Sorry, Better Luck Next Time

Here is something odd.

Early yesterday morning one of my friends in southern Ontario woke to a loud knocking on her door. When she opened the door there were two police standing there who had come in response to a 911 call. My friend said there must be some mistake because they had been asleep all night and no one was in distress at all. The police had her check the phone and sure enough, the 911 operator was at the other end of the line. She was told that it was a glitch that happened sometimes and someone from Bell Telephone would be out the next day to discover what the problem was.

Her phone managed to dial 911 while it was resting comfortably on the cradle. How can that happen? I guess a landline phone is never really off and I suspect that neither is a cell phone, but at least with a cell phone you can take the battery out. That would probably do the trick…probably.

 

Thankfully, my friend followed up and told us that the minions from Bell came out and found that some whozeewhatzis was over heating underground. It turns out that the phone was actually in distress and made the 911 call to save its own life. This raises a lot of questions that I am not sure I want the answers to.

I have long suspected that planned obsolescence was designed by the hand of man, but now it seems that the machines are a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for. I have hopes that this has nothing to do with intelligent machines rising up against mankind, but rather intelligent machines telling us when they need to be fixed. I’m better with being a slave to the machines than I am being killed by machines.

 

A few years ago now I took a lotto ticket in because it had won $10, dutifully signing the ticket. The lotto guy scanned it with his machine and told me “Sorry, better luck next time.” giving me a smile. I was sure it had won. I checked it at home and I can remember that tiny thrill coursing through my body. I kind of slunk away clutching that ticket in my hand, fighting off the tears. Something in me snapped and I turned back and said “Are you sure it didn’t win?” The guy ran it through the machine again and the same depressing, negative result came up. This time I looked at the winning numbers he had displayed and sure enough my ticket had enough numbers to win. He looked at the ticket and said to me “Hey, you’re right.” He reached under the counter and brought out a form. “Fill this in and mail it to the Lottery Corp and they will send you back your winnings. It happens all the time.”

IT….HAPPENS…..ALL…..THE…..TIME…..???????????

It may happen all of the time, but no one had ever told me it happened all of the time and if I hadn’t been anal about losing, I still wouldn’t know. It isn’t mentioned in their LOTTO LUCK newspaper. I have never seen it pinned up on the lottery cork board. I wonder how much cash you and I have let the lottery corp. keep simply because someone said “Sorry, better luck next time.”

Well, ever since that day I double check my tickets at home and also check them at the lotto booth. I still haven’t won anything worth winning, but I suspect that is just the machines keeping me down.