Note: These notes contain e-mail headers that have been sanitized.

Collected Stories :: contents

New Phones (VOIP)

Some background:

The Merit Network, Inc. where I worked, depended on phone service for its staff from the University of Michigan. The University of Michigan was exploring transitioning from a private branch exchange (PBX) it owns and operates to a phone system based on the Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP). The University Hospital System had declined to remain with the University Phone system and has switched to SBC (which, after swallowing a number of other baby-bells has now consumed the mommy-spider, AT&T.)

Because Merit was about to move to a new location, the Michigan Information Technology Center or MITC, we became guine-pigs for the deployment of VOIP. The phones chosen had lots of interesting features, and you could spend days exploring how to use your new phone. (That seems a great boon to productivity!) One feature is a list of incoming calls, with caller-phone, caller-id, time & date indicated, as well as an indication whether the call was answered.

Besides wasting your time exploring the features of the new phone system, you could also find your phone crashed. It was a computer, after all, and on the internet. I thought it was a conspiracy to force people to get cell-phones.

X-Mailer: exmh version 2.5 07/13/2001 with nmh-1.1-RC3
To: XXXX@********
cc: rsc@merit.edu
Subject: VOIP phone hints and spooky calls
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 11:00:10 -0500
From: "Richard S. Conto" <rsc@merit.edu>

Sometimes (perhaps), you can have too much information.

This morning, seeing the "Missed calls" indicator on my phone, I prowled
the "inbox" to see who might be calling.  There were two calls, one just
reported a number (the American Red Cross has been pestering me to donate)
and there was also a call from "George Roden (73469798927) 8:20AM EST Tue 12/21"

I decided to look this up, to see who it was who might be trying to reach me.

"ph" reported nothing.

The University of Michigan's X.400 directory (from the web page) reported
nothing.

Several reverse-phone searches reported nothing, although "www.intelius.com"
is willing to sign me up for a report, no charge if the number isn't found.
(The charge, if found, was $14.95, but I can't tell from the website if there
was a successful find.)

So, I tried google on "George Roden".  The first thing to pop up was a George
Roden who had lost leadership of the Branch Davidians to David Koresh.  The
second was a University of Michigan library holding (from Clements), some papers
about Hugh and George from the American Civil War.

But most of what Google found was references to Branch Davidians, Waco, etc.

Searching for "Georoge Roden"+Michigan didn't help. Most of the same references
as above came up, largely due to efforts by some parents in Michigan to regain
custody of their children from the Branch Davidians.

Searching phone directories for "Roden" in the state of Michigan didn't help,
or even "George Roden" in the entire US.  There's a lot of "George Roden"s out
there.

A typo on a reverse phone search lead me to Belleville Michigan.

Plowing through the Google'd "George Roden" references was pretty scary reading.

It appears that in an effort to regain leadership of the Branch Davidians, he
dug up the body of some woman and challenged Koresh to raise her from the dead.
Koresh's people tried to gather evidence of corpse abuse in order to bring
criminal charges against him. Since he was known to patrol the compound with
an automatic rifle, Koresh's people went in armed too, and a shootout resulted.
Koresh, et. al were charged, and Koresh was tried but the jury was hung and
the charges dismissed.   However, during this period, Roden threatened the
Texas Supreme Court and was jailed for contempt of court.

Later, Roden killed a man by splitting his head open with an axe and was
committed to a Texas mental institution for the criminally insane.

One report called him the "late George Roden".  One, from 1999, suggests that
he died "just a few weeks ago".  Most suggest he's still there, but all of the
pages are pretty old.

In all likelyhood, "George Roden" of Belleville, either has switched his phone
to a cellular service, or is a very private individual, and mistyped a phone
number.

Still, it's pretty scary.  My father died April 15th, and I remember meeting my
siblings at his apartment a few days later, watching the Waco conflagration on TV.

So, I'm a little twitchy right now. Be nice, please?

-- 
--- Richard		     phone:         6-2080
                             pager: (734) 651-9018