Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: Steven King Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Persistent Wrong Number Bozos Message-ID: <5328@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 19 Mar 90 00:57:43 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: Motorola Inc. - Cellular Infrastructure Div., Arlington Hgts, IL Lines: 28 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 183, Message 2 of 9 And here's my obligatory Persistent Wrong Number horror story: A few years back, I was running a BBS out of my dorm room. For various reasons, I shut it down after only three months. Within that period of time, it seems some helpful person listed my board on a national service (I think it was Compu$erve, but I can't say for sure). Middle-of-the-night calls were a common occurrance through the rest of the school year; as a matter of course I started shutting the ringer off at night. How do I know calls persisted? I sometimes forgot to hit the switch before I went to bed... :-( I curse the Commodore engineer who decided their modems should generate carrier in ORIGINATE mode without first checking for an answering carrier! A friend of mine was running a board out of his dorm room, too. His was up for several years, and was quite popular. When he graduated he recommended that the phone number be retired for a while, for the sanity of the next occupants of the room. The university didn't listen to him. I hear that the new occupants were quite mystified (and upset!) over strange calls at all hours of the night, with either silence or a weird squealing on the other end of the line. I think they finally got the number changed. If there's a byte of data in the computer but no | Steve King (708) 991-8056 pointer is pointing to it, then it isn't really | ...uunet!motcid!king there. | ...ddsw1!palnet!stevek