Thu, 19 Jan 2012
Yesterday, I received a call from my Member of Parliament, John Baird. Well, more precisely, I received a call from an auto-dialer that played a recording informing me that Baird would be holding a telephone "town hall" the next day. A telephone town hall consists of a Rude Clueless Politician interrupting your supper to spout the party line at you while you listen mutely.
The initial robo-call annoyed the hell out of me, but it's not illegal in Canada. For some reason, the politicans made sure to exempt themselves from rules against nuisance calls.
Nevertheless, thanks to the open-source world, I can fight back. I programmed my Asterisk home telephone system to redirect John Baird to "the monkeys". That is, any call originating from his constituency office does not ring through to our phones. Instead, the caller is treated to several seconds of shrieking monkeys before Asterisk hangs up. (If you'd like to experience it for yourself, call +1 613 231-6599 extension 126.)
The nuisance number I blocked, by the way, is 613 990-7720. If you'd like to reduce unwanted communication from Rude Clueless Policitians... block that number.
And finally, the sweetest entry of all in my Asterisk call logs:
"6139907720","s","monkeys","6139907720","DAHDI/4-1","","Hangup"