[Humor] Call Me

FROM "DAVE BARRY IN CYBERSPACE" =================================== COMMUNICATIONS Today most of us take it for granted that if we urgently need to reach a person, no matter where that person is in the world, we can simply press a few buttons on a telephone keypad, and within microseconds, thanks to the computerized global satellite telecommunications network, be connected with a microprocessor-controlled, multi-function voice-mail machine informing us that the person is not available. But that is only part of the story. Thanks to computers, inanimate objects are now able to contact us. I am not referring here to the computers that call us up at exactly dinnertime to ask us prerecorded consumer survey questions about our views on, for example, laxatives. No, the specific example of computer communication that I am thinking of here is a widely publicized, absolutely true 1995 news story -- you might have read about this -- about a woman in Billerica, Massachusetts, who had an 800 telephone number for her home business, on which she received a mysterious telephone call every 90 minutes, day and night, for six months. She'd answer the phone, but there was never anybody there, only silence. It was driving her crazy, but she didn't want to disconnect the phone, because she was afraid she'd lose business. Finally she contacted the authorities, who tracked down the source of the calls, which turned out to be -- I swear I am not making this up -- an unused oil tank in the basement of a home in Potomac, Maryland. This tank was equipped with a computerized device programmed to call a fuel company when the tank was empty, but the fuel company had shut down, and its phone number was reassigned to the Massachusetts woman's business. In other words, thanks to the miracle of computers, this woman was being harassed by an empty oil tank hundreds of miles away -- a technological achievement that would have been considered impossible just a few short decades ago. In any event, the oil tank is now disconnected, which is good, because otherwise it would probably have wound up registered to vote.