Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

vivatifosi

Generali wrote: »

It's about 3 seconds since I realised that!!!

Apparently the US lobbied really hard to get the international dialing code '1'.

My bloody Bloomberg terminal keeps crashing and I'm meeting someone for coffee in 15 minutes. Grrrrr.

The whole number one thing... I don't understand why the USA shares 1 with Canada and parts of the Caribbean, but parts of Europe don't share a dialling code, nor do, say, Australia and NZ, which are historically if not massively geographically, close.

Similarly, with postcodes, London got the cardinal points... W, NW, N, E, SE, SW... why did Sheffield get the S rather than there being an S in London, yet London got the E instead of Edinburgh, which didn't get ED either.

I also like internet domains... and the fact that a tiny place like Tuvalu benefits from owning the .tv domain and selling to tv companies.

hjd

zagubov wrote: »

It was years before I realised that the old dialling codes were alphabetical
ie Birmingham (021) Edinburgh (031) Glasgow (041) Liverpool (051) Manchester (061) and similarly for smaller towns too.

Used to be my party trick, knowing the place from the dialling code - funnily enough, other people didn't appreciate it.
However, it didn't always work (the alphabetical bit, not my memory) which I found most annoying. I like things to be in order.
Preston 01772
St Albans 01727
are cases in point.
London ones were easier in the days when you had the letters written on the dial so could always work out the correct code.

Pyxis

What a lot of interesting stuff!

I like this thread! Lots of little snippets!:T

Talking of Asperger's, just heard on the Teev that Chris Packham has it.

zagubov wrote: »

This is making me nostalgic for that lateral thinking stuff we did back in thread 5 four years ago.

Ooh! Could there be some more? Pretty please? I love that sort of thing! I love puzzles and I love semantics, so lateral-thinking exercises are great! Even if I don't manage to work it out, it's still great to let the mind do somersaults and go off at tangents, and then if you do get a light-bulb moment, oh the bliss!

zagubov wrote: »

I believe that the Soviet Union and now Russia got 007.:beer:

:rotfl: really? :T :rotfl:

How did we end up with boring old +44?



The old London Telephone Exchanges sometimes had some lovely names! They were followed by 4 numbers.
I was an older teenager when I found out that most places had telephone numbers with 6 digits, and no exchange name other than the town. So we had Daffodil 1234, (DAF 1234), but someone in Reading had (Reading) 123456.
When STD came in, London became 01 and the lovely exchange names disappeared and became 3-digit numbers.
Then 01 became 071(inner London) and 081 (outer London), which then morphed to 0171 and 0181. And then changed again to the 020 7- and 020 8- current system. It cost a fortune in new stationery!



One telephone number I had, in a part of London, only had two different digits in the seven-digit number! Easy to remember but also easy to mis-dial!

My current number, (not in London), is very similar to the local Maternity hospital. It has the same digits with two of them round the other way. I kept wondering why I kept getting calls from very pregnant ladies! :rotfl:
At least now I know what to tell them they've done wrong!

The personal part of my number is also identical to a grocer's shop in a nearby town. Before you had to key in the town code for local calls, people living near the exchange boundary between the two towns wouldn't realise that the shop was in a different exchange area, and would dial just the shop's number, the same as mine!
I kept getting people asking if I had any large loaves , etc!

That took a while to work out, as when I asked what number they wanted, they'd say my correct number! Flummox all round, with them insisting I was a grocer's shop, and me insisting I wasn't, until one day I mentioned what town I was in!:rotfl:

vivatifosi

hjd wrote: »

Used to be my party trick, knowing the place from the dialling code - funnily enough, other people didn't appreciate it.

We could have hung out at parties together. I used to know the first level postcode to pretty much every town in England. What a riot we could have been as a double act.

Stuff like this sticks in my mind. Before postcodes, it was the codes for all of the components for the office furniture company I used to work for. These days it is authors of books (though there are far too many of those to remember).

michaels

Masomnia wrote: »

Tomorrow I've got to give a presentation on my vision for future HR initiatives. My boss's boss's boss will be there so it has to be good. I think it's good, but I need vibes please.

I also have an interview on Wednesday for a job at a different company. Vibes for that too, please, if that's not too cheeky!

Thanks!

I hope your presentation includes staff retention initiatives. I do know someone senior in HR at an extremely large company and could sound them out about opportunities if that were helpful.

silvercar wrote: »

BT used to have adverts telling you "it was good to talk", that was in the days when calls were charged per minute, when national calls were charged at more than local and when calls during the day were at a peak rate. Then along came all inclusive call packages and suddenly it is no longer good to talk as the less people talk, the less lines (between exchanges) that the operators need to provide.

Years ago, you would occasionally get the message that lines were busy, doesn't seem to happen any more.

You clearly aren't on vodafone.

Another really carp night of hay fever congestion non sleep; I have just started a new project at work and am in the brain power intensive project definition phase, it isn't going so well when I can't concentrate on a line of argument for more than 30s without my brain drifting

Pyxis

vivatifosi wrote: »

We could have hung out at parties together. I used to know the first level postcode to pretty much every town in England. What a riot we could have been as a double act.

Yes! You'd have been like a drop of penicillin in a Petrie dish of bacteria! :rotfl:

Seriously, though, I'm always trying to find where a call has come from, with a number I don't recognise. It'd be useful to just know!

SingleSue

I can't remember a time when we didn't have a phone at home. It's obviously still quite new technology to my mum as she still thinks she has to shout down the phone to be heard....:rotfl:

CKhalvashi

zagubov wrote: »

I believe that the Soviet Union and now Russia got 007.:beer:

We're +995. Although Abkhazia and Ossetia are +7.

vivatifosi

CKhalvashi wrote: »

We're +995. Although Abkhazia and Ossetia are +7.

I can assure you CK, that +995 is NOT the dialling code for Inner Herts:p

No wonder I can't get hold of one of your taxis!

silvercar

We have a London phone number, just to remind us that we are so near yet so far. Like having London buses and a train station in (London) zone 6 but no eligibility for freedom passes for the elderly or free tube fares for kids.

My parents number was 5 digits that added up to the first 2 digits. After a long time they increased to 6 digits by adding a '0' as the second digit. So the total was unchanged but the first 2 digits no longer gave the total.

For a long time, until Virgin put in an appearance, there were only 2 area codes round here. (Lazy) people would just try one and if that failed try the other, our first opposite number was a local cab firm. We were getting calls for cabs every day. As soon as Virgin offered service we changed our number to them. It did get better from that point for everyone, as that meant there were 3 likely options. Actually that is another downside of all inclusive phone tariffs - no cost to dialling the wrong number.