Month: November 2001

Just a tease

You’re not just a number…well, yes, you are

Jeffrey’s stomach has been bothering him from time to time, and his doctor wanted him to have a UGI exam, which required us to spend the morning at the outpatient department of Good Samaritan Hospital. When we got there, we were handed a card saying “You’re more than a number here at Good Sam; you’re a patient, and we treat you with dignity. But to preserve your privacy, we will call you by number — you are number 3.” Yeah, right.

Better phone service through software. Yeah, right.

I’ve been unhappy with my wireless phone service for a while — it works well in many places, but it doesn’t work at all at my office and is very dubious at my house. For historical reasons, Diane uses AT&T Wireless; last week, she got a new phone (a Nokia 8260), which gets a very solid signal at home. So I borrowed it and took it to work and found that it worked there, too.

I called Sprint PCS to see if they had any plans to improve coverage, and they said that, if my phone hadn’t had a software upgrade for a while, it might not be using some of the new towers they’d installed. So this afternoon, I took it in to the shop and had the upgrade done; apparently I was six releases behind in the “PRL” database. But it didn’t make any difference when I tried to use the phone from my house.

I don’t really want to change carriers and phone numbers if I don’t have to; wireless number portability is a year away (and some carriers are asking the FCC for a further delay).

Maybe a new phone from Sprint PCS will work. I’ll have to check their policy on returns first, though.