Its time for me to write my annual recounting of this year’s notable events. Putting this list together this year has amazed me at how many things I have to write about. Just to give you an idea, the AT&T billing nightmare and the bogus car warranty calls that I’ve been incessantly blogging about didn’t even crack the top ten! The Chinese proverb “may you live in interesting times” certainly applied to me this year.
With all that said, let’s get on with the list!
On a related note to the hang-up calls I mentioned, Slashdot pointed to a N.Y. Times story on so-called “ghost calls.” The story is a good primer on what web resources exist for tracking these calls. In other words, this story describes the kind of battles I’ve been fighting for the past few months.
The story also provides an interesting tip for defeating the calls that I hadn’t heard of before:
Because the predictive dialers try to identify answering machines by measuring the amount of time that someone or something speaks, one way to defeat them is to give a long greeting, as an answering machine does, rather than a simple hello followed by a pause.
Be sure to check the comments in the Slashdot post, as the geeks (as usual) have excellent information on how these predictive dialers really work.
For the past few weeks we haven’t just been getting car warranty calls. Another annoying situation has established itself where we’ll get a hang-up call at 9:15 PM on Sunday evenings, followed by one about 6 minutes later. Then, at 4:25 AM on Monday morning the phone will ring again and – just like the other calls – there will be nothing but a dial tone.
I’ve since configured Asterisk to block these calls so they will no longer get through. Even so, I plan to see how good the crackerjacks at AT&T are at tracking them down by filing a complaint with them. Back in my BBS sysop’ing days, I had a phone number to the phone company group that could track any number. I’m sure I can find the AT&T equivalent with a little effort.
This has gone on for weeks now and its time to fight back.
Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
John Lennon
So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
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After reading about another tasering incident, this time on an irate Best Buy customer in Florida, I’ve decided that the problem I have with the incidents I’ve seen is that in none of the cases do the officers make any attempts to detain the suspects before they go for the phasers. Officers should never unholster a taser unless they at least first attempt to place a suspect under arrest. If you don’t have probable cause to arrest someone, you certainly don’t have cause to taser them.
Mouthing off to a cop is one thing, resisting arrest is another. Causing a commotion in Best Buy is no excuse to shock someone.
Today is the northern solstice, the first official day of winter in the northern hemisphere. Now we start stealing the sun back from our Aussie mates.
I’ll celebrate by taking Stellarium outside and learning more about the stars.
Matt sent this to me this morning. It’s a 20-minute-long Flash movie explaining how your stuff gets to you and why that process is not sustainable. Living near the North Wake Landfill as I do, I can’t help but wonder how much of that big pile of garbage could’ve been avoided.
Check out the Story of Stuff and begin thinking of ways we can be living a little more responsibly on our planet (hint: vote with your wallet).
With mere days to go I’ve finally decided what I want for Christmas.
Last night I was talking with someone familiar with our country’s premier spy plane, the legendary SR-71 Blackbird. He sent me a link to this exciting account of a mission over Libya in 1986.
Intelligence agencies hate to give up capabilities. The rule in intelligence is that no system is ever retired unless something has taken its place. There is no known aircraft that can match the Blackbird’s performance. The “sled,” as it was known to its pilots, has been retired. Just imagine what we must have now.
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I called AT&T Small Business Services today to check on the status of my long-standing unpaid-bill dispute (as well as my short-standing new bill dispute). After dealing with an initially confused rep by the name of Daniel, I got confirmation that I’m no longer listed as the responsible party for these accounts. Hallelujah!
I called the NC Attorney General’s office to update my file with this information. The specialist working the case asked me if AT&T was going to contact her with an update, to which I laughed. Huge corporations have little time to trifle with such things as the law, you know (thank goodness the telecom immunity bill has been shelved, for now at least).
