Funny article about being a cell phone "hold-out" (Tacran)

 Thanks for sharing, loved it!

 

I have a pay as you go phone through Verizon Wireless.  Each year I put on $100 simply because that is the best buy.  I use it once or 3 or 4 times year to call AAA.  I seem to have a talent for finding all the nuts, screws and bolts that the city buses drop on the street, and I find them in my tires! I have over 36 hours of time on it just now; I should probably just add the $5 or $10 minimum ha haaa.  As long as I add before my anniversary date, I don't lose what I have on there. 

 Sometimes I think, I should use it when I call my long distance friends.  But then I worry they would have the number and USE it!  I never have the darn thing ON, it just sits in my purse for when I need AAA.  I take it out and charge it once a month or so.  

 I am quite happy with my landline!

In response to the article, I will say, this does NOT prevent me from using FB!

 

Tracy, you must have posted this article for me! I do have a cell now, no landline due to 2 stalkers, and it's just a flip phone. I love the caller i.d. though, which I never wanted to pay for on my landline. I even text! But I'm still holding out on upgrading to anything fancier.

Tina, I admit, you were the main person I had in mind when I thought to share the link!! 

You're more advanced than I am --- I haven't texted at all.  I love Caller ID -- we've had it on our landline for a few years.  It's a must when you have so few hours of quiet on weeknights and you don't want to answer solicitor calls, or calls from someone you're not in the mood to talk to at that moment (yes, I mean my MIL).  My Mom never wanted to pay for it on her landline, but I finally convinced her after she'd been getting lots of unwanted solicitor calls at night.  I told her, "At 75 years old, you deserve to know who's calling and to have control over whether you want to answer the phone."

Sandie, car trouble is one of the main reasons why I decided to keep this flip phone after my MIL didn't need it.  I had the unfortunate experience of getting in a minor fender bender and having to use the OTHER driver's phone to notify my office I'd be late.  Very embarrassing!  So, yes they have their purpose, but I don't give the number to anyone. 

 I was, I thot, the worlds biggest hold out til one night David got furious with me - we'd gone somewhere and I was "waiting for him" at an agreed spot -- except I was around a corner and he couldn't "see'" me and walked back and forth (essentially in front of me but there were a zillion people) and if I'd had a phone it would have been an easy meet-up.  AT the same time we had a clunker car and that + interstate made me cave. 

 I don't text ... but I do call my Mom long distance every single day and I use the long distance thing to the point where our overall phone bill is FAR less than it used to be.  

I got another flip phone a year ago and loathed it (I could not hear on the darned thing and it dropped calls constantly) so I went back to an old Razor we found online for cheap.  

 At this point I know I need to get a 'smart' phone (do I WANT my phone to be smarter than me???   ) or I'll be so hoplessly behind in the technology that it will be awful getting used to it.  But I've got a stupid contract on the horrible phone I only carried a week .... grrrrrrr

I've had a cell phone since the earliest models came out.  Those big old brick sized ones that weighed five pounds.  Yeah, very handy. Not. It was for work only.  Then as phones got smaller we got smaller phones for work.  They are for communicating with our guys in the field which is a very necessary part of our business.

 We used two way radios before phones but they became harder and harder to find and when they broke, no one could fix them.  These were the type of radio that was a unit in the dash of a vehicle.  We tried pagers but the guys would have to find a phone to call in to the shop and not every customer is happy to lend their phone to a sweaty service tech. lol   

 My personal smart phone was not my idea.  My tech nerd husband insisted for so long that I finally gave in just to shut him up.  He is relentless. I use it when I want and ignore it when I want.  I do text and find that very convenient at times and other times not so much.  I choose when to respond and when to let it wait until I feel like responding.  My DH is constantly fiddling with my phone and updating it or restarting it for optimum performance.  Me, I let it sit in my purse most of the time.  I do like that I can read books that are on my Kindle, on my phone, when I'm stuck waiting somewhere.  If I'm going to carry it in my purse might as well not have to carry my Kindle or a paper book also. 

That article is well written and I especially enjoyed the humorous parts.  Technology is something we all have to deal with at some point and we can use it to our advantage (like a car or any other modern convenience) or we can let it become all consuming to the point of never picking our heads up and looking around at the world.  I don't think not using one is worthy of a badge of honor unless you happen to be Thoreau. lol

Absolutely what Jackie said ^^^ --- I have a friend who is absolutely convinced for some reason that ALL technology is somehow ... a bad thing. To her it's not only an annoyance but something that's expensive, and intrusive, and ... almost 'evil'. She's no older than I am but wow ...

I only mention it because I can see it has made her reclusive in ways she can't even seem to see. Jackie is absolutely right -- you can make **use** of it or you can allow it to dominate your life. For me it's a tool and not much more

But I can also see in myself that there is also a fine line between not letting it dominate and pushing something away because it's more than I want to deal with ... and ... sometimes that leads to just not wanting to 'change'.

THAT is not good. I may not like change but it's out there, and learning something "new" is often little steps. Refusing to change until you're forced to can lead to an overwhelming rush of something that becomes huge.

The more steps I skip along the way (upgrades, new technology, etc.) the hard that gap can be to bridge when I'm forced to do it. I've found "keeping up with it" becomes easier but then I have to be vigilant not to let it dominate me.

It does help that David and I are both geeks at heart.

I admit that I'm a little bit like what you're describing, Callie.  I don't think technology is evil, and I embrace some basics (I can't imagine living without the internet, my DVR, and email).  But, I'm usually late to the game when it comes to most things technical.  A lot of it has to do with what you mentioned -- not liking change, then feeling like there's so MUCH to learn that it's too overwhelming, so I stick with what I know.  I'm rather unemployable now, thanks to that behavior. 

But another reason is I don't have anyone in the house who is a tech-geek.  If I had a DH like yours or Jackie's, I'd be much more on top of things because I'd have someone to show me everything, rather than me having to learn by trial and error.  DH uses an iPhone for work and loves his iPad, but he's a very basic user.  Between the 2 of us, we can't figure out more complex things like linking everything in the house so our iTunes library is on everything, how to use anything that connects to the TV for internet or gaming activities, etc.  We don't have kids who can teach us anything, so we're a bit in the dark.  Neither of us are the type to want to dive in and figure it out on our own.

I've got 2 or 3 friends whose husbands are total tech-nuts, so they've got their own built-in Help Desk whenever they need to advance on any device in the house.  That was a quality I didn't think about looking for when I was single! 

Anyway, I thought the article's author did have a wry sense of humor -- it said he's written two books.  Might have to check into them.