if you ask the technical staff of the consumer service center of the local telecom company they will tell you that the secret code for locking the telephone that prevents calls from being made from that particular telephone will NOT be stored in the memory of the telephones; i mean those instruments that have the caller id facility.

the picture above shows it being stored as called number in my telephone's caller ID! this is not a regular feature. some times you find that the code is not stored. may be the machine also has its own whims and fancies and is trying to show off!

"NET ONE"

net one is a facility (supposed to be) available to the telephone users of the thiruvananthapuram telecom where by they can get connected to the the internet through their telephone line, the charges for which will be included in the telephone bill. when my internet account with my isp expired i tried this. i was allowed to log in but i am not allowed to surf. that way i will be paying the telephone charges plus the internet charges for that period without being able to even a single web page opening on my desktop!

i talked to the "help" people of the company and they said i have to first register for the use and this person daid he will do it and gave me the user name and password. i tried this user name and password supplied by their own person but again after logging in i was getting stuck as had happened initially. - i could not access any web site.

i tried the tracert command and it shows that the connection has been established to the sancharnet server and gives its ip address as well; but from then on nothing is accessible.

as usual i have a photograph of the desk top showing this information i got from the tracert command. but how does it help? it could again be another sign of insanity!

tracert

ANSWERING MACHINE

initially when i connected my answering machine to my home telephone in the current (rented) house it was working fine. it is a sophisticated digital answering machine of bpl with a lot of facilities like remote access and such. it was like throwing pearls before swine for soon it was being in activated and became useless.

but as usual, i have found a way around. the inactivation is done only when a telephone instrument is connected in series with the answering machine. when on its own the answering machine functions. and that is what i am doing now, just for the heck of it; - i connect only the answering machine.

try ringing it up and the machine will spit out a response, that is, as long as there is no power failure.

the arrangement suits me fine. some time back people were desperately trying to phone me up and i had a difficult time shaking them off - i dont want to have any thing to do with spineless characters who wont dare to face me in the open. now they are welcome to ring up and after the routine greetings ms.ADAM ( my Advanced Digital Answering Machine) gives them three minutes to talk, to their heart's content.

but rest assured the message will never reach me. the machine is set to mute; in case she indicates there is a message i give a prick to the bottom (of the machine) and she resets herself and wipes every thing clean.

that way everybody is happy; the "gentleman" making the call is happy that he could say whatever he wanted to say ( there is no caller id on adam and so the fellow remains anonymous). the bad man (that is me) is also happy for i dont have to bother cutting off the worms. the third party, the telephone company gets paid - so no problem there also!