New Phone on the Fritz
Ok, I’m not going to get technical on you but this last week we had finally decided that we needed to buy new phones in our house. The batteries were not lasting that long and we couldn’t have more than one person on the phone at a time (which is a problem when you use your phone for mainly talking with family overseas). So on Sunday we set up this great new phone and after translating the manual from German, we got it all set up, batteries charged, phone numbers entered into the “phone book”, special ringtone selected, etc. So we plugged it in and Alex really wanted to be able to call Grandma and Grandpa on the new phone so we dialed in their number and we heard nothing. We tried several times and nothing. No ringing nothing. So we dialed my handy (also known as a cell phone) and sure enough my cell phone rang but when I answered, I could hear stuff on the handy but not on the phone. So I called from my handy to our home number and the phone rang, we answered and it worked perfectly. So what is the deal?Well, after re-translating the manual (again) and then searching online for an English version of the manual, I could not find the issue. Now the way things get set up here in Germany when you have a high speed DSL line (mine is 16 Mbps download with a 1 Mbps upload - sometimes 1.5), you can not plug your phone directly into the phone outlet. This extra pull on the line causes you to loose your Internet connection. So our phone is connected through our DSL Modem/Router called a Fritz Box. So to test to make sure that the phone was the problem, I connected it directly to the phone outlet and well, what do you know - it worked find. So the problem was between our phone and our Fritz box. Did I mention that our Fritz Box only has German in it? So after translating all of the configuration pages on the Fritz Box setup, I still didn’t know what the problem was. Long story short (too late!), I upgraded the software for the Fritz Box and the phone started working just perfectly.
Now it has come to my attention that during all of this, that when we were so excited to call Grandma & Grandpa with the new phones that we forgot to look at the time we were calling them. As you might have guessed, we called them right in the middle of church time. Did I mention we that we remembered that they were traveling so we called them on my dad’s cell phone? They were traveling so that they could visit some new churches in our denomination and there was a good possibility that they were sitting right up front when we called and since I just now got the phone so that we can call out, I haven’t been able to speak to them about what happened.. So let me take this time to say to my Mom & Dad, I’m sorry for calling you during Sunday services and I am hoping that you had your phone on vibrate. Of course, my Dad probably didn’t have it on vibrate because who would ever call him during that time - everyone knows he’d be at church!
[Update: Mom & Dad were in a Sunday School class and had just been introduced when his phone went off. Better than when he was speaking in the church service!]
