Téléphone Portable + Maïs = Pop-corn

Just think about what our phones are doing to our brains....

This actually explains a lot...

Thanks to Jack for this one...

...and downgraded my phone

I changed my phone plan to only 450 minutes a month. I hardly use my phone at all anymore, or at least my minutes. Sue and I are on the same plan, and once I call my kids and a certain friend, then my time on the phone is tapped out. I text message more than I actually use voice.

At first I was worried. I thought I was losing friends. I used to carry 1,300 minutes and take advantage of Cingular's (now AT&T's) rollover minutes in case I went over my plan's minutes. But I found the number of my rollover minutes climbing; I simply wasn't using my minutes, so I reduced them to 950. Then 450. It certainly is a reflection of a shrinking social circle, which I'm actually fostering. It's also a reflection of more reliance on text messaging and Instant Messaging.

But a couple of beefs. If you reduce your minutes with AT&T, you can only keep the number of rollover minutes equal to your new plan. So, even though my rollover minutes numbered in the thousands, I could only keep 950, then 450. I think that's wrong. I paid for those minutes, I should be able to use them.

And because I text message more, I wanted a plan that allowed for a couple of hundred text messages. But guess what, ATandT charges more for that service with a cheaper plan than they do with a more expensive one. It should be the same price, no matter how many minutes you sign up for. It's gouging, pure and simple, but they can get away with it. Deregulation is a good thing, but you still to have some government watchdog because the private sector will rape and pillage for the almighty dollar.

Also, cell phones still aren't as reliable as they should be. There are dead zones everywhere around Boston. Times are changing, and cell phones are becoming the phone technology of choice. I don't have a land line at home. You'd think that a company with the clout of AT&T could persuade towns or the federal government to erect cell towers. After all, it's hard to imagine that towns can affect our communications grid because they don't want a cell tower in a church steeple. But they can.

Cell phone etiquette: what's it going to take?

The 7:47 was actually on-time this morning out of Framingham and once past West Natick it was clear sailing on the express to Back Bay. The train was humming along the rails, people were settled in, mostly dozing, one or two were working quietly on laptops and paperwork at the center tables. Then...

...one seat behind the tables some guy gets on his phone. He's excited. He's agitated. He's got one of those voices that needs modulating. Who knows what he's upset about because he talkng away in a foreign language, but that's not the point. In English it would have been just as annoying, it's just that his fellow passengers would have known probably how trivial the conversation was.

We are long past the point of people not knowing that loud conversations in public places on cell phones are rude and annoying. We get a reminder every time we see a movie. Blogs like this are pandemic. What the heck is it going to take?

MBTA: Cell phone-free commute

Glorious commute today...not a cell phone in sight. Yesterday some guy got on, cell phone already clamped to his ear, sat down next to me, and I had to listen to him repeat the same voice mail three times because the mailbox he was talking to couldn't handle his verbosity. So...three times he had to say he got her voice mail, what can he do to help, and he'd "touch base" with someone else who they were trying to recruit.

I'm wondering if we're not getting to the day where we have to segregate cell phone yakkers just like we segregate smokers. Put them in their own room or banish them outside so they can't pollute our space with their useless noise.