Dear Oldemalloy

This is the only way I found to contact you. I hope it's OK.

Some weeks ago I posted on a forum that we were going to do a road trip in the South West of the US. We were going to commence this trip in November. You sent a message to me with concerns re the weather at that time and we may encounter snow storms. As a result of your post, we brought the trip forward by 2 weeks. Towards the end of our trip, I saw the news re the weather. AND there was indeed a snow storm out of Albuquerque - right where we were 10 days prior - and the roads closed for 2 days!!! That could have been us!!!!! Thank you!!! Jane

I also still have the old copper lines but no phone provider will use them. Before I dropped it, the service was via FIOS Digital Voice. Won't work in a power outage except for about half a day, thanks to the backup battery.

I "parked" my old phone number at NumberBarn and set it up for texts only and the message sent to my email. Nearly all of my junk calls go there. It is about $2/month.

Number Barn has other features available such as call forwarding which I have not used.

If anyone is paying ridiculous amounts for a landline on a false assumption that it will work in a power outage or that your home security system needs one, might want to take a look.

If you click on oldemalloy's screen name next to one of his posts, one of the items in the drop down menu is "Send oldemalloy a private message". That's how you can contact other members.

Once our FIOS went totally digital they did away with the backup battery. Now the land line doesn't work at all during a power outage.

you can get a battery backup for about $50. We keep our modem & wifi router plugged in. Peace of mind when we are home - we can still use internet. And peace of mind when we travel as security / home monitoring devices stay live.

I had the battery backup and told them I wanted to keep it, but when they went totally digital they said they weren't using them anymore.

you can get your own battery backup / uninterrupted power supply (UPS) for about $50 - WalMart, Amazon, and countless other places.

Troglodytes? Hell, we rank as 'Lucy from Africa.' I have never owned a cell phone.
Well OK, there was a cheap model that we once got on Vancouver island seven years ago, purchased solely to contact taxis to fetch us at trailheads. We did not want to be eaten by wolves (we're funny that way).
Afterwards, we never used it.
Mrs Z has finally put her foot down and has been pressuring us me this week to join the human race.

Soon I'll be dragged kicking and screaming to some tech outfit.
I am done. the chimp and the modern age

Archie, I replied to you on your sw trip thread.

zebec . . . seriously?!?

We can't travel without our "auxiliary brain" as my DH puts it. Hell, I go back home/back to the office if I left my mobile behind! Our son only believes in texting, so we'd never hear from him without a cell phone.

SF, yes seriously. I had a $F&*&6!? challenging mother who would've called us every few minutes had we ever owned a cell phone. You have no idea.
Btw, my wife and I also have never owned a car, despite each of us having licenses, despite me renting trucks, vans and vehicles for our band back during the '70s.
We chose instead to save $ for travel.
Wait what? Seems there's some noise coming from our back parking pad...........turns out thieves were trying to steal our horse and carriage.

I am done. the end