The Coolest Thing In The World, May 6th Edition

I was barely aware of Google Voice before yesterday when my sister told me she was using it. It's a service that assigns you a telephone number that in theory will ring through to any set of phones you assign to it. So, I call her Google Voice number and it rings through to her cell phone and her house phone. There are also a bunch of other cool services like caller ID and call blocking. Nifty.

So, I decided to check it out, since I already have a Google account that I'm using for a buncha other things. I go to the Voice web page, answer a bunch of nosy questions, and it offers to either port my existing number, or let me choose a phone number by area code, or zip, or location, or by searching for a word.

Fair enough. I want to keep the cell number I have now, so let's give searching a try, since that is after all supposed to be Google's strength. Give me a 206 (Seattle metro) number, I request.

"No results returned for this search."

OK, how about Seattle?

"No results returned for this search."

Oof. Um, King County?

"No results again, fool."

What about Washington?

That produced results; unfortunately they were all for the other Washington.

Let's search for a word then. How about "Creede"? Nope.

Wait a minute. What about . . . "banjo"?

All right. Now we're getting somewhere. Voice returned a set of five numbers, all of which were of the form 50B-ANJ-Oxxx. Not really what I wanted. I was more looking for something of the form (xxx) xxB-ANJO.

So, on to the next page . . . and I hit pay dirt. The mother lode. Option number three, a phone number in the greater Los Angeles area code, is a keeper. I need to get it on business cards and pass it around to all my friends:

The world can now reach me by dialing 3-2345-BANJO.

(OK, that's really 323-452-2656, but I'm never going to remember that, and neither are you, and neither is anyone else.)