A Helpful Trick to Cut Down on Telemarketers & Phone-Scammers

If you have a phone (who doesn't),
you probably get phone spam, phone scam, telemarketing, wrong number collection calls,
and any number of other annoying unsolicited calls from people who should not be calling you.

You registered on that DO-NOT-CALL list, didn't you?
You pay most of your bills on time, right? (righhht?)
WHY THE HECK ARE THEY BOTHERING YOU DURING IRON CHEF?!?!?
Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy?!?!??

Well, mostly because all of our numbers got sold by companies we do business with, who have less than decent ethics about that sort of thing. Privacy Notice? YEAH RIGHT! Well, other than changing your number and making it unlisted, or flat-out cancelling your phone bill, there's not a whole lot we can do about it, short of a class action lawsuit.

Putting your justified rage aside for a moment, let's assume that you just want to make the darn calls stop.
I don't have a perfect solution for you, but I do have a little trick that might get rid of a good number of those calls.

Right-Click and Download this audio file: wrongnumber.wav

It's the 'wrong number' tone that you may be familiar with if you accidentally dial a disconnected number.

An auto-dialing computer will remove a "disconnected" number from its phone list if it hears the "wrong number" tone, and lucky you... these are the machines that most of these wonderful people use to harass us continuously.

So, here's what you do:

Have that audio file you just downloaded open and ready to play on your computer

or just use the audio player below (if it shows up in your browser).

When a phone number comes up on your caller-id that you recognize as one of your phone-spammers,

pick up the phone before the 3rd ring and play the "wrong number" audio into the phone, several times in a row if you want, and then hang up.

If they ever call back, just play the "wrong number" tone again.

It won't work every time, but it should cut down on the calls significantly.

This won't solve the problem overnight. It could take weeks or longer until you see results.

One year the calls were so bad that I put the tone on the front end of my outgoing voicemail message.
That way, my voicemail did all the work for me when I wasn't home, and when I was home, I could pick up the phone if I recognized the number, or let it go to voicemail if I didn't.
The phone-spammer calls were almost completely eliminated. Of course, the one drawback to doing this is that some of your friends and family (and occasionally a legitimate creditor) think your phone number is disconnected if they don't listen past the tone.

If you try it, please let me know and let me know how it worked out for you.

Chocolate Fudge Food Porn - WITH VIDEO!

This year I managed to check my candy thermometer for accuracy with a pot of boiling water before I tried to make fudge with it. This turns out to be the key to making a successful batch of old school traditional fudge. :-) Follow Alton Brown's fudge recipe, get your fudge up to 234-236 degrees, then wait for-freaking-EVER for the fudge to cool down to 110 degrees before stirring until both arms fall off.

If you happen to have one of those Cheese Knives from thecheeseknife.com , you can cut thru fudge like butter!

Here's a video and a few pictures:

"Yule Log" for Chocolate Lovers

Chocolate Fudge Food Pr0N!