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I'm a pianist, happily married. Socially progressive, chocolate lover, interested in the nature of reality, alternates between being a slacker and being a grind.

4.27.2005

New Phone Answering System

I am psyched--we have a brand new phone answering system! Our old answering machine, bless its heart, just wasn't very intelligible. I think Paul bought it when mini-cassette type answering machines were just beginning to be replaced by digital recorders, and this one was definitely a first draft. Messages often sounded little better than the adults on "Peanuts."

People who had medium or loud speaking voices would sound so distorted, we missed at least every 3rd word even with the playback volume on low. We could figure out most of the missing words from context, but the all-important digits of the return phone# would elude us. Think speaking softer would solve the problem? Not so fast. The machine would cut off if it perceived 7 or more seconds of "silence," and often hung up on our soft-spoken friends.

Finally tired of dealing with it, we now have a brand new system with 5.8 GHz and, count 'em, three mailboxes. So cool!

1 comment:

Brünhilde Wunderfrau said...

Wait a minute, your old machine distorted messages from people with loud voices? Messages from me must've been a real joy to listen to.

I always loved the Harmon-muted trombone that did the teacher voices on Charlie Brown. We did an acted-out version of Peter and the Wolf one year where the wolf pretended to talk to the conductor, and the Pr. Trombonist made those sounds. The entire orchestra was in hysterics, and the conductor loved it so much (because it really does convey a voice!) that we kept it in the show!

On one of the last concerts, instead of making the wah-wah sounds, the trombonist made a fart noise into his trombone, and the wolf got this embarrassed look on its face and gestured apologetically. I don't know how the orchestra made it through that concert without soiling its pants.

I'll look forward to leaving an intelligible message for you sometime! ;)

XO Darcensational