RadioBanter - View Single Post

August 16th 03, 03:07 AM

On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 22:59:03 GMT, Its (The Dawn
Soliloquy) wrote:

I agree with your entire post, but your statements following are so revealing
of the 21st century citizen. Simple concepts of technology that so many people
are oblivious to.

Cable TV sales pitch voice ON

"But wait - there's more!"

cable TV sales pitch voice OFF

Some of my more observant neighbors have figured out (1) that I'm a
ham, and (2) that therefore I'm some sort of an electronics expert.
Maybe it's the ARES and SKYWARN decals on my van. Maybe it's the five
antennas. Maybe it's the rugged good looks and
steely-eyed...ahem...well, anyway...today as I'm getting out of my
van, one of the neighbors accosts me in the parking lot to ask if I
can take a look and see if I can figure out why her phones don't work.
People ended up calling her on her cell phone because her landline
phone was busy for something like 4 hours.

I go over there, walk in the kitchen, there's the phone on the wall,
your typical $8 wall phone bought from a five-and-dime. I pick up the
receiver, listen...I hear the steady tone you hear after a phone's
been off the hook for so long the switch gets tired of playing the
recording telling you to hang up your phone. I hang it up...pick it
up...same sound. I ask her if she has another phone.

"I have my cell phone," she replies, holding up her tiny little Nokia
piece of junk in designer colors.

I begin to wonder if there's a computer or something that has the
phone off the hook. I ask what else she has that connects to the phone
company's lines. She says nothing. No computer, no answering machine,
no nothing.

"Hmmm....what were you doing when the power went out?"

"I was...oh! I was talking on the phone in the bedroom, I forgot about
it. But it's a cordless phone, it doesn't connect to the phone line."

You can guess now, right? When the power went off and her base unit
went dead, she simply put the handset down and walked away. When the
power came back on, the handset was still off hook. She was surprised
to find out that that thing she hangs the handset up onto when she's
done with it really is more than just a battery charger for the
handset, and is actually connected to the telco jack.

"Who hooked this up for you?"

"My ex-husband," she said, her eyes narrowing with lingering hatred as
she launches into the story of how he dumped her for some...well, use
your imagination. I'm letting it go in one ear and out the other,
thinking to myself, "Want me to tell you why he left? :-) "

She's a blonde. I'm thinking of getting her some black hair dye next
Christmas. It'll raise her IQ a hundred points if she uses it.

Probably an urban legend, an e-mail that I have received on occasion is a
story about a woman standing by her car, the woman is crying. She's holding a
small plastic electronic implement, trying to goad the implement into working.
A concerned stranger approaches, and asks her about her problem. She asks him
if he knows of a store where she can buy watch size batteries, it's seems that
her automatic car door unlocker is no longer working. The stranger asks if the
small electronic device is in fact attached to her key chain, to which she
replies yes. He takes the key chain, finds the correct key, and unlocks her
car door.

Problem solved.

Why is this story so easy to believe in the modern world?

Because the average person is basically clueless as to how things
work, and our society is currently a disposable society where if it
doesn't work you throw it out and buy a new one. Also because once
such people become used to using technology they forget what they used
to do before they learned to apply it.

Care to guess how many stores stayed open after their power went out,
and how many had to close because the cash registers weren't working
and the morons working there can't figure out how much change you get
from your dollar after you buy a $0.74 item unless the cash register
tells them to fork over your $0.26?

73 DE John, KC2HMZ
There's a sucker born every minute. -- P.T. Barnum