This cell phone poll is from bloodstones.

[randomness]

[Poll #1458046]

Comments

[rmd.livejournal.com]

the area code on my phone number (857) is an overlay of the area code that i grew up in. the actual town i grew up in is no longer in that area code, however, as 617 has split several times.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

When you say "where I'm from", do you mean where I grew up, where I live, something else?

I consider where I'm from to be something that doesn't change, since it refers to the past, so a current phone number or anything else has no bearing on that. Where I live now can change, of course. I realize this isn't a common view given the frequency with which I'm asked to say where I'm from when clearly what is being asked is where I live, but it's a pet peeve of mine. :]

[ceo]

Like rmd, the area code where I grew up and the area code where my parents live now are different, despite being the same physical location.

[sylphon.livejournal.com]

The area code on my cell number is one of an ever-growing area codes for the Atlanta area, it's one of the original atlanta 'catch-all' area codes. I've had it for 10+ years now since I've been able to keep it through all my atlanta-area moves. I had a different cell number briefly when I was in NC before moving to GA.

As for places I call home, well I just bought a house, so it is 'home', but I've never really felt at home since I left the New England area. My parents don't even live in new england anymore, but I still think of that bundle of states as home.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

I usually say I don't have a cell phone. I do have one, I just never turn it on unless I am actually using it or expecting a call. When it is on, unless I have it sitting on the table next to me, I rarely hear it when it rings.
I no longer give out the number because people/doctors offices insist on using the cell to call and I miss the calls. I don't know how many times I have told them to use my home number, but they insist on using the cell. Finally I told them to delete the number and that I no longer had the phone. I never think to check the voicemail and don't even remember the password.

I like to be able to disappear. I have no need nor desire to rely on a piece of technology 24/7. I just bought a new car and the dealer was all apologetic because it didn't have GPS. I said thank you, I don't want a GPS, I know how to read a map or ask for directions should I need them. Sometimes I just don't want to be trackable.

[chrisber.livejournal.com]

"Where I'm from" is such a nebulous concept for me, ever since grade school when people asked that, but really meant "what country are you a citizen of". Since I was a US citizen but had never been to the US, at least one person in the conversation quickly became confused.

These days, I'll admit to being "from" California, or Mountain View in particular; since most people who live here were born somewhere else, the question is closer to "where are you living now" in the usual context.

[redbird]

Something like 1.3 would be the closest answer to the last question: I don't think of Boston as home, but I do think of adrian_turtle's apartment as home, along with mine here in New York with cattitude.

[outlawradio.livejournal.com]

I guess the phone is from where I live now if you think of that in terms of the five boroughs. I was living in Manhattan when I got it (I got one of the Manhattan area codes) and I really liked my number and never changed it. I subsequently moved to Queens, back to Manhattan, Washington DC, back to Manhattan, and now Brooklyn. I consider myself to live in Brooklyn, and it's a New York City area code, so it's "where I live now" basically, even if not exactly.

[bloodstones.livejournal.com]

This poll clearly needs some option that makes it clear that I don't care if the actual 3 digit area code existed when you were growing up, or has been added since then, and that what matters is geography and whether someone will recognize the area code as being from x_location and ask if you're from there.

[agrimony.livejournal.com]

This gets weird for me. I've moved back to the area that I grew up in, which when I was a kid was an entire state with the same area code, but now the state is two area codes (soon to be four) and I just happen to be in the part that's still the original area code.

As to the question about if this is where my parents lived when I got my first cell phone, the answer is yes and no. My mom's always lived here while I got my first cell phone out in California. My dad... I'm not sure if he was still in CT when I got my first cell phone, so I left it unchecked. :)

My first cell phone area code was in CA.

Oh, and as I think on it, I lied about number of cell phone numbers. I've had three, not two.

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

My area code is 718 (who-oa, who-o-oa-- 718!); my first cell phone had a Boston exchange, but I switched it when I moved to NY and changed cell companies, I can't remember why but the guy wouldn't port the number to my dad's family plan.

I haven't changed it since and I don't plan to, because 718 is cool and makes me think of Brooklyn.

[muffyjo]

857 was the "new" cell phone area code that covered the part of the area I lived in at the time. It has since moved with me.

I can't remember how many cell phones I've actually had...let's see..college (yes,I had a suitcase phone in case of emergencies while driving from Maine to NYC). I think my first one outside of that was here in Boston when I lived in Brookline. Then I changed providers and they made me change my number. Then I moved to London and had a new one there. Then I came back and got a new one here. Then I moved across the river and had to change again to the one I have now. So I think that's 5 different numbers I've had.

As for home...it is a place that moves around for me. It's wherever my hat is hanging, wherever my mother's hat is hanging as well as a place that no longer exists except in my memory in South Carolina.

[rfrancis]

I checked every single item on question #1 including other, because my "other" is "I've never lived in another area code, ever, in 40 years, and that includes the hospital I was born in."

[theloriest.livejournal.com]

I keep thinking I should get a local number (particularly due to the number of wrong numbers I get from 4 hours behind me!)... but I really really like my number and it's unique. So I put up with being woken up at 3 in the morning once in a while.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

If my "Where you went to college" you really meant "Where you went to college the second try", then sure.

Also, where I went to college (the second try) is also where I work...

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

My area code is of the last city I lived in. Too many people have my old LA number for me to change it.

[karakara98.livejournal.com]

203 is where I'm from. 617 is home.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

To me, the default meaning of "where I'm from" is "where I grew up", i.e., Indiana. The exception is when I'm *traveling* and someone asks where I'm from, such that "where I live now" (i.e., Boston) becomes the intuitive answer.

[sarakate.livejournal.com]

My present cell number area code is one of several for my metro area, and is the area code that covers landlines in the area where I lived when I first got a cell and the area code that first cell had. It's not the area code that landlines get in the part of town where I live now -- we have two divided more-or-less geographically and one area-wide catchall code -- but it's a local call from here. My mom lives in the same metro area, although nearly as far from me as she could be and still be in the same area (it's ~50 miles from my house to hers), and has the whole time I've had a cell.

I generally would specify where I'm "from" as where I live now -- I've been here a good long while, and my accent reflects it, so in general if someone asked, "Hey, where are you from?" I think that's what they'd be expecting. There are circumstances, like if someone asked where I'm originally from, where I might give a different answer, but that'd be uncommon.

I've changed my cell number once, about 5 years ago, when I was issued a phone by my employer -- I'm allowed to use it for personal calls, so I dropped my personal cell. I could have had them port the number at that time, but chose not to -- when this area first split area codes, all the numbers in outlying areas were reassigned from the original code to the new code, and the number I got for my personal cell was one that a business in the new code had previously had, and there were still a lot of business directories and such that had their number with the old area code, and I got a ridiculous number of wrong-number calls for them. I kept thinking it would taper off, so I didn't ask for a new number early on, and then later, I'd given it out to so many people I didn't really want to change, but I was still getting 3-4 wrong-number calls a week, so I decided it was worth the hassle when I was switching to the company phone anyway.

"Home" is definitely ambiguous. I consider where I live now home, but I also have a hometown I grew up in, and I'll periodically say "going home" to refer to the city where my dad lives, and the small town my parents came from and most of my extended family still lives in or near. So, four.

[nathanjw]

Systemic identifiers are weird. The place where my parents live, and where I lived from 8-18 (and thus consider where I did most of my "growing up") has changed area code, zip code, street name, and street address since I lived there.