These are the clowns Steve Jobs picked to have exclusive access to the iPhone

Maria picked up the phone to call her office about 10:30 a.m. and got no dial tone.

I checked all of the other phones in the house and confirmed our service is out.

So I went online to our AT&T account to look for a number to call on a cell phone. I got, instead, a notice that they are experiencing trouble in our area and expect to have service restored by no later than 11 p.m. Tuesday.

Tuesday. As in tomorrow. As in more than 18 hours from now.

The good news is that I was able to activate call forwarding online, so all of the nuisance calls to our house will go to my cell phone.