(no subject)

Oh, the excitement of trying to run a listening experiment when people are drilling.

Fortunately, the workers are super nice and were willing to hold off till a break in my subject-flow, and more fortunately that'll be in half an hour. But still, it was just stupid. They told me that they had specific clearance to drill this morning and that we students were supposed to be informed; we weren't.

Well, anyway, I have one subject for whom both sessions featured intermittent drilling covering maybe 3-4 minutes out of 20 in each session. Not sure whether to keep his data. On the one hand, in a learning experiment it's nice to, you know, actually hear what you're supposed to be learning. On the other hand, I really don't want to have to collect any more data.

further 'fone foo

Curiouser and curiouser. I made another test call and this time, GCI Dude told me he thinks I'm being routed by my long-distance provider over Voice Over IP, which isn't required to provide the right caller ID number somehow. AFAIK I was never informed of such a thing. He suggested I take it up with them and get a complaint number so he can have a contact with someone in my company to work out what the heck is happening.

I'm wondering 2 things now:
1) Should they be routing me over VOIP without my knowledge or consent? I don't understand the technology well enough to know whether this is meaningful or something to be annoyed about outside of the quality issue.
2) My phone setup is maybe a bit strange; SBC (telecom giant) was forced to lease some of its lines to competitors, who for some unclear reason were able to offer prices I liked better, so I have phone service through Sage Telecom. AFAIK my long distance is through them -- we only pay one bill and it's got both local and LD charges -- but also AFAIK SBC actually owns and maintains the phone lines. Hmm. How do I figure out what's what? Do I call Sage and say, Hi, who's my long distance provider? Or would that just make me look like an idiot?