Why I Switched to a Flip (Dumb) Phone (For Now)
Posted by rbroberg 7 years, 1 month ago to Technology
Word on the street is flip phones are making a comeback.
I realized I wanted to activate my Samsung Convoy 4 after I realized (1) real time stock prices are best suited to professionals who work in stockbrokerages, (2) 90 percent of the time Twitter and Facebook are battlefields and pissing contests, (3) entertainment updates are not what the bossman wants me to think about in the office, (4) the weather prediction changes and it never really rains in California regardless, and (5) they all say the same shit anyway.
Advantages: Economical texts, more voice calls, fewer distractions
Disadvantages: Listening to people who have smart phones for information about weather, sports, politics.
I want to evaluate whether the following change: relationships, communication, attention span.
This experiment will last two weeks.
I realized I wanted to activate my Samsung Convoy 4 after I realized (1) real time stock prices are best suited to professionals who work in stockbrokerages, (2) 90 percent of the time Twitter and Facebook are battlefields and pissing contests, (3) entertainment updates are not what the bossman wants me to think about in the office, (4) the weather prediction changes and it never really rains in California regardless, and (5) they all say the same shit anyway.
Advantages: Economical texts, more voice calls, fewer distractions
Disadvantages: Listening to people who have smart phones for information about weather, sports, politics.
I want to evaluate whether the following change: relationships, communication, attention span.
This experiment will last two weeks.
The Caucasion one asked the expected question and I advised that I got Direct TV on the very spot where she stood about four years ago.
The other, a short and adorable looking Asian Indian (maybe Pakistani), approached all wide-eyed and pointed at the bulge in my shirt pocket.
"Oh, is that a flip phone?" she said with intoned wonderment while brightly smiling. "You still have ONE OF THOSE?!"
I took it out and showed it to her.
"Oh, how ADORABLE!"
I even let her hold it. She said, "I haven't seen one of these for a while."
"I'm old-fashioned," I explained.
She gave it back, I wished both ladies a nice a day and I pushed the cart on toward the catfood aisle. Monsieur Moocher must be fed.
Yesterday was different. Besides there being no Direct TV salespersons (this time I'll say it because sometimes they are male), just before I reached the catfood, my eyes caught sight of a Janis Joplin CD, which I immediaely added to my cart.
https://youtu.be/ju9yFA1S7K8
I was saying, "Who taught you that?" while I scratched its tummy without it even grabbing at my hand.
When I walked back to the house, Moocher kept running aahead and flopping, running ahead and flopping even when I began to ignore those antics.
The petting mystery cleared up when it turned cold. A lost kitten turned up at the back door.
When I pointed the kitten out to a neighbor, I was told the crazy cat lady up the street had another littler of kittens.
I took the kitten to the cat lady's house but no one was home. My son took a stab at it a few hours later and scored a success.
Cat lady took the kitten to a special room with a heater that her cats could get in and out of. My son saw Moocher there and told the lady, who said, "That figures" due to its prolonged absences.
So Moocher is a first rate Monsieur Moocher as well as a daddy. The kitten had more than likely followed Moocher to my home but Moocher was a tomcat too knuckle-headed to know what to do about it.
At least Moocher knows all about "getting it while you can."
BTW, please keep Moocher safely indoors for the last several days of October. There are some truly evil people out there that deliberately mistreat black cats around the Halloween holiday.
I have heard of sadistic cat-haters but their sick activites are not restricted to Halloweem.
On the other hand, I have to be really careful not to step on Moocher in the dark.
Panthers (black leopards) are my favorite big cats.
Moocher has been busy proving that to me.
Yestertady I was walking across the kitcen when I snagged a foot on the grab handle of a plastic bag with groceries still in it.
You should have seen how Moocher hunkered down all wide-eyed obviuoisly thinking some creature had attacked my foot.
Moocher disappeared for an entire week. I'm pretty certain it preferred the company of other cats at the crazy cat lady's house for a while.
I've seen and heard them elsewhere in my county, though, since the 80s.
Armadillols apparently beat coyotes across the barrier of the Mississippi River. Saw my first one in Florida during the 70s.
That's when I learned one can jump five feet high when attacked by a dog. They sure don't wear turtle armor.
If you are interested in learning more about cats and their care and feeding, try Think Like A Cat, by Pam Johnson-Bennett. It's a great book and has a really cute cover.
I told my son Moocher can jump the same neighbor's chain link fence and for the shed he just needed one or two extra jumping places.
Today I studied the shed from my house. I noticed a barrel with a lid beside a downward extension of the shed's roof over an open area.
Just about then my son came into the kitchen. I told him I think I figured out how Moocher got on that roof.
"The barrel?" he said.
Yup.
I have friends who ask me about my disappearance from Facebook and LinkedIn. "What's it like?...." It's great. I do use my smart phone to manage my investments and video my kids. That's it.
I look forward to your objective analysis.
(My addiction is to my laptop, phone data has been too pricey to be addicted so far. The Gulch is definitely a distraction.)
My wife and me both have had I phone 5 and now have I Phone 6 and neither of us use them for anything other than texting through WIFI and I message which is exclusive to I phones only and actually pretty unreliable at best. We have a big fat Zero for cell signal at home and for at least 3 miles until we top the mountain. She has full signal when at work but we cannot make voice calls to each other. From home I must have satellite TV and Internet plus I must have land line phone services and we have the cell phones for emergency purposes as well as texting through WIFI. AT the top of the mountain they have hard wired cable TV and internet with no data caps and real HS plus they have near full cell signal and don't need a land line phone. YUK!
Hopefully, this kneeling thing will break the hold of TV sports on peoples' time. We have been manipulated into making the NFL and those ghetto players rich while wasting our lives.
If you like sports, play them yourself, or at worst go to see the games in person. Watching TV is just a waste of time.
People become glued to their smartphones all day, and dont actually interact with other people any more. Its all about tweets, following where people go all day, and other nonsense.
However, I can still use the smart phone for lots of other things- calculator, alarm clock, kitchen timer, music player, camera, scanner, gps, exercise monitor, etc. None of those require use of lots of expensive data- most don't even need a phone connection, and they are in a very compact useful form.
I have had a smart-er phone (not just a dumb mobile phone) since I decided to go overseas for an extended period (about 2005. I didn't have a cell phone before that at all.) The extra functions on it are great for travelers.
The only possible option I have is the site/company has affiliated with paypal, I only have to have some funds in that account. I won't know if all this is going to work out for another month.
PS, if I can glean a steady paycheck with this system, I will share it with all. I won't know if it actually works until I get to that point. (I'm from Missouri)
When I think about it, aside from the telephone, my smartphone is the level, compass, and clock that I use with my telescope for backyard astronomy. But I could make fixes to the telescope, which I have done for other reasons.
My smartphone is also my Map. We have two older GPSs for the cars, but we never use them anymore. We could.
The calculator. Again, I have another one, an older scientific/programmer's, that I carry in my briefcase as a backup.
The camera.
Notepad. (Most of the entries are the TV series that we have on disk so I know which ones to look for when I stop at Half Price Books.)
I do my own weather. It is 60% likely to be 60% like yesterday's. Red sky at night, sailor's delight... and all that...
Dunno... Maybe I'll go back to a flip phone, too. Contract's up in a few months... Hmmm...
BTW we do not watch much broadcast TV. We do not own a digital set. Occasionally once or twice a year, I will plug the wires in for network TV. Mostly, we watch DVDs, no Netflix or Hulu, or Chinese People's Liberation Army in the living room.
find a phone (either landline or cell) not made in a
totalitarian state. (The other I got from being in a medical experiment, and I was told it was Korean. But that was some years ago, and it has worn out).