Boy, you said it brother. I'm not a huge fan of all this on-the-spot communication where your words are transmitted without the chance to proofread them. It's overrated.
James hasn't called me on the phone. Once when he was testing out his GTalk's voice communication he left me a gmail voicemail, but I dodged that bullet and think it's the closest we three've ever come to actually... *gulp* speaking.

Oh yeah - I'm one of the new Apple "fanboys" sucked in by the iPod, and I'm sure that my segment is as annoying to longtime Mac devotees as the new fans that flock to an established band when they have a radio hit are to their longtime followers.

Still, I can't believe that Apple will keep this Cingular-only for long. Sure, they're claiming that they're "different", and they have won some concessions from Cingular, for sure (especially, apparently, in redoing their network to accommodate that drool-worthy visual voicemail system). Still, I can't imagine that they wouldn't open it up to the rest of the market (Cingular subscribers make up less than a third of the cell phone market in the U.S.), and since they're releasing in Europe, we know that an unlocked (or at least differently-SIMmed) version is possible.

A voice analysis expert has confirmed that it's his voice on the answering machine. See this voicemail where he's talking about buying crystal meth.

You just *cannot* make this stuff up.

Heck, I called it when I posted this! I got a Sprint voicemail recording, but was too chicken to leave a message.

That's right, silly voicemail messages will kill you.

That, and burning to death.