The Adventures of Cowboy Hazel

A quandary has arisen. To keep the cell phone number or abandon it? This question is one that has been lying beneath the surface for quite some time now. You may not know this (I usually try to keep it as hushed up as possible (Oh shit, why am I posting it on my blog?)) but I lived in Brooklyn for two and a half months in early 2007. (Did I just use double parentheses? That was awesome!) And, during that time (actually a couple months before that time — I paid an extra fee to have T-Mobile switch my number while I was still in Boston), I traded in my 617 number for a 347 number because I was anxious to cut all ties with the bean town. Before moving to New York, I had an overly fond view of the boroughs (especially Brooklyn) and was happy to take an area code that implied that I was not from Manhattan. I’m the first to admit that I have been wrong in my life. The whole moving to Boston thing and liking the Red Sox thing (please can we just get over this — Sareeka, especially, it kills me when you bring this up) was obviously a huge, huge mistake. Yes, I’m embarrassed and I wish I could take it back, but I can’t. But, we’re getting side-tracked here. The point is, in the aftermath of that gargantuan folly, another smaller preposterousness occurred. I (yes, me, Robert James Reese, I am sad to admit) thought that Brooklyn was a more honorable place than Manhattan and accordingly aligned myself with the secondary borough as much as possible. As a result, my phone number is 347-853-5200. I would worry about posting that here, but it is already posted on my business site and if it hasn’t been spammed from there, it probably won’t be spammed from here. So, I have an awesome cell number that ends in double zeros, but it is from a lame area code. 347 is a secondary area code for all boroughs except Manhattan. It’s not even the 718 (which is the primary area code for those same areas). A rerun of the episode of Seinfield where Elaine gets a 646 number because of Kramer’s fax machine happened to be on last night and that made me think of this a bit. Also, my cell phone crashed on me three times today, which made me start to seriously consider getting a new carrier and/or cell phone. I was originally planning to wait for the first launch of Google’s Android platform, but I am worried that the first edition of that is not going to be that stable. And , AT&T is supposedly offering a $200 rebate on the iPhone with a two year contract and that’s better than anything that will be offered with the brand new Android Platform so I’m thinking that looks pretty good. I definitely want to get a browser capable phone so that I can expand my own network into mobile web content and test it, but I don’t want to have to lay down serious cash to do so. Maybe switching to AT&T with this new promotion is the answer? But, if so, what do I do with my mobile number? Thanks to recent legislation, I have the right to move my T-Mobile number to AT&T. But, do I want to? The pros for keeping the 347 number: It ends in double zeros — How cool is that? Also, I have a thousand businesses cards printed with that number on it. If I change the phone number, I’ll have to get new ones. Cons: I don’t want people to think I’m from the boroughs and some people don’t even know 347 is a NYC Area Code — Diana thought it was Florida. What do I do?