved into in 1979.

I remember as a kid being able to dial other people in the same town by just dialing a “3” and then the last four digits of their number. Everyone in town had a “563” number, and this was just the way things were back then. It was certainly a step up from having to dial the operator and say “Klondike 623” and wait to be connected (much less having to worry about the operator listening in on your phone calls).

Somewhere along the way “they” made a change and then we had to dial the whole “563” prefix before dialing an in-town number. What a pain. It really took some getting used to.

Then the area code changed. All of Wisconsin had the same area code, but now they have three or four different ones. We had hoped we’d get to keep “414” but it got changed. Still, though, we could just dial the prefix and the number for in-town calls. It was when we called people in other parts of the state that we had to wonder about the area code. For the time being, if someone gave you a phone number, you just had to remember the last four digits because the first three were all the same.

That changed, of course. For a while I lived in a town that had three different prefixes. Now I live in one that seems to have an infinite variety of prefixes. No longer can you just remember the last four or five digits. It’s all or nothing now.

Add cell phones into that mix and it gets absolutely crazy. For a while, even the three major cell companies that provided service here had distinct prefixes, and you could tell which cell company a person was with based on their cell number. Now you can’t even do that.

They say that we’re going to run out of available phone numbers soon. There are only so many ways you can combine 10 digits using 0-9. I’d do the math to tell you, but I’ve forgotten the exact method of being able to figure that out. Phone numbers were specifically designed to be seven numbers long because researchers determined that the human brain could hold seven distinct values in short-term memory at any given time. Add any more to the total, and the brain has to start dropping things. (I remember hearing this somewhere, but I also do not have any bibliography to back it up, so don’t blame me if you try to use it in a research paper. You should be reading encyclopedias for your research, not blogs!)

I used to be able to remember a person’s number if I dialed it once. I’d just have it and could recall it when I needed to. Then I got a watch that could store phone numbers and I lost the ability to recall phone numbers from my mind. I don’t remember if I got the watch because I could no longer remember numbers, or if I stopped being able to remember the numbers because I got the watch. They happened around the same time, so you can draw your own conclusions.

My first “memory watch” could hold 40 numbers. My next one (and the three exact same models of it I bought, one after another) could hold 150. Then I got a PDA which could hold as many as I could cram into it’s memory. Then I got a better PDA from work and it could hold more. Then I got a different job and had to give that PDA back, so I just started using and address program on my computer, which could hold even more numbers. It turns out, I don’t really know that many people, so I just keep the numbers I need in my cell phone’s memory.

Of course, it’s not just the person’s cell phone number you need. If they’ve got a work number and a home number, you need that, too. Modern-day cell phones have that all worked out for you and let you put different icons by different types of phone numbers. Most of them also let you store the person’s email address and whatever else you might happen to want to store in there.

But it’s all electronic.

One good EMP blast from a nearby thermonuclear explosion and that info’s all gone for good. Every so often, I like to actually type up and print out a page of the numbers in my phone, just in case.

I kind of wish everyone was assigned a phone number at birth that they carried with them all throughout their life. I’m sure there are those who’d think this was a major intrusion of privacy and yadda yadda yadda, but I’m here to say that those people are just jealous because no one ever calls them.

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.

-J. M. Barrie

(With a nod to HP.)