Dialling your own number to locate your mobile phone: Classic oder Dud?

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I've been doing this every morning recently, unworried by mobile ring tones being the least directional sound ever. How often do you do it? Is it morally wrong?

And who remembers to hang up the correct phone first to stop being charged?

(NB I only have one room it could possibly be in)

― Graham, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

U&K invention: Diallable keys

― Graham, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes but if it is on silent you must pray you have vibrate on and it is on a wooden surface.

― Ronan, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

What if it is switched off and you don't know if you left it in the train station where you collapsed unable to walk last night after sampling many of the Aftershocks and going very GREEN on the way back and and and people get out of your way cos you look like you are going to vom and INDEED YOU DO once you finally fall off the train and pass out for a while on a bench and you vow never to drink again? But then you find your phone down the edge of your bed after PANIC. Phew. I hate losing mobiles. I need to know where mine is ALL THE TIME.

― Sarah, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I hate it when that happens.

― Ronan, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes, me too. I am never alternating aftershocks with pints ever again.

― Sarah, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Trouble is, unless said mobile is in my hand I don't even *know* my own number.

― Michael Jones, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Graham!! Screw-in hook price 0.00000000000000007p: buy, screw in to wooden surface near front door that isn't going anywhere, put keys on THE MONENT you enter abode, hey presto, hours of time saved per week. You are ALLOWED TO DO THIS. I learnt aged 37 and it changed my life.

― mark s, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

what about calling your mobile phone and som eone swarthy answers it ? Remember too, I am God

― Mike Hanle y, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Mark S's post - scary carbon copy of one he made a few months ago. It's as if his 'mind' is a Chinese Room and he's just been rumbled.

― Nick, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Who will make my fabulous invention?? You will make a mint. Tiny color-coded stickers that can beep. Pageable with a little credit- card shaped thingie that has all the colors as little welt-like buttons down the side, with a space to write what each thing is. Put a sticker on the thing you don't want to lose (phone, keys, remote, hash, mayonnaise) and anytime you want to find it just press the appropriate color.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Not having a home phone and so having to either find someone online to ring your mobile or having to walk to the phonebox and phone parents asking them to call your mobile in 5 minutes when you are home again - very dud indeed.

Even more dud - being locked out of house whilst wearing trakky daks & no shoes and without mobile phone or wallet etc. by ex (accidentally) who then drove off somewhere and having to call parents (who luckily have a freecall number) to get them to call ex to come back and let me in. Total, total dud.

― toraneko, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

No Mark. Cost of room deposit = £75.000000000000. But then I've already ruined the walls and ceiling with Duck tape. I'll think about it in 19 years.

― Graham, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Note clever machine-illusion of variation, courtesy use of name, and price adjustment relative to plunging markets since June: "Best thing I did in my LIFE, Nick = screw small 0.0001p hook into bookshelves in kitchen, and taught myself to PUT THE KEYS THERE WHENEVER I COME HOME. I now have c.one whole extra hour a DAY to oost to ILE etc."

― mark s, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

anyway, did you do it, Nick? Didn't it change YOUR life?

Duck tape, heh.

― mark s, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I have no mobile phone. However, I wish I had some kind of tracking device for, well, everything I own/borrow, really. Or at least a real life version of google, so I could type in "keys house -locker -work" and wait ten seconds and be told their location. (Obviously it would need to update a bit faster than google, being told where my keys were six months ago when the spider last went round = not very useful and much how my brain works anyway.)

― Rebecca, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Tracer: genius. Have you thought of a way to actually attach the card-thingy to a body part, or will there be a back-up service for when you (I) lose the card-thingy?

― Ellie, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Stop press!!! To paraphrase mark s -

>Screw-in hook price 0.00000000000000007p: buy, screw in to wooden surface near front door that isn't going anywhere, HANG BLEEPER CARD ON HOOK, hey presto, hours of time saved per week.

Like I said, genius.

― Ellie, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes mark, Duck Tape = greatest thing ever.

― Graham, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Ellie you would need a sticker to put on the credit card thingie of course, which would transpond to ANOTHER thingie that is... er... hanging on a .0000007p hook in the front hall.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

What's with the 'duck tape heh' thing, mark? Are you in the duct tape camp? Or are you reminded of some sordid event in your life?

― Nick, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Nick, what is a Chinese room?

― Andrew L, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Chinese room - Quite a good explanation here.

― Andrew Williams, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Is that the same Searle that Derrida gave the business to in Limited Inc? If so what are the implications for mark s' brane?

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Is that the same Searle that Derrida gave the business to in Limited Inc?

I don't know - is Limited Inc. some kind of philosopher fanfic?

― Nick, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I like that duct is now duck officially. cf also toilet duck. cf also upcoming class action by entire aquatic fowl mob re negative stereotyping and/or royalties

yep that searle: derrida = pore man locked in my mind's chinese room i think

― mark s, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Mark, the duck/duct thing is a more complex issue than you seem to be giving it credit for, and caused our readers' editor some consternation earlier this year. See Duct vs. Duck for starters.

― Nick, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

One reader wrote that "the notion 'that it really is duct tape' is a bit of English middle class urban mythology".

― Nick, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Things that I consider similar: slotting in other activities while waiting for something, ie making tea WHILE

― maryann, Saturday, 8 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

the toast cooks, cleaning your room WHILE the bath runs. All the things our slightly superior to monkey brain can think of to be more 'efficient.' And it annoys me when people aren't efficient: boiling rice AFTER they've cooked the meal, not using the index but leafing through every page, having to cover ground twice because they didn't visualise their route in advance. Actually, I just realised I feel jealous of those people.

― maryann, Saturday, 8 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

'those people' ... you know, FOBs ...

― maryann, Saturday, 8 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I = Vincent

― maryann, Saturday, 8 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Till Graham I never encountered anyone who called it anything except duct tape. All such foax = burly handiman types rowr and abt as middle-class as jimmy hoffa thank you. So I thot he was making a nifty gag o well.

"Plastic Surgeon on a Roll" is betterah than duck *or* duct tape.

― mark s, Saturday, 8 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Are you really telling me that such hurlyburly men enunciated so clearly that you could hear the double 't'? Or did they write it on their invoices? I don't believe you, you're a liar. I think you just heard it as 'duct' cause you don't like ducks.

― Nick, Saturday, 8 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

isn't it just gaffa tape? you'll never be lost with a roll of gaffa

― carsmilesteve, Saturday, 8 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Steve, it's actually gaffatte tape.

― Nick, Saturday, 8 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i like ducks that's why i'm pleased they rule cf also duckopops, the new Tate Duck, and top recording artists N*Duck.

― mark s, Saturday, 8 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Why aren't you called duck s?

― Nick, Saturday, 8 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i am now

― duck s, Saturday, 8 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

five years pass...

Guys these animated gifs have totally sold me.

http://www.keyringer.com/index_files/flashing-car.gif

OH THANK GOD I ALMOST RAN OVER MY KEYS THANK YOU KEY RINGER

― Abbott, Thursday, 16 August 2007 04:08 (eighteen years ago)

This site selling a similar product also comes straight out of 1998, opening with an audio sample and everything.

http://www.ambitiousideas.com/pics/video.gif

― Abbott, Thursday, 16 August 2007 04:10 (eighteen years ago)

More animated gifs for "Find One Find All" item finder:

http://www.findonefindall.com/mainpagewordshort.gif

http://www.findonefindall.com/stoplosing.gif

― Abbott, Thursday, 16 August 2007 04:14 (eighteen years ago)

I don't know that the filer of United States Patent 20020105434, "Remote finder," has seen the above sites or ever looked at a Sky Mall catalog. Here it is, in its entirety:

This new device is of nonexistence in the market place and will be of benefit, and helpful recover misplaced remotes.

― Abbott, Thursday, 16 August 2007 04:18 (eighteen years ago)

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