Jason's Log

Understand how breakdowns in the Commercial Paper and Credit Default Swap markets got us here

Over the past few weeks, I have been searching for a good resource to help me understand the chain of events that started with the sub-prime mortgage crisis evolved into a $700B federal bailout. Although I do not claim to be any sort of expert on the subject, this episode from This American Life featured quite a few of them:

365: Another frightening show about the economy

Ira Glass and friends do an especially good job of linking the collapses of AIG and Lehman Brothers into the bigger pictures of the mortgage crisis and credit crunch. Definitely worth listening to, and really very frightening at times.

HOWTO: Selectively silence telemarketer phone calls on Windows Mobile phones

With the campaign season in high gear, I find myself the recipient of frequent fund-raising phone calls placed to my mobile phone. Of course, the government Do-Not-Call list exempts political organizations, so that is no help. In order to reduce the irritation from these calls, I decided to take advantage of the 'Custom Ring Tone' feature of Windows Mobile SmartPhone edition. The number I wanted to silence was 805-897-1183 and is from a company called TeleFund.

Note: I am using a Motorola Q, equipped with WMSPv5. I assume this feature exists on newer versions of WM and is almost surely supported on other platforms. All you need is the ability to associate a custom ring tone to a particular phone number for this to work.

Using a nice little sound generator script that I found here, I was able to create a WAV file containing one second of silence. I then used the handy SoundCoverter on Ubuntu to convert this to an MP3. As it turns out, WMSP supports both MP3 and WAV formatted files for custom ring tones.

You can download the files here:

Download silence.wav

Download silence.mp3

Once you have these files transferred to your phone (I did this using an external MicroSD card that I use for storing podcasts and audio books), you then just need to associate this file as the ring tone for the phone number you want to ignore. Where the file should go may depend on your phone operating system. On WMSPv5 any MP3 or WAV file found on the Storage Card will be made available as a custom ring tone, for example.

To silence the number on WMSPv5 the process looks something like this: After you receive the unwanted call, press Ignore to send them to voicemail. Once the connection has been terminated, open your Call History application. From there, select the phone number (assuming Caller ID was provided) and then select 'Save to Contacts' from the right-side menu. Create a new contact record, give it a name, and insert the number. Scroll down a bit until you see the 'Custom Ring Tone' menu, which by default will display 'None'. Select that menu item and scroll down until you see the entry named 'Silence'. Select that sound file.

Now the next time that phone number calls your phone, the 'silent' ring tone will be played, you will not be interrupted, and life will be just a wee bit more pleasant.