Good story for Readers Digest

This week I was asked to give a demo in Bloomington of my VFP apps to some folks from Washington DC.

No problem I do it all the time. I asked them to get me the laptop that they would be using for the PowerPoint presentations and I would load the system onto it for the demo.

When I arrived to give them demo the guy in charge asked me if I wanted to RAS back to the base in order to demo also my Web based document imaging interface. I said that would be OK and he proceeded to double click on his short cut to the RAS Dial up Networking. I entered my ID and Password and pressed return. Nothing happened. I asked him if he has done this before on this laptop and he indicated yes. I told him I could not get through and just went back to my seat to await my turn. About 10 minutes later the cops show up and wanted to know who was in trouble. As a 911 call came from this room. It seems the gentleman's RAS connection dialed 9 then 9 the 1 then 1 800 etc.. Only the hotels system had 9 to get out and read the 911 after.

So I guess we all had lessons learned. I learned not to believe someone when they said they have done it before. And the owner of the laptop learned that Bloomington takes all 911 calls seriously.