I remember a conversation with some rep from my phone company trying to sell me call-waiting, and it must have been after 1990, because I was just out of college, and living with a housemate. The rep asked me what I’d do if I got a flat tire, and couldn’t get hold of my housemate, because she was on a call already. I said “I’d change the tire.” Idiot.
Then I said that call-waiting was a way to get MORE calls. Did they have a way for me to get FEWER calls? I would be interested in that. He didn’t have an answer.
It was about two years later that I got something in the mail saying that caller ID was available in my area. It was a few dollars a month, and I could rent a caller ID box from the phone company, or I could buy my own device some place, and hook that up. However it was worded, it made it sound onerous to get one’s own device, but I went and got a new answering machine that was way better than my old one, displayed caller ID, and cost about $7 (granted, more in 1992, but still cheap). Hooked up inline, just like the old one.
He was in just four episodes between 1974 and 1998: “By Dawn’s Early Light” (the one with the military school), “Identity Crisis” (he was a CIA agent who murdered Leslie Nielsen), “Agenda” (he was the lawyer of a corrupt Congressman), and “Ashes to Ashes” (where he murdered and cremated Rue McClanahan).
Wikipedia says the first trial of Caller ID was conducted in Orlando, Florida in 1984, with limited deployment by BellSouth starting in 1987 and by US West in 1989.
Brain-fart, treating a red light as one would a stop sign, stop and proceed when the way is clear. I’ve done that, fortunately at two in the morning and there was no one around.
I was stopped at an intersection outside of Milwaukee early on a Sunday morning in the winter of 1987–88 when a girl ran the red light and broadsided a car traveling west. Neither she nor the driver of the other car (an older woman) were hurt, but both vehicles probably ended up in the junkyard.
(The older woman was clearly shocked, but the girl just slammed her steering wheel and yelled “SHIT!”)
I saw something similar happen in Minneapolis one day when I was having coffee and a cinnamon roll in a cafe right after a morning downpour. A pickup was rammed broadside in front of where I was sitting.
That makes sense, and not much else does. I’ve speculated that it’s also possible this intersection is one for which, when traffic is almost nil on the pikeway, and low on the bypass, the light blinks red over the pikeway and yellow over the bypass. Most of the bypass and State Road intersections with low-travel roads do that.
If this woman was running late for some place, worrying and trying to hurry, and previously had gone through this intersection a lot when the light was blinking she might have just gotten confused over what to do.
I can imagine people getting confused if they habitually drive through one of those intersections that is signaled sometimes and blinks when things are slow. Probably why you don’t see them much any more.
In fiction you save the world, literally 2 years later people will be asking “Who are you?” and completely disregard your expertise.
In real life you save a bus full of people you basically go on every talk show, get multiple books and spend the next couple of decades being the talking -head expert whenever the next similar event happens.
In a Die Hard With A Vengeance Zeus has no idea who John McClain is but does know about the Rodney King incident.
I feel that John McClain would be a bigger story than Rodney King, a single cop saves TWO different places from a massive terrorist incidents? Like hundreds of people died in Die Hard 2 so that alre would be 9/11 sized news, but one guy prevented more bloodshed?!
Any film or TV show that refers to previous ones is an exception.
And thrillers get complicated if the “secret” agent becomes well known: “Hey, you’re not a bus boy, you’re that Ethan Hunt guy! The Times did a story on you, whadthey call it? ‘Mission: Improbable’?”
Tell that to Oliver Sipple who likely saved President Ford’s life. The SF CHronicle outed him, and he later committed suicide. Ford sent him a note of thanks- that’s it. No medals, no talk shows, no book deals. Just a newspaper being unethical.
I’d totally forgotten about this. Kind of story that gets your mind reeling-- if Sara Jane Moore had successfully assassinated Ford, then Nelson Rockefeller would have run against Carter in 1976. That’s a hell of a butterfly.
Just for the record, Sipple did not officially commit suicide. He was probably drinking enough to be considered an alcoholic, and had been at the VA hospital for breathing troubles a few days before he died. He was simply found dead in bed, and his cause of death listed was pneumonia.
But he was 47, and had been on a downward spiral since he was outed-- which came on top of problems for a Vietnam vet with PTSD. Top suspect for outing him, BTW, is Harvey Milk.