Does Canada not have something similar to Tracfone? I can buy a cheap phone from the likes of HSN or QVC for around 70 bucks. That includes talk, text, and data that's good for a year.
Apparently a Janet Jackson song has a beat that matches the resonance frequency of certain old hard drives and can crash them. That’s hilarious. I remember reading some story, perhaps an urban legend, that wind blowing over a bridge created the resonance frequency of the construction material and fucked the bridge up.
Resonant frequencies can really fuck up bridges, and prior to computers were often hard to predict when it came to things like turbulent flows. The example you're probably referring to is the Tacoma Narrows bridge which collapsed in 1940: More recently the Millennium Bridge in London did not anticipate that pedestrians would create a feedback loop where the bridge resonating would cause them to sync up with the resonance, thus making it worse. The bridge didn't collapse, but they did have to shut it down and add dampeners. Fun fact: some buildings in earthquake zones will add rooftop pools because the sloshing in the pool acts as a dampener and prevents the building from having a resonant frequency the same as the likely frequency of the earthquake waves that are liable to hit it.
Also, a column of marching army soldiers is encouraged to break stride, as they can cause trouble for a bridge if they hit the right frequency. It's been done for so long, that I don't think anybody's confirmed it's ever actually happened. Just that it's possible it could happen. Mythbusters did a special, called it busted . . . and then later retracted to say it's plausible.
Another famous one. Though this was more due to structural failure from the numbers of people, it still killed a lot of people.
Uh, the USA? First, I must admit that I haven't made a land-line call (that I've had to pay for) in over five years, but WHEN I did, you were subject to "Long Distance" fees IN YOUR OWN AREA CODE. Because of where I lived, I had about a twenty mile radius around me that I could call for free. Anything over that was "long distance," and charged about 10-15 cents a minute. Here's the catch: since I lived in the country, just about every place I needed to call was "long distance." Jesus Christ, this was annoying when I was a kid, and needed to call a store to find out if something was in stock (say, a book, piece of science equipment, tool, etc.), and my mom would refuse, saying "Just wait until we go to ______ city"... And we would only travel to ______ city once a month, and when we did, my mom would be like "Ugh, I'm tired and hungry, lets just go home and we'll do it next time"... Wash, rinse, repeat.
Yeah, Hyatt Regency wasn't a resonance issue, it was a load distribution issue that occurred due to a hastily-conceded-to design change requested by the construction company. It's taught as an example of both "engineers, don't design shit that's difficult to build" and "builders, don't fuck with engineering you don't understand."
the connection/support points got pulled through the floor if I remember correctly right? i don’t know if Canada gets it but there’s a show called “engineering disasters” that’s on I think natgeo? It they do like day-long marathons of it at least once a week, and thanks to the existence of idiots, there’s always new content. I love that show. As soon as the builders start trying to cut corners you know things are about to get interesting.
I've had it free with my cell phone for almost a decade. It came along with free texting. Even then, I very well may be a remote owner that needs $50k of roofing done... but sure, don't call me because that might cost you an extra dollar. Totally true. RMC, Royal Military College, just outside of Kingston, Ontario, caused damage to that bridge due to a formation marching over it. Ever since then all parade formations must scatter step.
Basically the original design called for long support rods bolted into the ceiling. Each of the two floors would be connected directly to the rods. The construction company was like "that requires the rods be threaded for like half their length, and for us to screw the nuts the entire length of that threading to support the upper walkway. That's the world's biggest pain in the ass." They asked if they could swap the long singular rods for pairs of shorter rods, where the top rod would connect the top walkway to the ceiling, and the bottom rod would connect the bottom walkway to the top walkway. They didn't account for the fact that this would transfer the load of the bottom walkway from the rod directly, to the top walkway and then to its connection to the rod. This effectively doubled the load on the connection between the top walkway and the rod. There was also a shearing issue as the two rods were no longer aligned. Under full load it failed.
I was thinking more along the lines of "buy a burner phone to get a local number. Use it only for calls to the local contractors and such." It sounds like changing your number is a major headache due to your work. I should have laid out what I was thinking in my first post.
aside from my crippling fear of heights, this incident is why I don’t trust hotel walkways that cut across an open space like that. I will walk all the way around the building to get to the other side, or take the stairs or elevator to go to a lower floor and then cross. I fucking hate being in tall buildings
Meh... it was time, after 8 or so years. I was running into problems with a few services that didn't know how to handle a BC number properly, like my local vet service... The only real push back for me changing is having to learn a new number. The only real pain so far is CRA (Canadian IRS) locked me out of my account because of 2FA... most others I was able to recovery successfully.
I waited on hold for 25 minutes to ask someone on the other end to mail me an unlock code that I'll get in 2-4 weeks via snail mail. Yay. At least it's nothing time sensitive.
I've kept my cell number since I got it in college. Never even had a land line of my own. I was on my sister's family plan in another state that I've never lived in. It's a fantastic way to screen calls because if I get a random call from that area code I know it is spam, but if I get a random call fr this area code I live in, I know it's legit. But, like @Nettdata says, it has caused problems with contractors. It's a mix of being busy and screening calls for frivolous reasons, and being a "locals first" mentality and saying fuck anyone not from this town. I've also had issues with automatic calls from the local pharmacy, which apparently can't handle area codes. All in all, I really like keeping the same number with a weirdo area code.