Hows my little loaner?

As most of my faithful readers know I recently got a new phone number.

If you're wondering why, it was to save money on new phones. For some reason Sprint thought it was a great idea to offer a deal to new subscribers and not old ones. So I took the deal and using the magic of Google Voice I am now porting my old number to my new phone. So basically I have two phone numbers now.

I had been resisting cutting off my last ties to MN ever since we moved here. So much that when I sold my Stratus the radio was still programed for Twin Cities radio stations. Now that I have a local number I'm regretting it to the max.

Sara Hibbler had this phone number before me,

I hope this is really her.

and she apparently has a real issue with managing money. I regularly get 10-20 phone calls a day from all over the country letting me know that Sara has recently been approved for $3,000-$10,000 Payday loans.

TEN TO TWENTY CALLS PER DAY!

It's absurd! I generally have a policy of not answering my phone if it's from an unknown number. One morning I answered an unknown caller and shit just hit the fan from that moment on. So I switched my phone to silent, which effectively made my phone a gaming device/calculator because I was missing the 1-2 calls per week I actually want.

Insert Call Control app. This app has saved my sanity. It can block calls in all sorts of ways, individual numbers, entire area codes, or anyone who isn't on your contact list. There are other options that I've employed that sends every phone call from someone not on my contact list straight to voicemail. But the app can create other rules for callers and I've now white-listed our local area code to allow calls from the mechanic, dentist, or whoever.

So this has given me the pleasure of listening to all sorts of voicemails from people using ESL informing Sara Hibbler of her successful approval for a loan through different companies from everywhere. There was even one caller who was telling Sara, very energetically, how happy she would be to consolidate her paday loan debt and lower her monthly payment.

A quick look online show the interest rate of a paday loan can range from 200% to 1400%. Average credit card rate is about 15%. Fun fact.

I still get the ocassional text message from local numbers and I've had a great time with people thinking I'm Sara. At the same time I'm pretty bitter about the whole situation and I've decided to let all of her friends know what sort of shit she's in. This weekend I had a true gem, which was really the reason for this long post:

Most of you probably wont find this as funny as I did. At the time I laughed so hard it warranted a misspelling of an acronym. 

Because indeed switching my phone number has really been bad luck.