Efficiency!

It’s a new record!  My new phone book didn’t even make it within 50 feet of my house!

What's a "phone book?"

Star Trek has always done a remarkably good job of predicting the future.  Perhaps there's a lot to be said for self-fulfilling prophecies, such as the designer of the original flip-phone modelling it after a Star Trek communicator, but an awful lot of the technology that has appeared on Star Trek later appeared in real life.  Touch screens, cell phones, tablet computers, Google Glass, verbal computer interfaces...the list goes on.  

What might this have to do with phone books, you might ask?  Well, I've seen many episodes of Star Trek over the years, encompassing four different TV shows (Never watched "Enterprise," and I'm not entirely sure why), all of the movies, and even a couple of the books.  In all of that media, I have never once seen somebody open up a phone book to look up somebody's number.  Maybe this is a true harbinger of things to come, but for the time being, though just about everybody in the entire phone-using community has graduated to using a computer to look up phone numbers (or just doing it on a smartphone, which can then instantly make the call for you), the phone company remains 100% insistent on providing phone books.  I haven't used one in a long, long time, and it's now been over a year since one has even been in my house.  

I thought it was amusing Last Year that my phone book lasted 5 hours in between being dropped off at my doorstep, finding its way to the recycle bin in the garage, and making its way to the curb.   Well, ladies, gentlemen, and people from Elmira, a new standard has been set!  That's right, in a genius moment of laziness, the phone company people, instead of placing my new phone book on my doorstep, simply tossed it out the window of their car onto the end of my driveway.  Awesome.  

Fortunately, they still had the presence of mind to do this on garbage day.  Upon taking the trash and recycling bins out to the curb, I simply paused to add the new phone book to the collection.  Yes, the book again lasted a matter of hours, but never got any closer to the house than the end of the driveway.  Great job, phone company.  You made the process of instantly throwing out your phone book one step shorter.