As in games with a new telephone.
A few days ago I said that one of my tasks was to set up the phone – plug it in to the wall.
Silly me.
I plugged it in to the wall – phone jack and power cord.
I plugged the additional carry around phone into a different outlet (power only) after installing the battery pack.
A day later the carry around phone is still not quite working. It looks like something is trying to show up on the display, but no dial tone at all. Uninstall the battery pack and reinstall (try to plug it into the phone a few different ways). Finally – bingo and it works. Apparently it had been Installer error.
Now we have voice mail through the phone company. But of course this phone has an answering maching built in. I wondered what would happen when a call came in.
So I called from the cell phone, and two things happened, almost at once. Our lovely daughter’s voice (both her and her voice are lovely) comes on through voice mail with the usual message. As I am listening to this, the phone starts blaring something that I can’t quite hear because I am listening to the girl, and not in the same room with the base phone. OK – I know I have a little more to figure out, but I’m tired and don’t want to read any more manuals.
This morning, while at work I decide I want to talk with Carl. Call home, phone rings about four times and starts into the message, but I just hang up. Later in the morning I call again, and this time the phone rings maybe twice and goes to a male voice saying, “No one is available to answer your call.” Hmmmm. This is not what happened when I called it from the cell the day before. Maybe Carl’s on the phone and somehow that sent it to the at home answering machine. Tried to call a few more times through the day and got the same short ring and to answering machine… A little worried now, what if one of his kids parents tries to call and I don’t know if the phone is really working. So I tried calling on Ashlan’s cell (at home) but no answer there either.
Finally get home, and there are at least 3 messages on the phone, I think all from me. But none of them on the voicemail. Sit down to read the manual. This phone has a special feature to keep the phone companies from ringing long enough to count as a call in case you are not at home, called Tolling. This is apparently what happened. The first call let it ring four times, which allowed it to go to voice mail. The second call only went two rings, which meant the voice mail never had a chance and it went to the lovely phone voice.
Set the phone to ring 6 times (can choose 2, 4 or 6) That way voice mail should always prevail. Wait – there’s more, you can turn off the answering machine! I’ll try …
[phone rings at this point for probably an hour long call, during which Rey tries to call, getting the weird machine (not sure why) which starts talking in the background, he then goes on to try both cell phones, all while Carl is on the phone with his friend. I, of course, was nowhere in sight to hear or help.]
I think I am going to leave it as is and see how it works tomorrow. (We did call Rey back eventually, and kept him up way to late.)
So much for just plugging it into the wall. Note: the old rotary phone in the basement just keeps on working.
Raincharm's Weblog 
Leave a comment