How to save money and time when leaving a voicemail

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/how-to-bypass-stupid-voicemail-instructions/

It turns out that each carrier offers a “bypass the instructions” keystroke that takes you directly to the beep. (It bypasses both the person’s own recorded greeting and the 15-second carrier nonsense.)

To be as evil as possible, the carriers do not promote or tell you about the existence of this keystroke. Furthermore, the key to press is different with each company:

* for Verizon

1 for Sprint

# for AT&T

# for T-Mobile

Every time you dial a number, you’d have to know which carrier that person uses. Which is, of course, impossible.

And you can’t just press *-1-# in a row, hoping to cover all bases—because if you press the wrong keystroke for the wrong carrier, you wind up boxed into that system’s voicemail menus.

If you’re clever, though, you can do the “one-star-pound” method recommend by this blogger:

STEP ONE. Press 1. If it’s Sprint, you get the beep, and you’re done. If you hear an error recording, go on:

STEP TWO. Press *. If it’s Verizon, you get the beep. If not:

STEP THREE: Push #. You get the beep for T-Mobile or Cingular.

You have to pause after each one, and you have to keep listening. But it’s one small way to fight back. Remember: One Star Pound.

if [birthday] then [extinguish candles] else [sing off-key]

What you want is what you get.

Remember Larry Legend x Air Jordan x McDonalds?

well this is like that ... but real.

name changes

There are a lot of changes going on in the world today. For those who don't read the news, let us inform you.

Former Name: Sears Tower
New Name: Willis Tower


Yes, it's true, the tallest building in North America (no, it's not the Empire States Back Building), officially changed its name last Friday. It's pretty crazy that they would do this. Apparently the people that bought the building wouldn't lease out its space unless it was allowed to change the name. I think it's pretty bogus, because think of the billions of books, web pages, neurons in our brains that all state that the Sears Tower is largest tower in North America; they all have to be changed or replaced with the Willis Tower! I can already see this name being mocked:

"Whachu talkin' 'bout, Willis" Tower

"Little Willie" Tower

"Will-he-Is" Tower (a Perez Hilton favorite!)

--------------

Former Name 1: Shawmut Center
Former Name 2: FleetCenter
Former Name 3: DerekJeterCenter (rejected, though)
Former Name 4: TD Banknorth Garden
New Name: TD Garden



The Garden has gone through many name changes over the years because the lack of a long-term corporate sponsor. However, now it goes through another change because TD Banknorth recently had a merger with another company. As much as the corporate sponsors think that having their name on a giant building in Boston will generate free publicity, I can't help but see TD and think "touchdown", not a bank. So nice try, back to the drawing board, TD advertising department. I think it would be better if a chicken company like "Three Hundred Eggs" bought the rights to the arena and called it "THE Garden" or "THE Arena". Think about how much money that would generate.

Contrived stupid person: Yeah, I'm going to Madison Square Garden tonight for the Knicks game.
Contrived Awesome person: Oh really? Well, I'm going to THE Garden tonight for the Celtics game.
Contrived stupid person: Dang, I just got owned in the face.

---------------

Former Name: Mix 98.5
New Name: Mix 104.1



Okay, this one is really weird for me. I've never put 98.5 with any other word than 'Mix'. It's because of Mix that I thought that the core body temperature was 98.5 for a long period in my life. But now Mix is taking over the station that was once WBCN. Now I must think of it in a way that is no longer related to my temperature (I'm not that hot). If Mix is moving to 104.1, what is moving to 98.5? It's going to be a sports talk station, yes, that's right, an FM sports station called the Sports Hub. The closest thing we ever got to an FM sports station was when WBCN 104.1 ("The Patriots Rock Radio Network") was broadcasting Patriots games, but in an ironic twist, that station is closing its doors for Mix. Anyway, remember to change your presets on August 12th or else you will hear people yelling about Tom Brady as opposed to Miley Cyrus yelling.

me fail english? that's unpossible.

pretty cool

but i still dont know what a strawberry swing is...

we want to be the gizmodo of blogs.

you're asking yourself, "what are you talkin about calvin?" i'll tell you what i'm talking about. have you ever traced the rate in which gizmodo updates? it's like at least a post ever 15-20 minutes. that's intense. but how do they do it? with a team of skilled bloggers. i mean we have a gang of writers. technically the smallest number possible for gang, but to get to gizmodo's rate, we need help.

so we're reaching out to our loyal readers to see if anyone wants to join the FHS ranks. do you know the difference between "lie" and "lay"? are you sometimes moderately funny? can you type? can you speel? then there is a chance that we might want you to try to write potential blog posts with us.

leave a comment on this post if you are interested and we will give you instructions about how to prove that you're for humor's sake.

who knows? this could the be start of something mediocre.

I saw an advanced screening of the new harry potter movie

First of all the they showed a trailer for the next harry potter movies. thats right movies. they're breaking down the last book into two movies. pretty cool looks awesome. i think they called the last one "ron and the deathly hallows"

anyway, i'll let in on a brief synopsis of the movie. it's a little different than the book.

the movie starts off with voldemort and the death eaters and they're kinda tearing stuff up. so then voldemort is like "rah rah rah rah rah" and then tyler durden's girlfriend is like "ha ha ha ha ha" the snape is like "mmm hmm." and then harry jumps in and is like "wizardry!" and they try to find the horcruxes and then dumbledore is like "wisdom..." Then ron is like "dude..." and then he's like "alright, bro..." and then hermione is like "i'm smart." then she's like "grrrrr" and then ginny is like "pffft" but then is like "hmmm" then like "ooOOo" and then snape jumps in and is like "aHA!" and harry's like "noooooooooooo" then he's like "no. don't." then they all died. it was kinda weird.

Finally. A spiderman series worth watching.

Bad post? How dare you?

So in a recent comment a reader of ours said we wrote a bad post. We're hurt. Really hurt. We spend hours upon hours not blogging so that when we do post it's good. We study our dictionaries so that we're up to date on all the latest words. But fine. here. here' a pic of the google maps bike that I took.

P.S. We don't know anything about magical unicorns, it's not our cup of tea.

Off "there I fixed it" a brilliant solution.

the Joe King watch

I've done the research, Joe King (of the Fray) sings vocals for the following songs:

Heaven Forbid
Ungodly Hour
Absolute (the chorus line)

He's so sneaky; he sounds just like Isaac.

so true. so true.

from the consumerist.

consumerist

i agree. thanks to BK now every ad is terrible. stupid king.

my love is that deep.

Jerry: i love onions. did i ever tell you?
me: yes its the reason why we're friends



in reality we're friends for many more reasons than that. but still. it'd be funny if that was just it.

love the end. don't you agree?

truth will set you free

the new facebook trend

Seems like the majority of people are facebook checkers, not facebook updaters.

What more can i say?