Craigslist responses always seem to have the best grammatical highlights.

 

Joe, wouldn't some sort of a membrane separator/bladder system still allow flooding the fuel tanks with water while segregating the fuel from the seawater?
I mean, you would lose a few gallon's worth of volume to put such a system in place, but it would make life a whole lot easier.

 

She just got a job at Dunkin Donuts:

Instagram photo by @paiigelynn (paiigelynn) | Statigram

 

Why do drive-by strangers ask if I want to sell my Miata when they spot it sitting in my garage from the street? I've been asked a handful of times this year. Furthermore, how do they even spot it from the street? Gaydar?

 

Asking you to "sell your miata", is code for getting a blow job.

 

which someone would ask me if i was selling my miata...

 

While no one has asked me if I'd like to sell my miata, some guy did ask if he could give me a *******. Was that code for him asking to buy my car?

 

Funny:

Despite the fact that I worked for the Harris Corporation for 13 years, I had never until today realized the significance of the fact that telephone area code 321 is assigned to Brevard County, Florida.

 

Strange, it's only been in service since 1999.

Area codes were originally assigned in descending order of census population of the area and the "easiest to dial on a rotary" numbers were assigned first. They were restricted to having a 0 or 1 as the second digit. 0 was for the losers who had to crank the dial all the way around.

212 NYC
213 Los Angeles
312 Chicago
313 Detroit
214 Dallas
415 SF
704 NC
803 SC

The expansion to include other middle numbers didn't really happen until the 90s, though Bell encouraged users to dial a preceeding 1 to establish a long distance call, thus obviating the need to instruct the switching equipment using the second digit 1 or 0 of the area code as well as opening up 7-digit prefixes formerly restricted to area code use for further local number expansion.

You may recall some cultural backlash after the expansion by those residing in high profile area codes now subject to numbers with "lame" area codes. I'm looking at you 646.

...

Sorry Joe, I didn't realize how irrelevant this was.

 

I lost my 219 and was given 574. I remember it well. Only thing worse was when the communists forced Daylight Savings on us and took away our precious Indiana East TZ.

 

Those feels when your parents start getting older and now you have to start paying back all of those all nighters taking care of them when they need you. been up for about 24 hours now, still at least another 6-8 to go. Been administering heavy duty antibiotic eye drops to my mom every hour on the hour since we got back from the UAB eye foundation at 9pm last night. I'm ******* tired! This just hasn't been a good month for me or my family. I've always had high levels of stress, anxiety and depression, but this **** is just ridiculous! I need a doppelganger to take my place so I can vanish for a month.

At least I have a comfy couch, TV, food and drinks instead of a cold waiting room in a hospital.

 

Not just easier to dial, but in the days before MF interoffice signaling, 1s took less time to pass though the various stages of the long distance switching system as well, both in the selectors and when going across the trunks between tandems.

Giving the "easy" area codes to those cities which were dialed into most frequently conserved switching resources and speed up the system as a whole.

 

So after loads of job applications, I finally get an interview. Here's the kicker: new job would violate my non-compete clause from my previous job. Brilliant

 

We didn't have an area code or exchange when I was in High School. The telephone number at my house was "Califon 291" Sucks to be old, but the long term memory still works.

 

I remember my dad yelling at the old ladies on the street to get off the line so he could make a call. Party lines up until I was about 10. Dial phones until I was in high school.

 

Ah, the good* ole' days before the #4A/CTS tandem switch and Direct Distance Dialing.



* = bad





Fun Fact #1:

In case anybody didn't get it, area code 321 was assigned to Brevard County, FL after a community petition to do so, in honor of the achievements of NASA, whose Cape Canaveral facility is located there. 3... 2... 1, of course, being the last three words uttered before "liftoff."




Fun fact #2:

When the concept of toll-free long distance numbers (1-800 numbers) was first introduced, they were, by necessity of the primitive routing capabilities of the toll system at the time, mapped in such a way that their prefix directly translated into an area code. Thus, once switched into the toll-free area of the routing map, it was necessary for the access tandem (and the higher-level switches upstream) to decode only the prefix section of the number in order to determine next-route using the same lookup tables as would be used

For example, 800-421 mapped to area code 213 in Los Angeles, 800-227 mapped to area code 415 in the San Francisco Bay Area, and 800-424 mapped to area code 202 in Washington, D.C.

Why were the area codes themselves not used as prefixes?

The world may never know.

 

probably violated the 2nd digit rule. Prefixes couldn't have 1s because what would your number be? W1lliams 456?

 

I too remember only needing to dial the last 4 digits to call anybody in your town.

 

I have a funny story. My Grandfather was a farmer, but like most family run farms back home, he needed a day job for insurance and stability. He worked as a diesel mechanic for the local phone company. When he was in his last year of work, they decided to outsource the mechanics. Someone decided that it wouldn't be fair to lay him off with 1 year left so they made him a phone operator.

He hated life for that one year. He is a very quiet solemn figure that only spoke when he had to. It also turned out that he was working with my mother's future sister in-law. He thought she was nuts (she was).

Ahh good times down memory lane. Just thinking of my grandfather as an operator cracks me up.

 

But that rule should not have applied in the case of toll-free numbers, since those were already being decoded by a mechanism similar to the one which processed area codes. Eg: they were not literally prefixes, since they could never be directly dialed without the "800" area code. They simply didn't exist in any class 5 exchange table.