Rikki Don’t Lose That Number
After finally getting my corporate laptop back from the shop, I had to reinstall the software that I personally needed on there. This includes the software for my Verizon Wireless EVDO card. Unfortunately, it seems this process, which asks you a lot of annoying questions like “why do you need to download this software,” also requires you to enter your 10 digit telephone number for the device. Um, really? Do I even know what that is? Of course not. It’s not like I ever call it or anything. That piece of data, along with the CD that contains the software, is back at my house up in Port Orchard, and I’m down here in Sunnyvale!
After calling the helpdesk to see if they knew–of course they didn’t, and the people that might know were out at that time of night–I googled and found an article about how to query the device itself to get that information. Great, now all I need is a platform other than Windows. Turns out, I carry such a platform on a USB key. It’s an older version, but hey, it works. I then found a way to treat the EVDO card as a standard serial port. I was able to access this serial port using a utility called microcom. After issuing the magic AT command, I was imparted with the piece of information I needed: my EVDO telephone number!
After that ordeal, I was given the download for the software, which of course I dutifully installed. What annoys the snot out of me is that after downloading and installing the Verizon Wireless software, the damn software was able to query the modem itself to find out my number!
Can someone please explain to me why Verizon needs to give the third degree in order to download a vital piece of software I need to use their service?
