The stupidity of the 905 area code

Once upon a time, I had a high school physics teacher (let's call him Mr. Fox, because that was his name) that preferred to discuss things related to physics instead of the course curriculum. We all thought this was a waste of time. Then I went to engineering school, relearned everything that I needed to know, and all that I was left with were the excellent conversations that we used to have with our disgruntled and soon-to-be-retired physics teacher. Here are some things that I learned in that class:

• why a golf ball is dimpled (answer: to induce turbulent flow and therefore reduce drag),
• that you can cook a turkey in a microwave (but the skin is gross),
• how a Thermos is such a good insulator,
• lots of stuff about neutrinos that never got covered in engineering, presumably because they don't affect people in the real world, just like books and theatre, which we also didn't learn about,
• why Bell Canada is incompetent.

Allow me to elaborate. A golf ball goes extremely far considering how small and light it is, and aerodynamics thusly factors in to a huge degree. And now allow me to elaborate on why Bell Canada is retarded. Here it is.

Why do I need to dial a (1) before a call half the 905 numbers in the book?

Answer: there is no good answer. Here are some facts. FACT. The phone numbers aren't repeated, regardless of region. FACT. We are not charged long distance when dialing from Brampton to Oakville, even though we need to insert an irritating (1). FACT. There is no easy way to tell when I need a (1) and when I don't. FACT. I absolutely effing hate it when my dialing gets interrupted by that insolent voice that informs me that I need to dial a (1). FACT. (1) means long distance (in North America). Therefore, it should apply when dialing long distance. 

Why the eff to I need to dial a (1) sometimes?

iPhone figured it out already. Even if I call Montreal using a saved number in my phone book, it will automatically add the (1). Rogers will too. In fact, you would have to be addicted to prescription medication if you were a programmer that couldn't figure out this code. And yet, Bell Canada fails us. Why there isn't a community activist group dedicated this cause I'll never know (although if I had just quickly googled that I might have discovered one. But now it's in the past).

More annoyingly, if you are looking for a distraction from work and try to find the answer on the internet, you will discover 8 billion websites that are tagged (905) and offer nothing of value to anybody. My guess is that recruitment consultants, in their ample spare time, maintain the hobby of posting websites dedicated to giving area code information but containing no actual information per se. Just a guess.

Down with Bell.

In other news:

Eric has written a blomment, which is a blog inside of a comment of a blog. I just made that word up (called it!). Read it if you are going to Tobermory and need some insightful advice from a man that just spent a week there with his in-laws.