Touché

Here's a transcript of my conversation with P this morning. This is actually a redeeming one for the rocket scientists out there. But, I did have a good idea.

Disclaimer: Disregard grammar. It was a chat conversation and I tried to keep the authenticity.

Me: you know what i was thinking
P: no... tell me
Me: phone companies should invent something like a code you can dial when calling someone that says the call is an emergency, so that the phone rings out loud even if it is set on silent.
Me: Cuz everyone has cell phones now, and no one has land lines.
Me: I was thinking of this because I was woken up by a text early this morning from my friend on the east coast. Stupidly, my phone wasn't on silent.
Me: But it makes sense. For instance, the time when the tsunami came to Southern California. My roommate had literally 47 missed calls from her dad across the country trying to tell her to evacuate. But she never saw the calls or text messages until she woke because her phone was plugged in on silent. We evacuated even though the tsunami never came. And if it was coming we probably were too late since we missed those calls.
P: that actually kind of exists already
P: there are apps for smart phones that do that with texts
Me: ya, well... not everybody has smart phones
P: you text a codeword and it forces the ringer on
P: haha, i think you are the only one with out a smart phone.
P: but they will
soon enough
Me: in the meantime before everyone in the world has a smart phone, there are still emergencies happening on a daily basis that people need to be woken up about
P: yea i see your point
Me: remember how you used to be able dial *69? It was like all the rage in the 90's.
Me: it liked called the person back or something
P: i think the problem with your idea is that you would need to give phone companies control of people's phone settings
P: and that's like invasion of privacy, right?
P: it's also technically a hard thing to do. You would have to change the method of how phones currently work
Me: how would it change the method?
P: well if you want this to work on every phone that exists. then every phone would need to be looking for this code that exists before or after the number is dialed
P: right now that doesn't exist
P: that was a lot of "exist"
P: the *69 thing works differently. that's controlled solely by the phone switching company
Me: can't it be like a collect call?
P: hmm...what do you mean
Me: like you dial an 800 number first then it prompts you to enter the number you actually want to emergency call
P: collect calls are like a relay
P: you call the number for the collecting company...then they forward to the other number
P: yea...then how does the ringer get set?
Me: I don't know...you're the rocket scientist.
P: when you dial *69 it goes out to the switching station. that code signals to dial out the number that just called
Me: why do you know this?
P: cuz im a rocket scientist