Geek points.

[dsrtao]

Eliz IMd me midway through the day and then wasn't responding, so I figured I'd give her a call. The phone was busy. An hour later, the phone was still busy.

When it was ten minutes until I was planning to leave work and I still couldn't get through, I got creative.

• I ssh'd to my desktop at home.
  
• I set the volume high.
  
• I installed the Festival speech synthesizer.
  
• I figured out how to work it.
  
• I got an error because it couldn't find the sound interface it liked.
  
• I googled for a solution and found it (a config file that plays through an external program).
  
• I had the machine say "Dan is trying to call you but the phone is busy" three times.
  
• Eliz IMd me and asked me to turn the volume down.
  

"Ping! Ping! Ping!"

Comments

[dsrtao]

I did, but I also forgot about it.

"Ping! Ping! Ping!" is in reference to Cliff Stoll's _The Cuckoo's Egg_, where he hooked the output of the ping command to a sound generator and started unplugging ethernet cables. When the sound stopped, he had the right cable...

[metageek.livejournal.com]

I've done that, though only after reading about it.

I've also done the "log in and make the computer talk to my wife" thing, though not for any useful purpose—I think I was out of town or something, and just felt like surprising her. I didn't use a speech synthesizer; I just copied over a sound file.