TIRED DIALING FINGERS IN ORANGE COUNTY

Starting August 23-08, all Orange County 714 phone numbers have to be dialed as if they were long distance- even if you are just calling your next-door neighbor! (This is because all of the young whipper-snappers are hogging the available phone lines for their cell phones and the area has to be sub-divided with an "over-lay" until, hopefully, a better solution is found. Of course, some of us older types may be guilty of causing some of this problem too.)

When using a cell phone to call someone, one doesn't have to dial the "1", just the "714", but why try to remember two different set of rules? (One answer to this question was in the Register today. The newspaper published some comments from people and one person said he was concerned about having to dial the "1" because if he then mis-dialed the "714" area code, he could be making a long distance call to gosh-knows-where!)

One Register reader commented: I remember the "good ol days" when we only had three area codes to cover from the Grapevine south to Mexico: 213, 714, 619. Man, I'm getting old.

If you make many 714 phone calls to the same people, it would be a good idea to get a phone with a “memory” feature that will allow you to program phone numbers into a list so that you only have to hit the “1”, for instance, to have the phone automatically dial whoever was assigned number “1”. These phones have a “list holder” on the phone that holds a printed list of who was assigned to what number. (If I went to buy one of these phones, I would have the salesperson show me how to enter some phone numbers into the memory feature. I believe in “Monkey See- Monkey Do. I have never heard, “Monkey Read- Monkey Do”.)

If your existing phone has a memory feature that you haven’t used yet, this is the time to find that user booklet and get it figured out.