Another end of year call-in show!

December 15, 2017 3:08 PM

Hey all you wonderful MetaFilter folks! Last year I asked y'all to call in on our Google Voice mailbox and leave a message, and a bunch of you did, and it made a really nice podcast. So we're gonna do it again!

Call [phone]. That's (505) 663-MEFI. Just say who you are and share a quick thought—maybe a good thing from this weird year, or something you're looking forward to next year, or something you liked or appreciated on MetaFilter in 2017. Or a (short) poem, or a (short) song, or a (short, is this theme becoming clear) joke!

Same basic deal as last year:

- The call will go straight to voicemail, no human interaction required!
- Try to keep it short! 30 seconds is great, five minutes not so much.
- Speak up! Phone quality can be iffy, it's great to be able to hear you clearly.
- I'll be aiming to put this out around the end of the year, so it'll help if you aim to call sooner rather than later so I have time to get everything organized and edited.
- Please enunciate your username! The trickiest part last year was figuring those out hearing them said out loud instead of written down.

We'll appreciate hearing from you even if we end up not being able to fit everybody's message into podcast running time or edit around audio quality issues, etc. And if you want to say hi but don't want to be on the podcast, just say so in your message and we'll happily honor that.

Looking forward to hearing from folks and putting your voices out into the community like this.

posted by cortex (staff) to MetaFilter-Related at 3:08 PM (34 comments total)

Yay! And yes, please enunciate your username (or say your number and we can look it up). It's always great to hear from people!
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 3:15 PM on December 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

i'm excited to pretend to be griphus
posted by poffin boffin at 5:55 PM on December 15, 2017 [15 favorites]

I'm excited to pretend to be good at telling jokes.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 6:28 PM on December 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's Fizz, the first z is silent.
posted by Fizz at 6:47 PM on December 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

Is there an app that lets you record and edit and then send to Google Voice Mailbox? Asking for a friend...
posted by zengargoyle at 7:18 PM on December 15, 2017

I just got an iPhone X. Will you be able to see the poop Animoji I'm going to send?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:21 PM on December 15, 2017

It's Fizz, the first z is silent.

Oops, I've been pronouncing the wrong z!
posted by aubilenon at 8:48 PM on December 15, 2017 [6 favorites]

Is there an app that lets you record and edit and then send to Google Voice Mailbox?

Yes, it's called Your Brain. Make a few notes if you need, and then do three practice calls before you make the real call.

Boooo! This is a good question. I don't live in the US but would like to participate. However, I don't actually want to pay for the phone call, or figure out how to make an international call even. If there was an app that would let me do it with no fuss I would be all over it.
posted by Literaryhero at 12:32 AM on December 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

I don't live in the US but would like to participate.

I hope this will work with Skype as I'm not in the US either.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 12:43 AM on December 16, 2017

Mine can be pronounced two ways.
posted by jgirl at 6:49 AM on December 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

I don't have a good recording-played-back-into-Google-Voice solution, but if you want to record and edit first you can do that and just mail me the dang audio file and I have no problem with that. I'd aim to keep it to the spirit of the call-in show and not send in highly produced audio or anything, but no judgement about getting your phone takes down on your end if you're nervous about doing it live.

But it's also okay to call back after a biffed call and say "hey, it's me, trying again: [take 2 commences]".
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:21 AM on December 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

Do you have voicemail on your Skype? I think you can set that up and then international callers could leave messages and you could just leave it on for a few days?
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 2:17 PM on December 16, 2017

I always get a little thrill seeing a New Mexico area code out of it's usual context.
posted by endotoxin at 10:06 PM on December 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

Do you have voicemail on your Skype? I think you can set that up and then international callers could leave messages and you could just leave it on for a few days?

So I have a pony...
posted by Literaryhero at 5:01 AM on December 17, 2017

So, I don't know how Skype voicemail works, but I have just not set it up and will try testing it out and report back later today if it looks viable!
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:36 AM on December 17, 2017

Cool -- I have it in case you don't and we can have an alternate for international users.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 9:23 AM on December 17, 2017

Thanks for thinking of us international users! I think I have called the US maybe... once? in my life? so I'd have to Google the international code and that'd be a barrier to doing it. And I have no idea how much such a call would cost. (Those were my thoughts on reading this post initially). Skype would be great.
posted by altolinguistic at 11:48 AM on December 17, 2017

FWIW, the US international dialing code is: 1.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:11 PM on December 17, 2017

Low blood sugar message left! Now lunch! Maybe I should’ve reversed those! ;D
posted by Celsius1414 at 11:15 AM on December 19, 2017

I may have called this number a couple of days ago. I may also have been slightly drunk. I may also have been surprised that my guess at country code turned out to be right. I may have left a friendly if inchoherent message that was hopefully quite short. I may be feeling slightly embarrassed about this right now.

Anyway: Love you all and wish you a wonderful holiday season and glorious new year!
posted by Dumsnill at 12:36 PM on December 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

Not sure if you've already taken care of it, cortex -- just in case though: if you have your Skype privacy preferences set to accept calls only from your Skype contacts, you won't be able to get voicemail from unknown people. So if you want to keep your privacy settings as they are or don't want to be getting these messages on your usual Skype account, you could
- set up a new free Skype account just for this
- turn on voicemail
- configure privacy settings to allow calls from anyone
- then give out the Skype username to collect voicemails
- change privacy settings / turn off voicemail when done.

It's been years since I used Skype voicemail, so I'm not sure what you'd need to do to extract the messages and get them into the podcast audio -- you might have to record them from Skype?
posted by rangefinder 1.4 at 2:05 AM on December 20, 2017

Is this done? I was not getting voicemail just now, just ring-no-answer for something like 10 rings.
posted by rmd1023 at 1:55 PM on December 22, 2017

No, should still be up and fine! Got at least one voicemail this morning. But last year folks mentioned one or two hiccups and that may be the get-what-we-pay-for side of things. I'd say try again later in case it's a burp. And make sure you've got the right number, it's 505 (Los Alamos, just because) not 503 (which folks who know Oregon might assume it'd be).
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:22 PM on December 22, 2017

Oh! I totally read it as 503, since that's the area code I have on my "mefi office hours phone" in my contacts. (is that still a thing?) I have successfully phoned! Yay!
posted by rmd1023 at 6:51 PM on December 22, 2017

The office hours thing was entirely Matt's baby and I have no idea the last time it happened but man it's been years.

Yay for success!
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:41 PM on December 22, 2017

I just left my message, it's 6:04 a.m. and I had a bit of insomnia so I figured what better time than now to call in. I rambled and made some weird noises. There you go. :)
posted by Fizz at 3:04 AM on December 23, 2017

And just like last year, I messed it up. But I refuse to call back and correct, the mess up is part of the charm.
posted by Fizz at 12:13 PM on December 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

No worries, Fizz, I think I just left the uber-dorkiest message but it was heartfelt.

And I'm sure we're in good company with the uhh, it's ringing now what? and forgetting our finely-tuned and rehearsed thing we were going to say.
posted by wallabear at 1:15 AM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

The call will go straight to voicemail, no human interaction required!

I know you said this last year and I liked seeing this again because it reconfirms this is the right community for me. :)

I called and left a voicemail -- really wanted to offer thanks publicly this year. Even though I'd practiced ahead of time, I got a little rambly near the end, but it should still be around a minute. I also recorded and emailed a short (< 1 min) music file for you, cortex. Hope both are short enough.

Thank you! Looking forward to hearing everybody.
posted by rangefinder 1.4 at 12:54 AM on December 25, 2017

Are operators still standing by?
posted by Songdog at 2:43 PM on December 29, 2017

They are! Call if you haven't already, y'all!
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:57 PM on December 29, 2017

Done; thanks!
posted by Songdog at 12:05 PM on December 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

I have left my mucinous message!
posted by languagehat at 12:10 PM on December 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

just sent mine, hopefully not too late.
posted by chococat at 7:14 PM on January 1, 2018