More on centerpull balls

Oh, me too. I'm not going to replace my working computer. I don't demand that much from it, so I don't have to have all the bells and whistles. I still use dial-up because it works for me. I suppose if I had to have my computer on all day I would want something more flashy.

Murielle

Hi,

I still mainly use my DOS computer, on which I write plain text code audio editor plug-ins for an audio editor - I test and run these plug-ins in my Windows 98 machine.

I also connect to the net on my DOS baby.

Works well for me.

David

So is mine - that's why I've only just seen this!

I hope I didn't sound stern, it's just that I'm fed up of hearing the word 'scary' applied to non-scary things. But I suppose what scares some people wouldn't scare me and vice versa - although I'm not easily scared. Was during a dream last night when I was being prepared for brain surgery and found myself in a room with bodies covered with old honeycomb. Then one began to move. I shouted "HELP" and woke myself (and Spouse).

Mary

Not am I, what's the point in replacing anything until it stops working?

Except a husband, I wouldn't want to replace him no matter what :-)

Same here.

The reason I went for broadband was because people were always ringing me and getting the engaged tone. That puts people off and I don't want to do that. I'm very happy with broadband and the cost isn't that great, for the convenience.

Mary

Now, that does sound scary. ;-))

Murielle

I have voicemail. So, if they really want to talk to me they can leave a message and I will get back to them. Most of my friends and family do the same thing. No one really expects to get an actual person on the phone anymore around here. ;-))

Murielle

It was - even to an old beekeeper who has had brain surgery :-)

(Mary)

Heavens! Is that really true?

Although it was a son who complained most vociferously I know that we might have been missing customers, it's important to be available for them

The thought of never speaking to people on the phone is awful - I have little time for recorded messages from companies and those which keep you hanging on, playing electronic musak. They don't get my custom!

Mary

Yes. The fact is, that people are busy, and when you count cell phones and second lines, internet etc., they'd never have any time for themselves or their children if they answered the phone(s) every time they rang. For myself, it comes down to energy. I don't have the energy to spend three or more hours each day talking on the phone. I need to be able to decide when and with whom I speak.

I think what many people forget is that we have phones, etc., for *our* convenience, not for the convenience of others. Good manners have taken a hike in the past few years. No one who has called me in I-don't-know-how-long has asked if they've caught me at a bad time, or if I'm free to settle in for a long chat. People assume that my time is theirs whenever *they* feel like it. I don't have a cordless phone so when I take a call I can't get on with whatever I might have been doing, or might need to do during a long call. Turning my phone off and using the voicemail I pay for is the sensible option.

But even businesses use voicemail and I rarely get through to a person. Mostly it's voicemail. It is acceptable and therefore expected. People are busy I don't assume I'm the most important event in their day.

I don't believe I said I "never" speak to people on the phone ... I speak to people all the time. I just use my voicemail to choose when I speak to them. Oh, and telemarketers don't leave voicemail. ;-)

Murielle

We have an answering machine that picks up after three rings. I personally hate speaking to answering machines myself, so I try to answer when I can... or when I'm within earshot to hear it. It actually does come in handy though as we are sometimes in another room and don't hear the phone, but when the answering machine picks up we hear the voices talking. If it is a telemarketer (they certainly leave messages here, it's VERY annoying) we just ignore it and delete it afterward, but if it's a friend or family we try to grab it before they hang up. They've all gotten used to "Jeeves" answering the phone now LOL and just start talking with "Hello... if you're there pick up, it's me!.... Okay, no answer, so I'll assume you're not home at the moment. Okay, I'll call back a bit later."

But much of the time in our house it IS the 'children' who are ringing!

You're free to limit a conversation ...

That's a shame, I always do and people ask me the same. I think we must be living in a different culture.

We have a 'wheelie' phone in the dining room, the sitting room and our bedroom. Here in the 'office' I have a fixed phone and there's one in the hall too but that's rarely used. We tend to carry a wheelie around with us because we spend a lot of time outside and don't want to miss calls. There's a free voicemail service here but we don't even bother with that :-)

It's not acceptable to me, nor to many people. It's a courtesy to be answered by a real person.

I'm not criticising your choice, Murielle, it's just not the same as mine, nor of most of the people I know.

To most of us the phone takes precedence over other things, unless we have a visitor. Often a visitor will urge us to accept the call. It's comparable with answering a knock or ring at the door.

Mary

We have a couple of friends who do that, it amuses me but I can understand it in their cases. They always answer the door though ... :-)

Mary

Mary

In our area, we are inundated with telemarketers calling all times of the day and night, desperate to sell their cr*p. When we got up to more than 3 dozen calls a day, despite signing up on the No Call list, I took matters into my own hands.

I work for myself, and I don't have time to dash for the phone every minute of the day, and everyone who has a legit reason to our house call knows this. Everyone who should also knows I've changed our answering machine message, because telemarketers, despite being told that they MUST remove your number from their system when you require it, are not doing so, because most have automated dialing systems. However, someone smarter than their equipment posted the answer online how you get the garbage calls all but eliminated. The trick is to always let your answering machine answer for about 6 months, and for your outgoing message, find and record as the first part of your outgoing message the phone's "special information tone" and have that play on your machine FIRST and have a 5 second silence follow it before your actual outgoing message plays.

What does that do? It tells the automated computer constantly dialing your number that your number is no longer in use, and it is automatically deleted from their database. It takes a few months to get yourself out of all of them, and then after a couple more months, they will usually try again, but we don't get dozens of telemarketers calling every single day, nor do the ones who have operators listening in on the dialing bother to leave annoying messages because nearly everyone recognizes the tone as the "this line has been disconnected" signal, and since they are paid by how many sales they get, which requires an actual person to answer, they don't bother to listen until the outgoing message kicks in, which I recorded after a 5 second silence after the tone, as recommended when I looked up online how to stop the constant unwanted calls.

This way, I can live my life in peace and still pay attention to incoming calls. For those times when they try again, I have caller ID, and if they don't send their info, which some of them continue to not ID themselves despite the gov't telling them they must, I simply don't answer and after a couple of weeks, we are clear again for another 4-6 months. Those few people I know who have a cell that doesn't give their name, Caller ID still displays their number, and those I recognize, so I know to pick up when I'm home.

Leah

We don't have that. Yet.

When we do I'll probably get a handset with caller display so that I'll know whether to answer.

I certainly can't do with dashing to a phone, which is why we carry wheelie phones with us.

Mary

LOL! I used to get terribly frustrated by voicemail and answering machines. I still tend to stumble through voicemail I leave, but when an actual person answers I barely know how to handle it. ;-))

I used to worry about getting to the phone, even when I had an answering machine, but then, after I got sick, I don't worry so much. If it's important people know to either to email me or leave voicemail.

Murielle

Ah. That explains a lot. My friends who have children have very young children.

Sometimes that works. Sometimes that doesn't. Short of hanging up on them, some people just don't "get it" when one says, "I have to go."

Most of the time I do, too. On occasion I forget, but usually I ask before settling in for a long chat. I think that some people think "disabled" means "always available". ;-))

Having a phone you can "take with you" makes a huge difference. I've thought about getting a cordless phone. I actually had one for a short while, but it only worked once or twice and then it died. (It was a gift, so I can't complain too loudly about it.)

It is a courtesy. It is no longer the norm. I remember being taught that it was good manners to answer the phone by the third ring. That was back in the days when not everyone had a phone and Miss Manners was respected.

Um ... okay.

I'm going to assume that "us" refers to you and the people you mention in the previous paragraph. ;-))

I too was taught that a visitor, or an "in-person" customer had priority over a phone call. Sadly, in business, that is no longer the case as I discovered much to my chagrin about a year ago at the post office. After standing in line for over half an hour I finally got to the counter and the postal worker took a phone call. I was flabberghasted. When I expressed my astonishement she informed me that everyone got their turn, including the people on the phone. The world is changing.

Murielle

"Mary Fisher" wrote in message news:471337c7$0$765$ snipped-for-privacy@master.news.zetnet.net...

? We answer the door all the time... unless we're in the back of the house and don't hear them knocking (our house is almost soundproof when you aren't in the same area as another person... if I'm in the kitchen and Matthew is in the livingroom, with the computer room between us, and one speaks.. the other one barely hears mumbling if anything at all). Most times we *do* know people are at the door because Casper is in the house and letting us know LOUDLY that someone is there... but if he's in the back yard and hasn't noticed them and we're in the kitchen at the back of the house, we may not hear someone knocking at the front door..... our front doorbell gave up working a couple of years ago.

Oh yes... occasionally, if we keep getting the same telemarketer calling too often, I *do* pick up and request that they remove our number from their calling list. Especially the ones who call while we are eating, or while I'm in the middle of cooking. Some of them can be so very rude and won't stop talking when you tell them politely that you simply don't have time right now... or even when you tell them that what they are trying to persuade you that you *need* you are not interested in. Honestly, I went through this with one guy who wouldn't stop trying to force what he was selling down my throat, even though I told him politely a few times "No thank you, we don't need it." "No thank you, we aren't interested." "I understand that you need to try to sell this, but we simply aren't interested... don't have the money to buy it even if we *were* interested... and besides I am trying to get supper ready and things are beginning to burn so I really have to get off the phone now." He kept on pushing and pushing... I finally lost it and became very rude and told him... "Look, I've told you enough times POLITELY that we do NOT want what you are selling and you still won't stop about it. I am hanging up now, do NOT call back!" and he *still* kept on being rude and aggressively trying to sell his product, so I hung up like I said I was going to. Grrrr The ones who are that bad really do tick me off a lot.

So do we - but people who know us don't knock, they walk in. The back door is usually open anyway. Yesterday morning - 7 am! - we were woken by the front doorbell. It was the postman with a parcel so I didn't mind too much but we were both fast asleep and couldn't get back to the arms of Morpheus.

That story is bad. I wouldn't have had your patience, I'd have just said no and put down the receiver but it's never happened to me. Oh yes, there was one time when someone rang and wouldn't stop talking so I put the phone on the table and let him babble away to himself. Rude? Yes, but he shouldn't have rung anyway, our number's blocked.

Perhaps I'm just too formidable ... :-)

Off to Wales in the morning for a week or so, taking my knitting. We'll be in our tiny caravan on daughter's farm on a mountain, it's her birthday on Sunday and I want to plan an outing for us all. Keep forgetting ...

See you all later!

Happy needle-ing,

Mary

Thank you for sharing that information, Leah. I hadn't heard of doing this... sounds like a good idea... especially since you let those who need to know what to expect when the machine picks up.

When I said in a previous message that telemarketers in our area leave messages, I was thinking more about the ones who call saying "You have won a weekend to our resort... please call XXXXXXX to reserve your vacation." Blah, blah, blah.... my sister actually called them back once and she found out that the *room* was free... you had to pay your airfare to get there. She said, "Well my husband doesn't fly. What if he wants to drive us there instead of flying?" Nope... the deal was, that you HAD to fly to get the free room. Always a catch... nothing in life is free... with the exceptions of smiles, hugs and unconditional love of family, pets (who are furry family anyway) and friends.. ;o)

Anyway... *most* of the other telemarketers don't leave messages, that is true! However I just went through two weeks of annoyance. The phone would ring, I would pick up after the first ring because I happened to have the phone right beside me, and there would be no answer on the other end. This happened EVERY time, and the phone was ringing often. I finally called the telephone office in town and asked them to call me back to make sure it wasn't our phone messing up. She called me right back, I answered and we spoke... it worked, so it wasn't our phone. She said it was likely telemarketers... but how can they expect to sell anything if they don't even talk? Unless these particular ones are just being paid for each number they dial, whether they actually talk to anyone or not.. but that doesn't make a lot of sense either. *shrug* Anyway, after two weeks of that... I answered the phone one day and someone actually spoke to me. Even though it was a telemarketer, and I didn't want what they were trying to sell (she was polite enough to take no for an answer), it was nice to actually hear someone and know that our phone really is working okay. I had been a bit concerned that it may have been long distance calls that weren't coming through, since the operator at our local telephone office came through okay when she called me back.

I wonder if your advice will work on our phone too? I wouldn't know where to find that "special information tone" on our phone. Oh well, the information will come in handy for some other people, I'm sure. :o)