OT: drowning devices

I'm hoping to get there before the body is motionless! :> Folks tend to get lost/incapacitated here pretty regularly. Take a tumble, fall down an embankment, twist an ankle, etc. Most of the year, water becomes a problem so you want to find folks in relatively short order to keep them from suffering from extreme/fatal dehydration. Wildlife (except snakes and insects) typically aren't a problem during daylight hours.

She hikes close enough to home (a few miles from here as the crow flies) so I can get there and, knowing which trail she took, expect to find her in relatively short order.

OTOH, if she opted to take a different trail -- or, start from a different trailhead -- it would be a "search and rescue" class of operation.

I have always used business cards as convenient bits of scrap paper. Especially handy by the bedside: you can find the edges of the card without turning the lights on and scribble a note "blind".

I've not been in a support role since my first job (back when dinosaurs walked the earth). I primarily do development, proof-of-concept prototypes, patent proofs, etc. So, it's almost always The Boss/Client who's looking to tickle my ear. As such, pushing them away from phone contact (where they want to shoot-the-sh*t and play "what-if" -- without thinking about all those "ifs" ahead of time!) is the big savings. Force them to put their thoughts and questions into words and most folks are too lazy or unstructured in their thinking to be able to do so.

Those who *do* formulate concrete questions have now undertaken the task of *documenting* their questions FOR ME! And, I can document the *exact* response to those questions -- not what they choose to selectively remember -- to remove much of the ambiguity and potential future misunderstanding.

An employer taught me that years before there was (practical) email: get it in writing!

Reply to
Don Y
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We currently have an answering machine with ringer turned off. Every day (or so), we try to see if it's fielded any calls. Then, when we have time, listen to the messages and decide how we'll handle them.

[This is why folks don't *rely* on our phone for anything urgent]

I've been working on an algorithm to passively let us "tell" the answering machine which calls we want to take and which to ignore. Once taught, then let *it* decide to delete messages before even bothering us with them! *And*, know when to deliberately find us for messages that are particularly important: "Please stay on the line while I attempt to locate Don..."

I've written some software to implement an NNTP "agent" -- sits between my Thunderbird "client" and (remote) NNTP "server"... acts like a client to the server and a server to my client! It examines posts (parsing the headers *and* content -- so, *it* fetches all messages from the server) and, based on how I've interacted with that "agent" (acting as a client), decides which messages it wants to "bother me with".

So, for example, if I never look at messages from Joe Whackjob, it soon learns not to *show* me any of Joe Whackjob's messages! This is analagous to a telephone system learning "he never takes phone calls from Joe Whackjob so, when Joe calls, don't even bother ringing the phone *or* taking a message!"

This is what a (good) secretary would do -- learn how you want calls handled and then implement that policy *for* you to save you the effort of doing it yourself.

Of course, with NNTP, I can look at the content and make smarter decisions than just looking at the headers. With telephone calls, I can only look at CID (which can be forged), time of day, and other authentication mechanisms -- i.e., I can only get an idea as to *who* is calling, not WHAT they are calling ABOUT!

[So, a close friend can call and try to SELL ME CAR INSURANCE and I wouldn't know ahead of time that it was going to be a sales pitch :< ]
Reply to
Don Y

Folks who *know* me with invariably tolerate my eccentricities; and, probably get a laugh out of them!

Folks who *don't* should be intimidated, "put off", inconvenienced, etc. I.e., I have a video record of your visit and there are no "instructions" for how you can "ring the doorbell" (deposit 25c?)

The HAL interface also gives me an authentication mechanism that I can use to allow trusted individuals to gain entry to the house in my absence: it "recognizes" them and will unlock the door and disable the alarm to allow them entry. Of course, it will also record this event so it's unlikely any of these trusted individuals are going to avail themselves of this capability unnecessarily!

[E.g., I've had keys to many people's homes. They *assume* I will only use those when necessary -- but have no assurance that that is the case. Yet, they are confident in their trust owing to their personal knowledge of me. They wouldn't leave a key with the Postman, for instance!]
Reply to
Don Y

We have a neighbor next street over (same house number) who often gets our mail while we get theirs. It's happened often enough that we simply drop it in each other's mailbox when that happens.

[Technically, only the homeowner and the USPS are allowed access to a mailbox...]
Reply to
Don Y

Exactly. You don't *need* to field each call/SMS *as* it comes in.

OTOH, if you knew one of your kids was driving to East Nowhere, you might be a bit more sensitive to incoming messages while you knew they were on-the-road.

Years ago, if they had called and you didn't consider their activities important/worrisome enough to "stay by the phone", their call would have been unanswered (or routed to an answering machine). So, little reason why it can't do that *now*, as well!

Reply to
Don Y

OK. So, in effect, you're saying folks who own expensive bits of personal kit shouldn't let them get into potentially "dangerous" situations. I.e., don't bring your phone/camera/etc into the bathroom, on a boat, etc. AVOID the situation that can lead to loss.

Reply to
Don Y

I always told people to put what they needed me to do in an email, too. It means that I have a trail so when/if they come back later wanting to know why I didn't do "Y", I can show them their email where they told me to do "X".

Reply to
Muggles

I think I'd be the first neighbor who'd enjoy your eccentricities! That would be cool.

Reply to
Muggles

Yep! I also don't answer the phone if I don't recognize the number, and that goes with our land line, too. All msgs of the land line go to voice mail, and sometimes we'll get repeated calls from confirmed spam calls and I'll just disconnect the call before it gets to the 'leave a msg' part because I'm sitting by the phone and can see the caller ID.

Reply to
Muggles

Yes. Come up with a routine that's smart in taking care of it, and stick to it.

Reply to
Muggles

Exactly. In my case, clients are often looking for "ball park estimates" for future projects. But, they give "ball park requirements" and all sorts of platitudes about "Just give me a general idea -- I won't hold you to it...".

Of course, when the time comes, they only remember the number you gave them and not the lack of specificity on THEIR part:

"What???! You told me it would cost $3000 and now you're looking to charge me $250K? (red faced, steam coming out ears)"

"Well, when I gave you the $3K estimate, you were looking for a 'tool shed' in which to store your riding lawnmower. Now, you're asking for a 4 bedroom house!"

(Ah, you forgot those "little details", eh?)

Good notes do more than cover your *ss -- they also help maintain healthy relationships. ("Yeah, I guess I *did* ask for a tool shed when we were talking about this back in July...") No one wants to admit they have "selective memory".

Reply to
Don Y

One time I had someone blame me for something that never got done 8 months ago, so I went into my email archive and found the 5 emails that were sent to them asking for instructions on what they needed done, and the 2 emails of them telling me the client had not made up their mind, yet, and they'd let me know when they found something out. After 5 follow-up emails inquiring if the client made up their mind and no instructions from the boss, I GAVE UP because the time frame in which the task would have needed to be done was 2 weeks in the past. The boss just said "oh, ok" ...

Reply to
Muggles

We consider the phone an "interruption"; it exists for the convenience of the CALLER! It makes no concessions to the CALLEE -- except if you elect NOT to respond to its demands! :>

So, we like to discourage folks from using it -- in "passive" ways (i.e., by not answering, not returning calls promptly, etc.)

We're far too old to be enamored with the idea of sitting on the phone for an hour blabbering about nothing important. Too many things to do that are more interesting, personal, interactive, etc. than to waste time on the phone!

I have no problem letting a machine "tie up" the caller -- and then automatically discarding the message. It's relatively easy to detect robocalls -- if the other party doesn't "pause" in their speech as a response to *your* spoken words, then its obviously a dumb machine. You can ignore whatever it says.

[OTOH, if you hang up, it knows that it was "talking" to a human.]
Reply to
Don Y

I've been thinking about totally removing the answering msg so when the machine answers, it's just empty air. It's just a short blurb right now like 'leave a msg', but the majority of the time the calling part hangs up. Occasionally, we'll get some type of msg that is obviously spam of some sort.

Reply to
Muggles

I think they find many of these things "entertaining" (i.e., they;ve never encountered anyone who applies technology in the ways I do). I find them "excellent test subjects" (aka guinea pigs).

I brought a prototype of my "speaker identification" system ("who is speaking") to one of our get-togethers and had them all amused that a machine could differentiate between them so easily just by listening to the characteristics of their voices.

[So, I can receive a phone call from , verify the caller ID is correct for that person, verify their voice has the proper characteristics *and* verify they know the proper procedure/secrets and allow them to turn off my house lights if I've left them on, close my garage door if I left it open, turn on the irrigation system if it's unusually dry, etc. AND, they don't have to be "inconvenienced" to do these things for me: having to maintain custody of keys, come *onto* the property, into the house, etc.]
Reply to
Don Y

Years ago, I had my home phone *listed* -- but under a bogus name (this allows folks who KNOW ME to find my phone number but folks who just know my REAL *name* are left facing an effectively "unlisted" number. And, it doesn't cost extra as unlisting does!). The answering machine had no outgoing message so a caller would just hear "beep".

You'd be surprised how many (incoming) messages were: "Hello? Is anyone there??" followed by a hangup. Friends, of course, would know what to expect and would leave a message or "announce themselves" if I was waiting for their call (using the machine to "screen" calls)

I always considered it amusing that folks required the outgoing message to KNOW that they were talking to an answering machine. I.e., the beep by itself wasn't enough of a (reassuring) cue!

Time to juice some more lemons...

Reply to
Don Y

That's so cool. You're the real deal when it comes to thinking outside the box! I love the idea of doing that even if I don't have all the skills that you have to make new ideas technically work. I suppose I do it on a scale that my skill set allows me to, but it's cool when I come across someone who has more skill than I have and they actually can make things happen that ARE outside of the box.

Reply to
Muggles

The only caveat I can think of to not have an answering machine msg, is our Dr's office sometimes calls and leaves msgs there.

Reply to
Muggles

A somewhat viable approach is to program the answering machine to start with the IC SIT code, followed by a couple of seconds of silence before you record the message. This may trigger some autodialers to remove the number from their list.

Audio samples at

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Reply to
Scott Lurndal

My experience was having a mobile in a shirt pocket and putting it in a washing machine, came out spotless but never worked again despite dismantling and drying it with a hairdryer.

Kenny Cargill

A week or two back, a friend lamented "drowning" her cell phone (accidentally, of course). I recounted this story to a few other friends and was surprised at how many expressed similar events (personally or among their family members).

By far, the toilet claimed the most victims. A couple lost items "over the side" on (small) boats.

No one complained about dropping anything in a *sink* (perhaps because few folks ever have a sink full of water?). And, no one complained of "death in a snow bank" (I guess snow doesn't melt quick enough to do damage?)

Cell phones are the typical victims. And, "falling out of their back pocket" (while lowering or raising pants, "before" or "after") was the typical cause. (Men's wallets seemed to suffer similar fates)

I assume PDA's are too "yesterday" to make the list. And, earpieces probably don't make it *into* the bathroom (site of most malfeasance).

But, wonder how often this happens and, considering the dollars involved in some of these devices...

Reply to
Kenny

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