Time's Up...

As a kid, we used to dial a number on the phone to tell what time it was. The lady on the recording would say, "At the tone, General Telephone time will be..." It turns out that they have finally decided to discontinue that practice.

Not that I really mind. It's just that calling for the time on the phone hearkens back to a simpler time. It's nostalgic.

Here's the scoop from the LA Times:

It's the end of time, at least as far as AT&T is concerned.

The brief note in customers' bills hardly does justice to the momentousness of the decision. "Service withdrawal," it blandly declares. "Effective September 2007, Time of Day information service will be discontinued."

What that means is that people throughout Southern California will no longer be able to call 853-1212 to hear a woman's recorded voice state that "at the tone, Pacific Daylight Time will be . . ." with the recording automatically updating at 10-second intervals...

Indeed, time already has stopped in 48 other states, he said. California and Nevada are the two remaining holdouts..

In Northern California, the prefix for calling time is 767, or P-O-P on a telephone keypad. For decades, locals up there have dialed POPCORN any time they have had to reset their watches or reprogram electronic gadgets after a power failure...

To be sure, time marches on. Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteelera, when we all had time to share...

Want to know more about how time works and the people who did time? Click HERE for the full story.