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Welcome to the telephone twilight zone

To: SPITFIRES <spitfires@autox.team.net>
Subject: Welcome to the telephone twilight zone
From: "Arthur H. Smith" <arthurhsmith@compuserve.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 11:17:10 -0500

I just had to pass this on.

I am in the process of changing my IP from CompuServe to CompuServe. Now
that may sound strange, but its just an other CompuServe thing, e-mail
names will be XXX@cs.com rather than XXX@compuserve.com. I know its more
info than you want but bear with me. Cs.com allows 4 other users on the
account with their own e-mail names so I got a modem for my mother and the
other night was Trying to set up a phone line connection.  My company was a
home based business and there are 2 extra phone lines (now disconnected)
going into my parents house. I connected some wires to one of the
connection terminal blocks and got a real lousy connection, dial tone and
what sounded like 65 pounds of crinkling aluminum foil. I fiddled with the
connection for a bit and retried the phone line and there was a
conversation going on. I disconnected and ran up stairs and asked if any
one was one the phone to explain it was me on an extension. Both of my
parents looked at me and said NO. With a look of puzzlement I went back
down into the cellar and reconnected the phone and was listening to the
conversation, as one girl was giving directions to another, now I didn't
interrupt because it was, like very strange and creepy. Then one of the
girls said, "is any one listening in?" I answered "Yes" and went through
the explanation of what I was doing and where I was located and one of the
girls said "Oh hi Arthur this is Linda across the street."

Now it turns out that is very very strange because I was connecting to a
phone land line and Linda across the street was on her cell phone. Oh and
the other girl was somewhere far away.

Another time in the past when I called a customer I ended up in a three way
connection with people in two different towns neither of them the town
where my customer was located. And neither had dialed the other, so it was
a three way conversation between absolute strangers.

And at another time I had a strange phone trip when I called information
(the computer version) and got "The number you want is, area code 322   345
63777777777777777777777" I hung up at that point. (I forget what the
computer really said but that was the gist of it.)

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