Be Smart

Rob Pegoraro, the Washington Post's fine consumer electronics columnist, has helped me out more than once, and now he's done it again. He can help you, too.

Thanks to Rob, you can skip the irritating useless minutes-eating cell phone greeting-plus-menu-choices that callers must usually endure before leaving a message. He has revealed the secret codes that let you bound over this audio boilerplate to record your message immediately.

The catch is that you have to know which service your callee's cell phone uses. That's because each US carrier uses a different skip code.

Surprised? I suspect not. Of course each carrier uses a different code. Why should there be any consistency in these things? All that would do is make calling a teensy bit easier for the rest of us poor schlubs.

Here are the codes :
AT&T: 0
Sprint: 1
Verizon: *
T-Mobile: #

Much obliged, Rob!