Telephony

I hate call waiting, it seems so unfair to interrupt one call to take another. The second caller can wait - that's what busy signals are for.

I hate the telephone. If someone else is around, I'll almost always let them answer it. If I'm alone, I'll answer it. I'm trying to break myself of that habit, but it's difficult.

I agree with Bill on the call waiting feature. I like a busy signal at least then when I call someone and the phone is busy I can try back later without having to feel dissed because the phone rings but it does not get answered by a person or answering machine that I know the called party has, I am just not important enough at the moment for them to answer their call waiting.

Any incoming calls usually get answered if there is anyone home. The method for determining who gets the phone is simple. whomever is furthest away and most comfortable gets to get up and answer the phone. Also, the answering machine is busted at the moment.

I hate telephone calls. I own a phone for my convenience, not the convenience of people calling me. I refuse to take any telephone call from someone who is not a personal friend. Businesses calling me never get me, they must send a letter.

We have two phone lines, and one hunts to the other, so we don't have call waiting, but we also don't lose calls. It works, except that we only use one answering machine, and it's on the first line.

I hate/fear the sound of a ringing phone. If my girlfriend let me, I would let the answering machine screen every call. I will never understand why anyone would get a beeper/cell phone (except maybe for emergencies). I also steadfastly refuse to talk to anyone who is using a speakerphone. I just can't stand the fact that my voice is being broadcast.

I was going to add call waiting and hunt groups/rotaries, actually but I was thinking there were getting to be too many options, but that's a good point, call waiting would make sense in this list. I have a Panasonic KXT phone switch thingie, they now make a tiny one, too, that takes 3 lines in and gives you 8 extensions. I also recently started to be able to access my voicemail and faxes over the web with some software I wrote :)

We have 5 phones and two cell phones, plus beepers that can send and receive email. Only one phone line - we mostly web from work :)

Jonas: I'm with you. A ringing phone just goes through me like the laughter of children, or like a hot knife or somethign. . .

My apartment (with three residents) has three phone lines: one dialout line for me, one "dialout" line for one of my roommates (though he rarely uses it for that, now that he has a cable modem), and one common line. Four phones in the house (one of which is a 2-line phone), and an answering machine. I also have a cellular phone (why do people keep saying "I'm sorry" when I mention it? It's not for work, I don't have to keep it turned on, and have it mostly in case of auto emergencies).

*** JONAS: Besides emergencies, beepers/cell phones are useful when you need to hook up with someone at an impossible-to-predict time. (I tend to pick up people coming in from out of town at subway or bus stations a lot. The cell phone lets me do whatever I'd normally be doing while I wait for them, instead of remaining shackled to the phone in my house for a couple of hours.) That said, however... being -required- to carry a beeper/cell phone is the very PINNACLE of evil. I'll shut mine off whenever I damn well please, thank you.

I finally got a portable about a year ago, and now wonder how I ever lived without it.

You forgot call waiting, my personal favorite telephony service. It really makes the difference for me between needing one line and needing multiple lines, especially living with a housemate. I'm sorry people feel like call waiting is rude. I'm often on the phone for several hours a night and if we didn't have call waiting we would have to have a second phone line (in which case I'd probably have to say "excuse me, I have a call on the other line" which seems the same to me). I almost always answer when call waiting beeps me (after asking the first caller to excuse me) and then judge what should happen next, depending on who the two parties are, what the urgency level of the call is, etc. We have two portable phones, one of which has a headset so that I can eat, work, clean the house or whatever while I'm on the phone. My boyfriend liked mine so much after he gave it to me for Christmas that he bought one and has converted his whole house to its usage. I also love having a cellphone. I don't receive many incoming calls and so it's pretty easy not to be rude about it. I spend a *lot* of time in my car and otherwise away from home (since the aforementioned boyfriend lives an hour south of here) and it's really helpful to be able to make calls or ask people to call me wherever I am and to be able to call for directions or reservations en route.

... and I can receive faxes on my computer, but typically don't need to (don't get many faxes!)

The phone used to be attached to my ear but it has fallen off. I write letters now..

In our house, we have five phones and two phone lines, one fax machine, one answering machine, and one answering service (for my dad's work). We don't have call waiting or caller ID. That distinctive ring thing sounds cool.

I'm answering this for my parents' house rather than my dorm, not that I have any control over either of those phone systems. We have caller ID but I rarely use it to screen calls, unless it's from someone I particularly don't want to talk to. Wasn't sure what to check on that one. We just got call waiting too, and I always think my boyfriend has punched buttons on his end of the phone, which he's been known to do. Heh. Guess I'll get used to it eventually.

I have call waiting, but I often ignore it because I think it is rude. I hate calling people I don't know, and I hate answering the phone, because usually annoying telemarketers are calling. I don't have a cell phone, but I will probably get one for emergencies (that car dying on a lonely highway in the middle of the night fear kicking in) and for work use (they always page me when I am on the bloody Mass Pike). I have a pager for work, and I hate it.

I'm connected!

I used to have ISDN before I moved to the sticks. I also used to have a 10MB ether drop (T1 by proxy, sorta) when I was in school. About four years ago, I took the freebie NYNEX Caller ID box they sent me, attacked it with an oscilloscope, converted it give RS232 output, and wrote some Linux driver software for it... From that point on, when the phone range, it'd look up the # in a database, and if it had a match, play a specific WAV file.. If no match, it would string together WAV files of me speaking the numbers.. Needless to say, this geek escapade freaked people out.. *ring* .. "Pick up the phone, this is god calling!" I agree with the convenience of cell phones.. Mine's not a leash, it's only on when I want it to be.

Nothing more annoying than the phone, nothing sweeter than high speed access via leased circuits....weird, I demand a lot of my communications, but I refuse to answer the phone. The idea that anyone anywhere can pick up this device and call me at my home makes me, well, think of spam.

A cell phone is a wonderful convenience. I was expecting an important delivery on Saturday, and the weather was beautiful, so I called the delivery person and asked them to call me when they were leaving their shop, and I went out to the park and played frisbee. Things like this happen all the time. Before I got my cell phone, I vastly underestimated its convenience. It's never an intrusion though, because I don't have to answer it if I don't want to. I have caller-ID and can just turn the ringer off.

The other day we had a message on our digital answering machine from romkey, telling a housemate to check his email for the url where he could find a fax that came in for him. I would add "I kid you not," but I've already said that the message was from romkey.

Call waiting is undeniably and unarguably evil. It disrupts calls, leaves everyone embarassed, and pisses me off. If, for example, I'm talking to one person and my parents call, I have to say, "Uh, I'm talking to someone else. I'll call you back." If they just got a busy signal, they wouldn't get that sort of fakey "I'm here, but I'm too busy to talk to you" hemming and hawing deal. It's so annoying. I'd rather just get a busy signal-- it gives the message without the need for lame excuses.

"I have N phone numbers on me at any point in time." You forgot pagers.

I sometimes answer calls and sometimes don't and sometimes screen them, depends on what I'm doing and my mood.

I'm spoiled - I can't stand to share a phone line with housemates, and I couldn't live without my modem line (that is, until Somerville get cable modems).