Are You Hung Up?
Like many of us I too have become bored with the Internet. This is evident in how much time is spent on Facebook. None of us should be bored enough to resort to using Facebook as entertainment.
My morning computer ritual is to check and answer email. Then I check the blogs; I check the forums and then see what’s on North Coast Oregon. I recently added something new to the ritual. I check the Astoria Dispatch to see what calls our emergency responders were called to in the last 24 hours. I also get to read who got arrested. Most of it is the same every day, MVA, suicidal someone or other, noise complaint, dog complaint, traffic stop and assistance rendered.
One thing that happens at least five times every day is the 911 hang-up call. People call 911 and hang up. When this happens the dispatcher immediately gets a screen that tells them who called or where the call came from. Then they have to send out an officer to make sure everything is really OK, or not.
Often people say their phone dialed itself, but the statistical unlikely hood of this happening over five times a day at one dispatch center is incredible. I’ve had telephones all of my life and I’ve had a cell phone for the last 16 years and I have never dialed 911 accidentally. I’ve only dialed it once intentionally when a driver went off the road by the Quartz Creek Bridge on Highway 26 in a winter storm.
How is it people can’t figure out how to prevent these false alarms calls in the first place?
posted by The Guy Who Writes This at 4:00 AM
9 Comments:
When we lived down south we had a phone that had an "emerg" button on the bottom of the handset. It dialed 911 if you pressed it. After the third time I pressed it accidentally (and got the call back and had to admit yes, I'm okay) I threw that phone away and bought a new one without that button on it.
I once dialed 911 three times from a hotel room. You had to dial 9 then 1 to get an outside line, but the 1 button would stick and dial 911, which you didn't need an outside line for. I apologized each time and then gave up... the call wasn't that important. The hotel security still came to my room to make sure everything was OK (or to find out what the heck I was doing calling 911). I told them they really needed to clean their phone (it wasn't a 5-star hotel).
i don't know about the rest of the makes, but nokia presets 911 on speed-dial '9'. i have dialed 911 twice on two different phones, and the embarrassment and surprise that ensued was enough for me to program a key code into my phone to prevent it from happening again.
"Ass Calls"...The curse of Cell Phone technology.
At least with mis-called 911, somebody calls you back.
Perhaps those mistaken calls were from people phoning Information? Here that number is 411.
My two eldest once dialed 911 and put their three year old brother on the line. (Where the hell was I?) Got a call from the police to check on things. Glad they called first rather than rushing over.
Glad you reminded me... I took down my F B page today.
nonesense.
I think the internet itself is responsible for making us bored.
people have lost the ability to just be.
sad really.
I admit it... I had to check out the emergency calls. Many more than I would have thought, but also ran across this one:
PR REQUESTS WARRANT SERVICE AT LISTED ADDRESS FOR MALE SUBJ. HE IS VERY VIOLENT. BOTH
SUBJS HAVE ACTIVE MY SPACE ACCOUNTS. AREA CHECKED, UTL SUBJ.
OK I get the guy is violent, but the note that "BOTH SUBJS HAVE ACTIVE MY SPACE ACCOUNTS." I mean... WTF?
When I got my first Blackberry, the home screen had a button for "Emergency Call"...the first time my purse accidentally pressed this button, I quickly figured out how to lock the keyboard!
Sometimes the log has upwards of ten false calls. It's probably good my phone closes so it can't dial it self or "ass dial", but then if they called back to leave me a voice mail message I'd probably never retrieve it. I never check for voice mail or text and when I do often the messages are six months old.
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