Communicating

More years ago than my daughter has lived, we had a second phone line put into our home. The first was our normal telephone line. The second was for use with our amazingly fast 300 baud dial up terminal, so that we could both talk to operations and look at the systems simultaneously. Life was good.

Time passed, technology progressed. We eventually didn't need two phone lines -- we have a cable modem, and that can be used to dial into both the systems I support and those that my wife supports. Every so often, we'd look at the phone bill, and think about cutting that second phone line. But every so often, too, we used it -- like just this morning, when I got up at 5AM to dial into a product upgrade, and my wife got up at 7 to dial into an activity of hers. So we continued to use it.

Some time in the middle of the day, the primary phone line -- died. We don't know how, or when. But the phone in the library has a small indicator which flashes when one of the four extensions -- kitchen, den, bedroom, mother's room -- are in use, and its been flashing all day. If you call our number, it'll ring busy. But none of the phones are actually in use. We even disconnected all four of them, waiting a while, and tried it again, calling from the other phone line. Busy. So we thought Great, we have to have someone come out and figure out whats going on here.

Well, the first problem is that tomorrow is a federal holiday. Not one for me, since I have stuff to do at work, first time back in the office in a week, but one for the phone company, I'm sure. And even if its not, who do we call? Verizon, which does wireless service? AT&T, which does long distance? Cingular, which does -- something? Not sure. And their web sites are ever so helpful. But tomorrow, my wife gets to traverse the maze, and try to figure out who to call, and get them to come traipsing out and tell us why the phone's not working.

I'm sure they'll rush right out.