| Contacting Me | 1 | 2 | 3 |
I generally use my home phone only for work, or as an occassional means of luring telemarketers who should know better. My mobile phone acts as my primary phone. If you need to get in touch with me for personal matters, use that number. (See below.)
For work purposes, I very much prefer email, but in order to avoid aforementioned telemarketers, I may sometimes let calls go straight to voice mail when I don't recognize the incoming phone number. (God bless Caller ID!) The good news is that most people I work with never really figured out I'd moved to Seattle, and most of those that did gave up trying to call when I disappeared from the country for a year. The bad news, alas, is that caller ID doesn't pick up phone numbers from my own co-workers now, which means I can't screen my calls anymore, so my productivity is definitely shot now. Nevertheless, if you still suspect I'm screening your call, please do leave a message, because I'm generally good about returning messages quickly, as long as you're not the reason I wasn't picking up the phone to begin with.
If I don't answer my mobile phone, please leave a voice mail, or a numeric message (e.g.: your callback number) by pressing '5'. Or, if you feel like being geeky, you can send an email to my cell phone. They charge by the kilobyte, so make sure you don't have a lot to say. (Don't forget to send text only, and strip off that five-line signature.)
Some of you may know how I like to provide mnemonics for remembering my phone numbers, whereby you can simply dial the first letter of each word in an easy-to-remember phrase. For instance, one of my old numbers (574-7626) was best remembered with the dubious phrase "Keith Swartz Is Right On All Matters", and my last home number was even easier to remember as "AX SUPPLY". Well, my mobile number now has a 1 and so is disqualified from this pattern, and my home number currently has no mnemonic assigned to it. If you think of a good one, call it and let me know. Nothing beats phonespell.org if you're stuck.