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I've just changed mobile phone numbers. If I'd given you my old number and you want to stay in touch, send me a text message on the old one (within the next two weeks) or email me.

10 Comments

1:

Just curious --why-- you changed the number? Too many crazy fans calling you at all hours? Stalkers that just breath a lot? (Sorry, but I was nervous!). Seriously, I can't stand the thought of getting a new number.

2:

SNAFU with PAC between T-Mobile consumer and Vodafone business accounts. (It's only applicable when you create the business account: thereafter, Vodafone won't let you change the number of the primary phone on a business account. But if I got the PAC code my old phone would have stopped working as soon as I got the new account -- and, as it happened, that was six days before the phone arrived.) Plus, I've been having an increasing number of strangers dialing the wrong number and getting me over the past couple of months, so ...

3:

Once a month or so, I have a Hispanic lady call who has little English (and I have little Spanish) and she insists I must be Teresa. I eventually hang up and I guess she calls the right number then.

4:

The Oxford phone system occasionally likes to plug you into other people's conversations.

5:

We are the Eschaton?

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2008/01/open-thread-0-2.html#c98070912

Is the warning of pre-emptive nuclear strike, by Western powers, against other nations developing their own NBC arsenals the moral equivalent of the Eschaton's light cone warning? The warning is...

I am the Eschaton. I am not your god.

I am descended from you, and I exist in your future.

Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else.

6:

The next step in escalation is for one to obtain, when possible, the phone number of someone who repeatedly and unapologetically phones one under the delusion or pretext that they think you are someone else.

I've used "69 and "Caller ID" to winkle out the numbers of such offenders. Three or four such persons found themselves getting counter-calls from me at the most intentionally disruptive times in THEIR schedules.

I believe that I forced at least one such perpetrator to change their phone number.

This is a last resort. Anyone can "dial" a wrong number once, even twice. But, the third time, once this has been pointed out to them politely, and the priorities of my schedule explained, I escalated. This was combined with an insistence that I actually WAS someone else, whom they named, and they were sure of the number, and why I was I hiding that person?

Two weeks ago today I was admitted to a good local hospital via Emergency Room for major abdominal surgery. I'll spare you the gory details. Let's just say that the surgery (inclduing bowel resection) was successful, but postsurgical complications ensued, and I was being dosed with a narcotic, which managed the pain but exacerbated the complication of a small intestine which would not reboot into functionality.

I'd happily taken phonecalls from family and friends -- being at the gates of death is a good way to disambiguate. But when someone phoned, I groaned with pain reaching the phone on the bedside table, and it was someone expecting someone else, I lauched into a drily corrosive monologue that began: "So, it doesn't bother you that you woke up a patient in a hospital who has just had life-saving surgery and is in agony, but has had no sleep in 36 hours?"

Luckily for him, he was able to elicit an embarassed apology. Hate to get pre-emptive counterstrikes tangled up in my catheters.

I'll bet someone in Charles Stross' network here has an anecdote that can trump this, along 411 Nigerian counterscam lines, or retribution in WoW or Second Life.

What does a hard scientist get from my medical experience, 9 days in the hospital, besides gratitude to be alive, and vigorous collaboration in the healing process? PUBLICATION, that's what.

The surgeon and I shall publish a scientific paper, combining his surgical and teaching experience with my Biophysics and Complex Systems publishing history since 1974. We want refereed publication, in the scientific literature as soon as feasible, so that the semi-Open Source nature of such protocol allows benefit (at least statistically) to future patients. Two keywords for the paper as currently draft abstracted: "Giome" and "ileus."

7:

Is the warning of pre-emptive nuclear strike, by Western powers, against other nations developing their own NBC arsenals the moral equivalent of the Eschaton's light cone warning? The warning is...

Posted by: Keith Douglas | January 23, 2008 10:45 AM

Think of it as more of a response to Russia's declarations that they would use pre-emptive nuclear strikes to defend themselves.

8:

I'm a french teacher. I've written a dissertation about Laclos'Liaisons dangereuses. I discovered your books on Amazon after reading Hamilton's "Pandora Star". They say (on Amazon)I should like "The family Trade". And really, I loved the four novels of the serie and was very surprised by your books. At first, I thought "Charles Stross" was a pseudonym : only a woman could imagine Myriam Beckstein thoughts ! I've read many american novels were the women characters are psychologically "wrong". And now, I know you are a real man, and I find very amazing that you can take a woman as heroïne. Your characters (men and women) are very fascinating. You must enjoy writing. Your books are alive, full of joy. So, don't stop writing! You make a very good job.

9:

Think of it as more of a response to Russia's declarations that they would use pre-emptive nuclear strikes to defend themselves.

Well, yeah, the little darlings will pull major naval manouvers in the Bay of Biscay...

http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Russian-fleet-and-air-force.3699711.jp

Jeez - what the hell would a pre-emptive nukular strike defend you against anyway? Alien? Predator? Not being accused of genocide?

10:

"what the hell would a pre-emptive nukular strike defend you against anyway? Alien? Predator? Not being accused of genocide?"

A pre-emptive nuclear strike, is the answer to the question...

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