Trac record

In previous World Tours, I had noticed some distressing gaps in cell-phone coverage, and eventually I was able to trace some of them to the fact that while most GSM networks in the States run on 1900 MHz, some of them run on 850 MHz, and my very old phone (acquired before World Tour '01) didn't support the 850-MHz band. I made a note to do something about this after World Tour '07, and in the interim, acquired a TracFone from a Wal-Mart store for eighteen dollars and change, plus one airtime card.

I had to put the TracFone to work in the Carolinas, where I couldn't reach even what was represented to me as a 1900-MHz area. Taking advantage of current promotions, I was able to leverage a 90-minute, three-month airtime card into two hours and five months.

When I got home, the old phone was acting up, and I scrapped it in favor of one of those new four-band jobs with a camera of sorts, which theoretically would have made the TracFone obsolete. But after thinking it over, and noting that I can get actual reception in my office with the TracFone but not on the new phone, I decided to keep it and give it a reload, a ridiculously easy process except for one gap in the tracfone.com user interface: when you log in, it gives you the serial number of the phone on your account page, but if you subsequently jump to Buy/Add Airtime, it doesn't carry the number forward. Of course, this is why God invented cut and paste. Taking advantage of current promotions, I was able to leverage a 60-minute, three-month airtime card into an hour and a half and five months.

And besides, it's consistent with one other inconsistency in my life. The TracFone, since it was activated in North Carolina, has a 919 area code, rather far from my digs here in 405, but then my fax number — I subscribe to one of those fax services that emails you the stuff — is in 509, in far-off Spokane.

Posted at 10:52 AM to General Disinterest