Speech (non) recognition - by Manford

Our local telephone company (reached by pressing 123) uses speech recognition when first called - but not for me - almost no matter what i said, the reply was either "you are calliing about an overdue account, is that right? (and could not then recognize my NO, no matter what accent I useand), or said it didn't understand and then asked me to say more words. When I got fed up and said "Ich bin ein Berliner" and it replied "You are calling about an overdue account, right?" I gave up, redialed for the umpeenth time, growled and made gibberish and it then let me know which number key to press to get some service and that worked. Now all I have to do is go to a Telecom office downtown and let them make a copy of the information page in my passport and have them fax it to headquarters and then we can be signed up for a land line and wireless modem (which they shipped with one day service so I have it now) dsl. So it goes. We hope those of you who have an opportunity to see our Woodlawn house in its current shape will do so, or maybe buy it; but mainly we wish you good health and happiness. We met the former owners of the house we are buying today (Saturday) - they are from Malaysia, he is a pharmicist at a local hospital - with two grown kids. They are very nice.