Ain't technology wonderful
Dec. 21st, 2005 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rscMy brother called me this morning, partly returning my call of a few days ago, and partly to tell me about a scare that he had just had (which, fortunately, came to nothing).
As some of you probably know, my parents live in a retirement community in the suburbs of Philadelphia; my brother lives in Philadelphia itself, and works in New Jersey. My parents are in their late 80s, and although they're doing resonably well, there have been occasional health crises of one sort or another over the past several years.
This morning my brother was in his office, and the phone rang, and the caller-ID said it was my parents. He picked up the phone and heard a thud, as though the receiver had been dropped, and then nothing. He hung up and tried calling back several times, getting a busy signal each time.
Now almost certain that something dreadful had happened, he called the retirement community's front desk and got somebody from security to go check on my parents. It turned out that my father had just gone across the hall to do laundry, and in the process had knocked the phone off the hook, and it fell in such a way as to activate the speed-dial to call my brother's office. My parents were fine. (I don't know where my mother was during all this, but if she was in a different room she would likely have been unaware that the phone was off the hook, and wouldn't have been able to get to it quickly in any case.)
When I said that this scare resulted from technological advances that weren't in place, say, 15 years ago, he pointed out that if it had been a real crisis the technology that allowed him to know where the call came from would have been a very good thing.
As some of you probably know, my parents live in a retirement community in the suburbs of Philadelphia; my brother lives in Philadelphia itself, and works in New Jersey. My parents are in their late 80s, and although they're doing resonably well, there have been occasional health crises of one sort or another over the past several years.
This morning my brother was in his office, and the phone rang, and the caller-ID said it was my parents. He picked up the phone and heard a thud, as though the receiver had been dropped, and then nothing. He hung up and tried calling back several times, getting a busy signal each time.
Now almost certain that something dreadful had happened, he called the retirement community's front desk and got somebody from security to go check on my parents. It turned out that my father had just gone across the hall to do laundry, and in the process had knocked the phone off the hook, and it fell in such a way as to activate the speed-dial to call my brother's office. My parents were fine. (I don't know where my mother was during all this, but if she was in a different room she would likely have been unaware that the phone was off the hook, and wouldn't have been able to get to it quickly in any case.)
When I said that this scare resulted from technological advances that weren't in place, say, 15 years ago, he pointed out that if it had been a real crisis the technology that allowed him to know where the call came from would have been a very good thing.
