No really, I still have the same phone number

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

We switched to Vonage (VoIP) phone service last October.  We had friends who had tried it and they seemed satisfied.  It was also about $40 / month cheaper than the local phone service with the normal long distance plan.  So far we are very satisfied.  But the whole concept of VoIP confuses most people.

The phone number is not tied to your house like a normal phone line.  It is tied to the little router device that you plug into your high speed internet connection.  That means that wherever we go (including friends houses and hotels), the phone number comes with us.  This also means that even though we are in Texas, we still have just our Indiana phone number (this also makes 911 tricky since you have to tell them where you live since your phone number is of no help).

We went to buy some furniture tonight (bunk beds and a leather couch) and of course one of the fields we needed to complete was home phone.  The salesman could not understand why we were in Texas and only had an Indiana phone number.  He kept trying to ask us if it was a cell phone.  Eventually I just agreed that it was like a cell phone, even though it was not (and I have not had a cell phone for about 2 years).  He seemed satisfied with this answer.

Then we got a phone call from Arab Pest Control asking us if we still wanted service on our Indiana house.  I told the guy we had moved to Texas and I don't think he believed me (I was after all answering a local call to Kokomo, IN).  I ended up telling him that our number was still working by mistake (I think I said it was a glitch in the system).  This actually satisfied him more than the truth did.

So if any of you need to call me here in Texas, use my old phone number.  Due to a glitch in the system we will answer it with our cell phone.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon