Strange phone behavior

[Alex Fraser]

Ah these modern times...
We had a problem with our home phone.  The phone would ring a half ring 
and then disconnect.  I was chatting with the Comcast agent in the 
Philippines when it occurred to me to connect one phone direct to the 
modem to eliminate my local rats nest of home wiring.  Well it worked 
and I had one phone that rang and connected fine.   We have an older 
answering machine which would not be on the line anymore as it is 
upstairs and the cable modem is in the basement near where the cable 
drop comes in (it was on the rats nest of wiring I disconnected).  We 
had our answering machine set to pick up on 3 rings and the one we have 
at Comcast set to 4 rings, so it never was used.   I went to the Comcast 
support page to check the settings.  I noticed I'd been there months 
before and had played with the Comcast text feature.  I sent a couple of 
texts to my cell to verify that it was still working and it was.  I 
noticed that I had that text number in my phone and had completely 
forgot about it.  OK I decided to stop fooling around and call my 
703-494-xxxx home number from my cell to see if it picked up after 4 
rings.   I got and "invalid  number" error!  I went to bed.  This 
morning I again was chatting with a Philippines Comcast tech.  She 
called the number listed as our home phone, it rang and I picked up, 
which was encouraging until she told me she had dialed 571-432-xxxx.  I 
told her it wasn't our number, but it sounded familiar.  Sure enough 
when I looked at my cell phone it was the Comcast text number, oh hell. 
So she started a ticket and said I was being moved up to I guess tier 2 
and they'd give me a call.  OK I got some more coffee and thought about 
all the robo calls we get from strange numbers, I've wondered where they 
could get those numbers?  So I decided to be a squeaky wheel (to get 
some grease) and dialed the 611 tech support number from the new 
incorrect 571 number and made my case to the tech in Texas.  He said it 
was a porting problem and transferred me to the porting department in 
the Philippines.   That guy said the person authorized to report the old 
number would get in Monday and he gave me a direct number to dial Monday 
afternoon, which is in the morning there.   Well I'm not upset, I'm kind 
of amazed that this whole thing works at all, but I am worried.  With 
all the hacks these days I wonder if we aren't as close as one 
uninstalled patch on some remote machine away from a total meltdown.   
Ah these modern times...

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  ~~~******************* Alex Fraser *******************~~~
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