Off Topic

The little description at the top of this blog thingy says that this is mostly a knitting blog, so sometimes we go a little off topic. Today is one of those days. Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

For the last five years I have used a flip phone. I'd flip it open and have a keyboard to type texts, and it was, more or less, a machine for phoning and texting. Occasionally I'd take pictures with it, but that was never its primary function. It served as a means of communication by texting and phoning.

In August I got caught in one of New Orleans' torrential downpours and my little flip phone got wet. Very wet. Drenched, in fact. When I got it home all I could get it to do was go, "Buzzzzzzzzz." Not useful. I packed it into a zip-lock baggie with those little silica gel packets that you get with electronics, and hoped for the best. Eventually it dried out, though it took the better part of a week, and it was fine, til the front screen went blank. It would buzz when I got a text, but I would have to open it to see who it was from, and if I wanted to make a phone call, I had to open it, jot down the number, and dial it manually. Not an ideal situation, and I knew it was time to bid it farewell and move into the 21st century and get a Smart Phone (well, at least the second decade of the 21st century).

Two weeks ago I went to the store and got my first Smart Phone. It's an android, and does all sorts of wonderful things. It can connect to the internet. I can get on Facebook with it. I can get to Ravelry with it. It plays games. It has a kindle. It even phones and texts.

And I hate it. I hate it with the passion of 10,000 burning suns.

It chirps, cheeps, bings, burps, tweets, and twats all the time. Some of those times are when I have an actual text. Tonight I turned off the Facebook notifications on the phone. I only have two gigs of data and don't want to use it up, and will probably delete Facebook from my phone entirely. Because I don't want to use it get on the internet, or as a GPS, or as a camera, or to be any more intrusive into my life than I need it to be. I need it to make phone calls and to send texts. No more, no less.

I am somewhat of a neo-Luddite. I don't like too much technology, and only want what I need to make life easier. Therefor I like using a washing machine, but not a dryer. If it weren't so damn damp in this state, I'd have a clothesline for all my freshly laundered goods. But it would probably take a week to dry. As it is, most of my clothes get hung up to dry, either on a drying rack or on hangers. I don't really like microwave ovens. I understand that they can be useful, but I prefer a toaster oven, and if I could only have one, I'd prefer the latter. I prefer real books to e-books, and while e-mail has its uses, a hand written letter is so much nicer. In short, I am not what anyone could call an early adopter of most technologies.

But I need to have a phone, and my old phone really was on its last legs (it tended to shut itself off from time to time, sometimes when I was actually on the phone talking to someone). It looks like I'm stuck with this monstrosity, and I will probably have to learn how to use it more effectively. But it doesn't mean I have to like it. It merely means that I have to bow to expedience.