I searched the ‘net’ trying to figure out who or what is verification fr as displayed by my caller ID. It turns out it was a phone bank service hired by the San Francisco Chronicle to verify that I am receiving my newspaper. The service called several times but up until today no human was on the other end answering. Finally someone finally answered. After applying my brilliant technical analysis on the situation (that is sarcasm) I deduced that the phone bank software is calling more number than the amount of operators available to handle the volume. Thus when the system rings your number and you answers it routes it to the next available representative. If no one is available then it waits a period of time and then unceremoniously hangs up on you. It will then call you again later. Nice. Really nice. The machine is now annoying us more than people.
BTW: The SF Chronicle seems to worth about 15 minutes of reading.
I dunno. I think if tasked, I can annoy you WAAAY more than a computer.