The Curse of the Eighth Digit

You would think after all this time the chaos of the eighth digit is gone, at least from the telecom companies side. Perhaps some people still got unchanged numbers, but that’s normal. Yesterday however while I was going to order my regular thursday night Batriq meal, I called “1888000″ Wataniya line only to get a message saying “you can’t reach this number, and you must add 2 to it”! I look at the number again and figure, they must’ve done something like this

if ( number.length() == 7 && isMocNumber(number)) {

add2Prefix();

}

Immediately after I left the 2nd Ring Road traffic light intersection with Fahaheel road away from the city, a second call made it. Hmm… Is it just by accident, or it the specific cell I was in? Maybe I will try again next week :D

Do you get such problems up till now?

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11 Responses to “ The Curse of the Eighth Digit ”

Comments:

Bojacob says:
November 28th, 2008 at 2:43 pm

I absolutely LOVE the geek part of this post!

nemo says:
November 28th, 2008 at 3:34 pm

geeky yes :p

Bashar says:
November 28th, 2008 at 7:10 pm

Bojacob & nemo: Thanks for the complement :)

maryam says:
November 28th, 2008 at 9:48 pm

1st let me say LOOOOL, you know it’s nice to know that there are people who have thoughts like these ;P makes you feel you’re not alone :D
Don’t know what’s the cause but it’s a hiccup somewhere ;D
Aham shay, ena you are going to try it next week hehehehe

MacaholiQ8 says:
November 28th, 2008 at 11:57 pm

I haven’t had any problems for a while though I’m not surprised that such complications are common. I mean you make this whole digits migration as simple as 1+7=8 where in fact it’s a bad@$$ complicated process. ;P

3baid says:
November 29th, 2008 at 5:20 am

Glitched cells? Now that’s an interesting concept :o

Bashar says:
November 29th, 2008 at 7:48 am

maryam: You know, I once listened to Linux podcast and they were talking about how technology nerds and geeks are now kinda desired by women, unlike in the past. Then he said “And if you’re a girl geek, then it’s like you’re the most wanted girl in the room” I blasted laughing at his comment :)

So guess now there i no escape trying it next week :)

MacaholiQ8: Yeah I know, but this is where it hits eventually I guess :). Gotta be an IF statement

3baid: I know. Doesn’t make sense to me, but why did it happen? I wanna try over and over, but I think Batriq will put me on their black list :/

tone Health says:
December 4th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

I also liked the geek part here.

Bashar says:
December 5th, 2008 at 6:53 am

tone Health: Thanks. Though further tests proved cell may be full of problems, I was not able to get that same message again.

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