Skip to main content

Who is This?

I forget who first mentioned Google Voice to me, but as soon as I heard about it, I liked the idea. It lets you have a phone number that you know will never change, regardless of which carrier you use, what country you're in, or just about any details of your physical presence. You can then have any phone you want ring when you receive calls, so it gives you all sorts of flexibility. It's entirely possible to have people call you and have it make a work phone ring, and then three hours later, have that very same phone number ring totally different number at home. Basically, it gives you more options, so I'm a fan.

Well, for the most part.

I don't usually mess with the call forwarding aspects of it, but I do like having a web interface for all of my voice mail and text messages. This is particularly useful when I'm at work, since I turn my phone notifications off when I'm there. I can switch over to a different tab to check in on messages when I know I have some free time, instead of being interrupted in the middle of some thought-intensive piece of work. Or if my phone is low on battery, I have a back up means of checking on all of that. The one downside I have noticed is that it's a purely text-based system, so I can't send pictures from the web interface. Remember this fact, it will be important later on.

Unfortunately, the human aspect of all of this is ultimately where things fall apart. See, when I first got the new number, I sent out an email to a bunch of people telling them that I was going to be using the new number. The old number would still reach me, and would continue to reach me (I wasn't actually getting rid of my phone, after all), but I would basically have a second number. Some people changed the contact info they had for me to the new number, but other folks rightfully interpreted this to mean that they could keep my existing number on hand.

The problem with that last plan is that although their messages would reach me just fine, as soon as I tried to reply, they'd receive a message from the new, unknown-to-them phone number. That first month or so, I had to explain who I was on more than one occasion, though I was able to work it out with most people eventually. Remember that fact that I mentioned might be important earlier? This is where it rears its ugly head. Any message I send with media in it (e.g., pictures) pretty much has to come from my old number. I haven't seen a way to send these messages with my new phone number attached to them. So, even the people who were "good" and switched their contact info for me will get confused on occasion.

Luckily, I don't send media very often (what can I say, I'm a boring person), but still. I have had to explain to various people that they need to keep two phone numbers on hand for me, and each time, they just look at me funny. This is not a common plan of action, so it's an uncommon discussion to have. I've had people look at me like I'm crazy. I've also had to send the, "oh sorry, it's Sam. I have two numbers: XXX-XXXX and YYY-YYYY" message on more than one occasion to try to clear up confusion. Trust me, conversations that include the phrase, "who is this, again?" are all sorts of fun.

So all in all, my genius plan with a new number is not as genius as I would have liked. Also, for the nerdy among you, I'm reminded of a fairly famous computer science quote that is way too appropriate here, "any problem in computer science can be solved by another layer of indirection" (as is the corollary, "except for the problem of too many levels of indirection"). I may have to stop sending picture messages altogether, just to keep the funny looks to a minimum.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pink

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit. I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right. However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of th...

Dreams

Normally, I don't eat very many sweets. I tend to eat pretty generous portions, but I generally prefer savory food over sweet. In fact, I usually prefer things half as sweet when possible. My preference doesn't have anything to do with health reasons, it's just one of those things that I've always liked better. That said, I do inevitably eat dessert, particularly if I'm out with other people. My stance towards dessert is roughly equivalent to those who are social drinkers . If other people want to munch on something for dessert, I'm not about to cross my arms and refuse. That'd be just a tad gauche. So, I do eat some dessert. I even have a few standby favorites that I'll usually order when presented with them (brownies, creme brulee, and apple pie). But left to my own devices, I'm not about to go hunting for dessert. Apparently, this means that the sugar can really mess with my system under the right circumstances. As I've discovered, ...

New York City Trip (Day 1)

After my crappy flight , I was now in Newark, New Jersey at 7AM on a Friday morning. I had done a little bit of reading up, so I knew which bus I needed to take and where I was going to get off. All in all, getting into the city was surprisingly easy. I suppose speaking the language does make things simpler. Through no real planning of mine (a theme of the trip, at least on my part), I picked one of the later bus stops at which to get off, Grand Central. I actually just figured that getting off at Grand Central would give me options, and heck, it's called Grand Central. That just screamed "decent place to disembark that might be close to some stuff" to me, so that's where I got off. However, it also meant that we drove down 42 nd St to get to my bus stop. That just happens to be a big street, and it gave me a glimpse of Times Square as we drove by. My bus stop choice had accidentally given me a rough layout of the city. Go me. I had about 6 hours to kill...