Subject: From: Date:

RE: [ECS] upload Wayne Wittenberg Tue, 11 Aug 1998 00:36:03 -0400

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At 12:15 AM 8/11/98 -0400, Michael David wrote:
>Out of curiosity, what are you sending that is so darn long?
(refering to a post about my alpha pager)

Well, 80 characters (or whatever it is) isn't that much!  I prefer messages
that are in english, rather than some crypto code.  Most of what I do could
be done with a numeric pager, if you carried or memorized a translation sheet!

Here are some examples:
+ When a phone caller leaves a message, I get paged with complete name,
number, what incoming line was used, date & time of message.
+ I get reminder pages indicating how many messages I have waiting, if I
don't pick them up 'promptly'.
+ I get reminders for my wife to take her medicine at certain times/days.
+ I get status pages indicating status of house, including alarm system, etc.

Most of these pages DO fit in the existing text-item limit, but sometimes my
house status reports get a little long.  I try and combine non-urgent
messages into longer messages, to save the number of pages (and
interruptions I get during the day!).  But there is no 'item text length'
function, so I cannot always tell when a message is getting 'too' long.  I
do have a pager with unlimited airtime (pages per month), but they are
sometimes hard to find.  I just switched pager companies and I think only 2
out of the 10-15 that I called had unlimited paging at a reasonable price.
Some used 'billing units' of 10 characters, so an 80 character page would
count as 8 pages out of my monthly allotment.

I love ECS and my alpha pager, if the pages stop, I get worried!

c'ya,
Wayne

   waynew 'at' magicnet 'dot' net,   Orlando, FL
   http://www.magicnet.net/~waynew

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