This article was in The Washington Post after Christmas. I thought it was fascinating. Apparently, some bees are hyper-sensitive to the presence of mites in sealed cells that are feeding on young bees. They will break into the cells and drag out the mites and the infested bees. Researchers have been experimenting with breeding queens that carry this hygienic trait in their DNA. Here's a quote; sounds promising: "Under a new initiative, entomologists are working with queen producers in California to evaluate colonies for the strongest stock. Organizers hope that this, in turn, will lead to the selection of hardier bees and, ultimately, less reliance by beekeepers on chemical treatments. The 20 producers in the program raise about half the queen bees sold in the United States." Here is a link that might be useful: In Search of a Better Bee

MtnRwdux, that would've happened to you at my house. I never ever answer the door to strangers. I don't care what you look like. If it's daylight, I may go to the door, which is glass, with my 100 lb barking black lab, to see who it is and if I don't know them, I tell them I don't open the door to strangers so if they have something they want to tell me, they can leave literature at the door. Nothing irritates me more than someone coming uninvited to my door at dinner hour. Coincidentally, just this evening I saw someone get scammed right in front of our grocery store! As I was leaving, I saw a man b/w 40-50 yrs old with wallet in hand talking with a young girl who appeared to be in her 20s. She was dressed "nicely" in loose cotton shirt with long summery cotton skirt, blond hair in a loose bun. I didn't think much of it as I passed by them and then noticed a guy in an unrecognizable uniform heading toward us, about 50 ft away. I thought he was just going shopping, but then I hear him suddenly yell, "you need to leave the property immediately. You are not allowed here. Get out of here now!" She kind of took off and the man was standing there bewildered. It hit me that she must pave given him a sob story needing money. I've never seen security there before but wonder if this has been a problem lately so they hired someone. Odd. Two,summers ago, I was approached by a man and his son outside a hotel in NJ. I had just checked in and went out to the car to get a few things. We were there for a soccer tournament so,the area was unfamiliar. He gave me some song and dance about needing a few dollars for gas, but I've heard about these kind of scammers before so I politely refused. I then went back inside and reported to hotel staff. My elderly parents got the IRS scam call. They are both totally "with it" and my mother had a nice argument with a guy with a strong Indian accent. She basically told him to go ahead and send the cops..she wasn't worried about getting arrested. I do worry as they age that they might not be so smart.

"In my area, and I believe elsewhere, Tracfone doesn't have any brick and mortar locations." Well, duh. That's why I told Anne to start with Verizon. It is Verizon that actually owns the phone number that was assigned to Anne's Tracfone. Tracfone doesn't own any phone numbers. It leases them from the carriers in the areas where Tracfone "provides service." Calls made from/to Tracfones use cell towers that are owned and maintained by the carriers whose lines Tracfone leases. "I know of and about the tasks you thought you'd snow me with." I wasn't attempting to snow you with or about anything. I was only attempting to find out how much you actually know about the way voice communications work. You say that you (with consultants) set the specifications for systems and equipment that was needed for your office. Big whoop. All that means is that you sat there and said things like, "Well, we need a system that can handle 142 calls per hour with 15 agents taking the calls at any given time. We need a system that can route callers to the agent(s) who are most capable of answering their questions. We need telephone sets on the employees' desks that will let them know who is calling and from what number." You helped establish the minimum specifications for a system needed by the company for which you work. I, on the other hand, determined the needs of the agencies/cities, worked with those agencies/cities to set their specs, and then designed the system that would meet/exceed those specifications. "I was a manager, not a worker-bee. I know of and about the tasks you thought you'd snow me with. There's nothing wrong with being a worker-bee but that isn't what I did." You are so condescending. If you were a worker bee, you would have known that the Caller ID information (which appears to be the root of Anne_CT's issue) is assigned to the line at the Central Office. Being a manager, you know only that Caller ID exists and that it means a person's name and phone number will show up on the recipient's phone. Yes, of course I have heard of ROLM, and I know what a PBX (Private Branch Exchange) is. Did you know that a PBX is actually a computer? Do you know what a trunk line is? Do you know the difference between Automatic Call Distribution and Uniform Call Distribution? Do you know what an IVR is and how it works? How about PRI and ISDN? Yeah, you may have heard of these things, but without doing a Google search you don't really know what they are, how they work, or how to program them because you were a manager and not a worker bee. When someone calls 911 from their home phone, the address shows up on the 911 operator's screen. Even if the caller says nothing, the dispatcher knows where to send the first responders. That's because the address information is keyed into the OE at the CO by a phone company employee. But what happens when a 911 call is originated from a business? If it's Spiffy Dry Cleaners, it's not much of an issue because the address (including Suite number as appropriate) is keyed in. But what happens when it is a business that has multiple telephones throughout multiple floors in an office building? Ever think about that? Absent specific 911 location information for each telephone number in the business, all calls originating from that business will show up with just the business address on the screen of a 911 operator. If that business uses a PBX, the PBX administrator needs to key the information into the system. Since trunk lines are shared lines, this can be a pain in the patoot. Each employee is assigned an extension number, and that extension has to be programmed into the 911 information for that trunk line. And if the employee changes physical offices within the business but keeps the same extension, the PBX administrator has to update the 911 ID information for that extension. If the business with multiple telephones throughout multiple floors in an office building uses, for example, Centrex lines for each phone, and those phone lines are assigned to a specific floor and cubicle or office number, that info would need to be keyed in by the local Telco. Sounds easy enough so far, right? But when someone on the 11th floor of a building in cubicle 136 has a heart attack while working late one night but manages to call 911 from their phone before passing out, how will the first responders know where on the 11th floor cubicle 136 is located? Different states, cities within those states, and even fire districts within the cities, may have their own standards as to how they want the location to be designated. But in my area, the main entrance to the building was the starting point, From there, the building is divided into quadrants, with Q1 being to the immediate left of the main entrance, then proceeding in a clockwise direction so that Q4 is to the right of the main entrance. Think of it this way -- If cubicle 136 on the 11th floor is in the northeast area of the building, "northeast" means nothing to a firefighter if the floor is filled with smoke and no one can tell up from down or right from left. So, for 911 purposes, cubicle 136's location would be designated as --- What? Ah, this all depends on which direction the main entrance to the building faces. If it faces west, then cubicle 136 is in Q2, but if the main entrance faces east, cubicle 136 is in Q4. (And if the building is very large those quadrants may need to be further divided into sub-quads.) Obviously, with the way folks move around within businesses while still keeping the same phone number, most of the time the 911 designation information never gets changed. Gotta hope no one suffers an emergency when no one else is around to direct the first responders where to go.... And it appeared to me that in Anne's case, her phone number was originally a landline assigned to "John Smith" and it carried his name and address as the 911 information, with his name showing up on the Caller ID as the person making the call. Then John ported the landline number to a wireless number and no one changed the 911 information because the number was still assigned to the same guy. Then, when John gave up the number (whether it was by his death and the account being closed, or by any other reason), the number remained a wireless number and no one even thought about changing the 911 information because it isn't usually put into wireless accounts -- because wireless calls to 911 ping off the closest cell tower for routing to a 911 dispatch office. By the very nature of wireless phones, your billing address doesn't matter one iota when it comes to sending first responders. I'm done. I can only hope that Anne comes home happy from her outing with her son to get her issue resolved.

I get almost no spam calls on my cell phone, but I also turn it off at night and then turn in back on in the morning when I feel like it. I think it is turned off most of the time, and I figure the battery will last longer that way. I tend not to answer numbers that I do not recognize, but sometimes these calls are from doctors' offices, and I have to call them back. When I first moved to Culver City, I had a phone number that was either previously owned by Larry Welk or was very similar, and on my voice mail, I said "Please leave a message for Larry" because I used that name instead of Lars back then. At one point I started getting a lot of voice mail messages from companies trying to sell me insurance for my helicopter because Larry Welk was a news helicopter pilot for Channel 13. (Larry Welk was/is Lawrence Welk's son, in case you have heard of him.) Finally, to stop the voice mail messages, I changed my greeting to say "Hello, you have reached 310-xxx-xxxx, the house of no Lawrence Welk music. If you think you have reached this number in error, please take two Geritol and dial again in the morning." After having that message on my answering machine, the insurance companies stopped calling me, but my mother got mad because she liked Lawrence Welk and made me change the message.