monroe county blues

[nibot]

Yesterday I felt as if some terrible malaise had descended upon me. I blame it in part on Cingular. I went to the trouble of driving to their storefront downtown and promptly assumed a headache upon entering (my natural reaction to american mobile telephone companies). I was immediately referred to their 1-800 number. Keeping sarcastic comments to the effect of, "Well, if my phone were working, maybe I would have tried that" to myself, I pressed on for general information, but this was promply rebuffed by the assertion that, as a Californian, I cannot be helped in New York State. The lady insisted that California is a magical fairy land where Cingular telephones work in a completely different way than everywhere else in the country. Also, apparently number portability is an entirely intrastrate phenomenon; I couldn't transfer my 510-area code phone number to an account based in New York. Rochesterians, anyway, are a sweet provincial people, and when they recite their telephone number for you, you'll be left hanging for three more digits. Likewise, when you throw a full ten-digit number at them, they look a little bewildered and confused.

This reminds me of something I witnessed the other day in the hospital cafeteria, where I frequently eat lunch (what costs $8 on the University of Rochester college campus costs $3.15 at the medical center). At the grill, a man asked for a "hot dog." The griller (?) then asked for clarification: "White or red?" Confused, the man repeated his request: "a hot dog." With growing agitation, the grill attendant repeated his response: "WHITE or RED". Et cetera, ad nauseum, and so forth. The situation was resolved by default through some stochastic process. Afterwards some gleeful person brought forth this bit of trivia to the others standing by: "Did you know, in some cities outside of Rochester they don't know about 'white hots?'" Much surprised murmuring resulted.

Well, grad school sucks, but I've already belabored that in my brain, so no need to go on here. Time to go work on some homework. I think I'm going to go see Garden State tonight, most likely by myself.

Comments

[squarkz.livejournal.com]

a remarkable number of my friends here hung onto their area codes, so i consistently get phone calls from reno and i'm confused every single time.

i changed to a 206 area code just as soon as i possibly could, because a seattle number just seemed so fashionable.

in your case, though, i'd keep your little piece of california.

[shamster.livejournal.com]

display california pride - it's what separates us from the world of the beasts.

Sorry to hear about the depression. Mine (and as I assume most everyone in your situation) stems from a combination of homesickness, poor (read: dark/gloomy/cold) weather conditions, a sudden and total loss of direction in life and sense of purpose. Maybe the latter is a product of the former. nonetheless - give it a year and you'll be chipper and at ease.

[nibot.livejournal.com]

yeah.. actually it's mainly grad school that has me down. I think Rochester is a pretty nice place.

I want to get a big California flag for this house!

[shamster.livejournal.com]

Got your flag here. Come pick it up :)

[tastyshores.livejournal.com]

garden state was an awesome movie. i could totally relate on a certain level. Kind of like Camus' book The Stranger how do the keys on your computer have the swedish symbols? or do you have a swedish keyboard?

[nibot.livejournal.com]

In Windows, you can add a Swedish keyboard layout using the control panel. Then there will be a little icon in the lower right where you can switch between english (EN) and Swedish (SV) language keyboard layouts.

The other way is that you can write ä as "ä", ö as "ö", and å as "å".

[tastyshores.livejournal.com]

i guess i'm just gonna copy and paste the words from other svensk folk becauase i'm so lazy and computer illiterate.

[ucbfumbler.livejournal.com]

I hate to be on the side of Cingular. But I think that lady might be right. I remember hearing something about the California Cingular's GSM network being just different enough from the east coast. Why? SBC is a grouping of various regional companies and Cingular is the wireless branch of SBC. Basically, what happened was these regional carriers all had their own variation of GSM (yes, variation, we don't live in Europe) and then they merged to create SBC. Think Verizon and Sprint, both are CDMA but they can't use each other's phone. Plus, on top of that you had Cingular buying out regional companies (and now AT&T Wireless), so more localization of standards for backward compatibility. I know people with 5 year cellphones because they love the phone and don't need the features.

Where does this leave you? In theory, number portability is for when you're changing companies. But in then it's kinda weird and sometimes they don't let you do it. One of the people in my office tried to move from Sprint to Nextel, but she couldn't take he number with her. And now, she's trying to move from Nextel to Verizon, still can't move the number with her.

BUT I don't see what the problem the lady has, it's a SIM card change into a new phone. And just change you're address with Cingular, it should work and you can still keep the 510 number.

So here's the steps:
1) get a new phone
2) replace SIM card with old one.
3) call into Cingular and have an address change.

[nibot.livejournal.com]

Oh, the lady was right on all counts. That doesn't make it any less stupid.

Incompatibility of phones: There is that new GSM frequency going into service. 1800 or 1900 MHz, I forget which it is. But in some areas you need a tri-band GSM phone in order to use the new frequency. This I can understand. It is fine.

Inability to access accounts: This is not fine. Apparently Cingular/New York can't access account information for Cingular/California customers. huh?

Change of address: No, apparently it's not allowed to have a California area code but a New York address. (huh?)

Number Portability: Apparently it's only guaranteed to be available if you're not crossing a state line.

I will do one of the following:

* Have my parents create a new line on their account, transferring my (Oakland-based) number to their (Southern CA) account. This will only cost $10 or $20 per month since it's a family plan. Because of aformentioned Cingular SNAFU, they'll have to do this in California and mail me the new phone / SIM card (doh!).

* Just buy a new phone on Ebay. I prefer the above since I am currently paying $40/mo, and I'd prefer to be paying $10/mo. But I might just get an ebay phone anyway, since I see that Ericsson T28W's are going for less than $20. (hot!) In fact... I just bid on one!

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

I noticed in both Colorado (mathcamp) and Nevada (canvassing), they seem to never mention the area code at all, so I had trouble calling numbers that I needed to reach. I think it's because the entire state has just one area code in each case, though I think Denver and Vegas may have their own area codes now. Berkeley people are always confused when I give them my phone number and keep going beyond when they expected me to stop, because they all assume my phone is 510. It's a universal problem.

That sucks about your phone number "portability".

Not exactly universal

[ucbfumbler.livejournal.com]

I'm in SoCal and people expect you to give a ten-digit number. In San Diego, it could be 619/858/760, you always have to ask now. OC, it's 714/949. LA is a mess at 213/310/626/909, I'm sure I probably miss one or two other numbers.

[svino.livejournal.com]

God, I hate Cingular.

I admit I'm in the "never heard of 'white-hots' before moving to Rochester category, but then, I never eat any color of hot dog much.

The med center cafeteria lines seem to not be the best place for acoustics. It seems every other day there, I have or overhear the bread type conversation:
Them: "White or Wheat?"
Customer: "White."
Them: "Wheat?"
Customer: "No, white."

[kari-marie.livejournal.com]

Gee, and this nonesense ought to get even better now that Cingular and AT&T are one, right? :-Þ

We're so provincial over here that people give you phone #s in 4-digit quantities. Try that on for size (one prefix in this entire one-stoplight town.) I think it's quaint, actually.