Journal Archives
9/1/99 A Solution to the Phone Number Shortage
Okay, after only about three hours of sleep in the last 40 or so hours I've hit upon a solution to that most vexing of problems: Where will we get new phone numbers now that the phone company is beginning to run out? It seems what with everyone having two phone lines, a cell phone, a pager number, and a fax, Ma Bell and other Powers That Be simply have run out of seven digit numbers. I personally don't think they're looking hard enough, but that's a subject for another day. Their "solution" in most parts of the country is to create new area codes. Run out of seven digit combinations? Add three more. Make everyone have to dial 10 digits for a local call, what do we care.Of course this creates some rather peculiar situations where the main house phone has one area code, your daughter down the hallway IN THE SAME HOUSE has a different area code, and your cell phone has yet a third. Welcome to the modern, convenient, user-friendly age indeed.
Okay, so you've heard these complaints before, but I've actually came up with a solution. It's very simple, really, and allows us all to keep using seven digits as God intended us to use. Capitalization. It's really as simple as that. You know how each letter has two forms, upper case and lower case? Well, all we have to do is develop capital numbers. This immediately doubles the possible combinations. For example, my number could be "three-three-eight, nine-capital five*-three-capital six". See, problem solved. "But," you whine, "phones don't have capital numbers on them; this will also double the size of the number pad on the phone!". Dear, silly reader.... have you not heard of a "shift key"?! We'd simply add one of those to the keypad as well....
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Last updated 12/17/01