Working on a railroad for a dollar a day

[austin_dern]

I don't use my home phone much; about the only person I need to call is the taxi to the airport, and nobody calls me because I never gave out my number. That doesn't mean nobody calls me, it's just they'll sometimes take as much as two dozen rings before accepting that I won't answer. But the happy side effect is I get extremely low phone bills. When I still had the apartment in Troy, New York, Bell Atlantic and AT&T only bothered sending a bill once every three months.

I may have overdone it this past month, though. My SingTel bill came to $0.35. And, remember, the Singapore dollar is weaker than the US one, so we're talking an expense below that of the postage involved. I tried paying the bill through the payment stations, but it turns out they don't accept payments of under one dollar. So I overpaid, and suppose I've got part of the next two months' bills paid.

On the other hand, while cleaning, I managed to lose my cable bill. It was on the table next to the sofa, and though the cable bill started out next to the SingTel bill, it's not there -- or, so far as I can find, anywhere -- now. I have got to get automated bill-pay.

Trivia: There are 601 pairs of twin primes between 100,000,000 and 100,150,000. Source: The Mathematical Experience, Philip J Davis, Reuben Hersh.

Reading: My Ten Years In A Quandary And How They Grew, Robert Benchley. ``The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn't make any sense of quoted as stands.'' -- From the essay ``Quick Quotations,'' about how nobody sounds really sensible in the quotes posterity chooses to remember, and the speaker should get at least three sentences to be reasonably safe against being unjustly thought fatuous. I note in the lists of Robert Benchley quotations I see in standard compilations, the second sentence above is trimmed, and I don't know if it's because the compiler didn't get the joke, or did.

Comments

Re: What you don't call...

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I've never responded to voice mail, but that's because I haven't got the service. I have responded to voice mail in the past, when I had it, though, and found it more convenient than an answering machine.

I'd answer your call certainly, but it'd be advisable to let me know when ou plan to call, since that way I can be reasonably sure I'll be home to answer it, among other things.

Gilead I knew where he was because I happened to mention online my location to chipuni, who it turned out was two floors below me, and leapt up eagerly. Where he knew Gilead from I don't know exactly.