where I am marginally more competant than my dad

[sarren]

My Dad's had the urge to look up old mates in the UK. He was given written instructions on how to get to a site where you enter the person's name, city, postcode and it will give you the address. Unfortunately my dad hasn't quite mastered such intricacies as drop down boxes, or the difference between a web address and a search engine. So I faffed around for a bit - he only has their names and 'probably still in Manchester', which to my surprise actually got me two hits on the fourth name I tried. "Oh. it works, then." says my Dad, in tones of great surprise.

Dad - What I want is a phone directory.
Me *pulls up BT phone book, where you enter the name etc, and it gives you the number*
Dad - No, a directory.
Me - So what you want is listings, where you can look through names, right?
Dad - Look, I'll show you! *stomps off*
Me - YOU'VE GONE TO GET THE PHONE BOOK, HAVEN'T YOU?
Dad - YES I HAVE. *reappears brandishing phone book*
Me *headdesk*

But, not being particularly skilled at this myself, I can't find phone book type listings. Do they exist? I ask, because I automatically assume that everything in the world is on the internet if you know how to look.

Talking about knowing how to look, last night I had a look at RV hiring for BM. So I look up El Monte, the first on the list. There's a list of places that you hire from. Reno's already booked out apparently, and SF is a bit far, so I check my map of California so see what other cities would be better to hire from. Except I can't find these cities. I spend half an hour googling different maps of California, trying to get a more detailed map. Go to bed tired and discouraged. Discover this morning from a post on perthburners that 'Oakland' (and presumably the other places) are in fact suburbs of San Franscisco.

Mourn own incompetance..

Comments

[tienriu.livejournal.com]

Hi, you don't mean this (http://www.thephonebook.bt.com/publisha.content/en/find/residential/residential_numbers.publisha?namespace=coexistence) do you?

Staying up here, I have yet to see a White Pages-esque book - this might be, though, because there's so much more people here in the UK than there is in Australia.

I used the link above to track down one of my dad's friends - whom he hadn't seen in thirty-odd years, with only the name of his house (literally!), that he was probably in Scotland and that his number MIGHT be [blah blah blah what turns out to be nine numbers rather than the required ten].

Hope the link helps =)

TR

[sarren.livejournal.com]

That's what we were using. Dad wants to be able to just look at lists of names and addresses as though he was looking at a regular phone book *sigh*

Thank you for trying though :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/doctor_k_/]

Oakland's not really a suburb of SF - it's another city in the Bay Area, just across the bridge. Had a long discussion with Americans last year about the difference between suburbs and cities (we'd certainly consider Oakland a suburb, or maybe the same way we'd think of Fremantle or Joondalup).

Round SF we should go for SFO or Oakland. Oakland is not the sort of place I'd go on my own or at night - shootings, crime etc are what Oakland seems to be well known for.

(I'm voting for SFO/Dublin myself)

[caitlen.livejournal.com]

OMG that happened at WORK the other day with one of the staff!!

I WORK AT A MEDIA/TECH FIRM and they went for the paper directory.. *head/desk*

[sarren.livejournal.com]

Did they also feel the need to read through huge lists of names and addresses? Do you even have that function?

Also, pretty icon :)