Second-class phones, they're breaking

I mentioned, I think, taking a couple of our broken lamps in for repair. This was two lamps that rabbits a decade-plus ago had chewed the cords of, as well as the living room lamp. We don't know that the living room lamp had anything wrong per se, but we had several LED bulbs burn out in short order and they shouldn't be burning out at all, really. Thus my decision to surprise bunny_hugger by bringing them in for repair.

Surprise turned to irritation because we didn't have anything to light the living room with, except some feeble table lamps that were like waving candles at a black hole. And then annoyance as weeks went by without any word when the lamps would be back; the last we heard was two weeks after I dropped them off, when they said it would be soon.

So, I finally called. Or tried to: it turned out our phone wasn't working. I called from my phone and they were ready for pickup and oh yeah, the number I gave them wasn't working. I tried to surprise bunny_hugger by picking them up, but she noticed me getting the car out, so, never mind that. We got them back, though, and ... had the same dying LED bulb for the downstairs lamp. We got that sorted out, though, and now things are fine and we hope it's just that we weren't picking a bum brand of bulbs. (bunny_hugger's father is of the opinion the design is bad.)

And the phone. This was a mysterious and irritating problem. Nobody could call us; they'd just get a ring that never ended. We wouldn't hear a thing. When we tried to dial out, if we dialed a local call, we'd get to four digits and be told the call could not be completed as dialed. If we started the call with a 1, we got to three digits before being told the call couldn't be completed.

So, on a working phone, I called AT&T and they agreed that sounded weird. But said they'd try and have someone out to fix it the next day, though they'd see if it could be done at the office first. This, bunny_hugger tells me, is working at a neighborhood-area switching station, not somewhere in the depths of the onetime Michigan Bell building. The next I heard was the following afternoon, when they called to ask if our phone was working. The question is necessary for form but answered in the asking. It turns out they had gotten it working 6:30 the night before, but since nobody had tried using the phone we didn't know. Neat.

Unfortunately they didn't tell us what happened and how we got such strange behavior out of our phone. Also, I realized, this behavior was much like the phone stuff of an office's internal phone system. We didn't think to see what happened if we dialed '9' first, and I suppose we'll never get another chance to. Too bad.

Trivia: Johnson Space Center managed the concept, design, development, construction, and delivery to Kennedy Space Center of the Skylab parasol in seven days. Two other thermal protection devices --- a sail, also produced by Johnson Space Center, and a twin-boom sunshade, built by the Marshall Space Flight Center --- were also made. Source: Skylab: A Chronology, Roland W Newkirk, Ivan D Ertel, Courtney G Brooks. NASA SP-4011.

Currently Reading: When Giants Ruled The Sky: The Brief Reign and Tragic Demise of the American Rigid Airship, John J Geoghegan.