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Apr. 7th, 2002 09:26 pmIt was a very nice day for a drive today in North Georgia. I am aware of this as I spent all afternoon in the car.
Side-job #1 dude is way out in the sticks. He made a small fortune through pure luck of geography mixed with an entrepreneurial spirit -- 20 years ago he lived right on the border between two area codes. Where he was, he could dial into Atlanta free, or the sticks for free, but not both. So he bought a bunch of phone lines, half going to Atlanta and half into the county, and helped small businesses reduce their phone bills by connecting them to local Atlanta phone lines. After many years of fights with the phone company, including BellSouth suing one of his companies out of business, he's branching out into International calling. Basically doing the same thing -- helping foreign businesses get around high International phone rates to the US when they're pennies going the other way. Ironically, BellSouth is helping him do this. US biz...don't ask me to explain, I don't understand how our economy keeps going sometimes.
The technology he needs (computer control of telephone lines) is my specialty. So I drive out to Nowhere, Georgia, through quaint towns, horse farms, national forest, rivers, streams, and lakes, on a beautiful 70 degree day like today. Twist my arm. I picked up about $20k worth of phone equipment and drove it to one of the biggest skyscrapers in Atlanta. I went from lazy folks fishing for catfish off the side of a highway bridge to lazy guards watching SuperFriends on a TV wedged between the security monitors.
Round trip -- 215 miles, and I only got hopelessly lost once. So far, this stuff looks like it might actually work!
Side-job #1 dude is way out in the sticks. He made a small fortune through pure luck of geography mixed with an entrepreneurial spirit -- 20 years ago he lived right on the border between two area codes. Where he was, he could dial into Atlanta free, or the sticks for free, but not both. So he bought a bunch of phone lines, half going to Atlanta and half into the county, and helped small businesses reduce their phone bills by connecting them to local Atlanta phone lines. After many years of fights with the phone company, including BellSouth suing one of his companies out of business, he's branching out into International calling. Basically doing the same thing -- helping foreign businesses get around high International phone rates to the US when they're pennies going the other way. Ironically, BellSouth is helping him do this. US biz...don't ask me to explain, I don't understand how our economy keeps going sometimes.
The technology he needs (computer control of telephone lines) is my specialty. So I drive out to Nowhere, Georgia, through quaint towns, horse farms, national forest, rivers, streams, and lakes, on a beautiful 70 degree day like today. Twist my arm. I picked up about $20k worth of phone equipment and drove it to one of the biggest skyscrapers in Atlanta. I went from lazy folks fishing for catfish off the side of a highway bridge to lazy guards watching SuperFriends on a TV wedged between the security monitors.
Round trip -- 215 miles, and I only got hopelessly lost once. So far, this stuff looks like it might actually work!
