Changes: Great and small.
Aug. 8th, 2012 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumAs I was coming back from getting my coffee on Sunday my phone committed suicide. It leapt to it’s death as I was opening the door. I hoped it wasn’t dead, but the case was split, and the screen didn’t light up. It was kaput. I couldn’t see who might be calling, couldn’t be sure whom I was calling (if they weren’t one of the nine names I had on speed-dial), and if I answered the phone I couldn’t hear them.
So I was pushed to a decision I’ve been ducking for years. My phone was gotten something like seven years ago... I don’t think it was later than early 2006, but it might have been as early as mid-2005. I am not a luddite, but I am something of a Mennonite when it comes to tech. I want to have the chance to decide what I want to be changing my life. I’ve been thinking about getting a new phone for a while. The question is what sort of phone to get.
My last phone, was a phone. No text, no net, not much more than a box to talk into. It had a reminder function, but I used it all of once, because it was such a pain to set, and hard to look at, etc. The thing I used most was the alarm. That, and the voicemail.
But texting was looking pretty much like a thing I needed to add. I can’t use my phone at work, and calling to get voicemail is tedious. My old phone could have done text, but I couldn’t do it on that phone. I need a real keyboard, or I go slightly mad. Even if I weren’t frustrated by trying to do nine-key texting, my joints won’t take it. I had thought about activating text, so that I could receive them, but I know myself. I’d have been frustrated at not being able to respond in kind, and I’d have tried to text out.
So I looked at phones, and tried to parse out plans and kept getting bogged down in the arcana of it all.
Leisurely examination of the options was no longer afforded me. Nope, I was hard against it, and not in a good mood.ladymondegreen was a trouper, and jl8e was his usual self, quite, supportive, and something close to invisible when things were stressy, without actually being out of touch with things.
Which is good, because I was cranky. I could not have done it without them; or, if I had, I think the results would have been much less satisfactory.
I did not have a contract. I wasn’t sure I wanted to start a contract with Sprint (I’ve been on a month to month since the contract we had expired, sometime in 2006, which actually means it must have been about 2005 I got this phone after all, because it was an upgrade).
But... the cheapest phones to just buy were close on $200, and that was to replicate the flip-phone I had pretty much decided I didn’t want to keep. If I took a contract, then they would be affordable, but if I was going to do that, I needed to know what I was getting. It was no fun.
So it was the Sprint store (where, as someone who didn’t have a contract I was tolerated, more than sought after, which is odd, since I would have been making a large outlay to get a phone; but they only take cash for non-contract phones. Repair of the one I had wasn’t an option, so it was cruise the Sprint Second-hand shop, or something. Radio Shack didn’t have much better a selection, and the problems with figuring out the Sprint plans were making me crazy). I was getting really cranky, and the differences in how I communicate when under stress, to the waysladymondegreen does, didn’t help.
So we had a sitdown chat, figured out how to deal with that, and we went to talk to the Verizon folks to see what putting me on the houseplan was going to cost. About what I was paying Sprint for my present plan. Fewer minutes, but I should have cut those back about a year ago, since I haven’t been anywhere near going over the lower limit threshold in ages. About $30 a month less than a new contract would have cost.
Which meant finding the right phone. It needed a keypad, and it needed to feel good in my hand. That pretty much limited it to one of the sliding ones; with the covered keyboards, or an iPhone. It was, when I got to that part of the equation, easy to decide. Thankfully the folks at Verizon were able to import my contacts, so I didn’t lose anyone I already had in my phone. So I have an iPhone. It’s already changing how I live.
It means I will actually start using google calendar, because it’s actually useful, and I don’t have to go out of my way to do it I can text. I have the internet in my pocket. There are things which are irksome (I can’t seem to get my e-mail in non-html, which seems a bit of stupid, since it means I use more data. I can see why the carriers might want that, but why shouldn’t Apple make it an option to defeat it? What it means is I don’t read e-mail if I’m not on a network).
Google maps is different from my GPS, in that I made the mistake yesterday of not realising that my directions to the Federal Court Building were public transit (on foot it wanted me to take the ferry), so I got off the PATH and proceeded to walk a circuitous route; rather than just dead reckon based on where I thought it was (I was right, I’ve passed it more than a few times), because the path it was giving me was the route for a bus.
I suspect the various integrations, and apps, and all the other things will, in short order mean I am destine to be using an iPhone for years to come: Aaron pointed me to an interesting app, Theodolite which is a really nice tool for measuring distance, and heights, etc. It’s a theodolite. One can also take pictures in app. It’s got a lot of ways of recording data, so I can use, for example the Military Grid System I’m used, to which gives a purported accuracy of one meter, +/- 66ft [margin of error the phone tells me it has for my mapped location, when I was playing with it]. It, for example, plotted our living room as being in a parking lot across the street). I tested it by shooting an estimate from something I could see out the window, and the numbers seemed about right. I suppose I ought to pace it out, just to be sure, but I see no reason to doubt them when they say they are getting +/- about 2% using the tools I was using; to measure relative distance. If I find more apps I am not likely to want to give them up.
So I was pushed to a decision I’ve been ducking for years. My phone was gotten something like seven years ago... I don’t think it was later than early 2006, but it might have been as early as mid-2005. I am not a luddite, but I am something of a Mennonite when it comes to tech. I want to have the chance to decide what I want to be changing my life. I’ve been thinking about getting a new phone for a while. The question is what sort of phone to get.
My last phone, was a phone. No text, no net, not much more than a box to talk into. It had a reminder function, but I used it all of once, because it was such a pain to set, and hard to look at, etc. The thing I used most was the alarm. That, and the voicemail.
But texting was looking pretty much like a thing I needed to add. I can’t use my phone at work, and calling to get voicemail is tedious. My old phone could have done text, but I couldn’t do it on that phone. I need a real keyboard, or I go slightly mad. Even if I weren’t frustrated by trying to do nine-key texting, my joints won’t take it. I had thought about activating text, so that I could receive them, but I know myself. I’d have been frustrated at not being able to respond in kind, and I’d have tried to text out.
So I looked at phones, and tried to parse out plans and kept getting bogged down in the arcana of it all.
Leisurely examination of the options was no longer afforded me. Nope, I was hard against it, and not in a good mood.
ladymondegreen was a trouper, and jl8e was his usual self, quite, supportive, and something close to invisible when things were stressy, without actually being out of touch with things.Which is good, because I was cranky. I could not have done it without them; or, if I had, I think the results would have been much less satisfactory.
I did not have a contract. I wasn’t sure I wanted to start a contract with Sprint (I’ve been on a month to month since the contract we had expired, sometime in 2006, which actually means it must have been about 2005 I got this phone after all, because it was an upgrade).
But... the cheapest phones to just buy were close on $200, and that was to replicate the flip-phone I had pretty much decided I didn’t want to keep. If I took a contract, then they would be affordable, but if I was going to do that, I needed to know what I was getting. It was no fun.
So it was the Sprint store (where, as someone who didn’t have a contract I was tolerated, more than sought after, which is odd, since I would have been making a large outlay to get a phone; but they only take cash for non-contract phones. Repair of the one I had wasn’t an option, so it was cruise the Sprint Second-hand shop, or something. Radio Shack didn’t have much better a selection, and the problems with figuring out the Sprint plans were making me crazy). I was getting really cranky, and the differences in how I communicate when under stress, to the ways
ladymondegreen does, didn’t help. So we had a sitdown chat, figured out how to deal with that, and we went to talk to the Verizon folks to see what putting me on the houseplan was going to cost. About what I was paying Sprint for my present plan. Fewer minutes, but I should have cut those back about a year ago, since I haven’t been anywhere near going over the lower limit threshold in ages. About $30 a month less than a new contract would have cost.
Which meant finding the right phone. It needed a keypad, and it needed to feel good in my hand. That pretty much limited it to one of the sliding ones; with the covered keyboards, or an iPhone. It was, when I got to that part of the equation, easy to decide. Thankfully the folks at Verizon were able to import my contacts, so I didn’t lose anyone I already had in my phone. So I have an iPhone. It’s already changing how I live.
It means I will actually start using google calendar, because it’s actually useful, and I don’t have to go out of my way to do it I can text. I have the internet in my pocket. There are things which are irksome (I can’t seem to get my e-mail in non-html, which seems a bit of stupid, since it means I use more data. I can see why the carriers might want that, but why shouldn’t Apple make it an option to defeat it? What it means is I don’t read e-mail if I’m not on a network).
Google maps is different from my GPS, in that I made the mistake yesterday of not realising that my directions to the Federal Court Building were public transit (on foot it wanted me to take the ferry), so I got off the PATH and proceeded to walk a circuitous route; rather than just dead reckon based on where I thought it was (I was right, I’ve passed it more than a few times), because the path it was giving me was the route for a bus.
I suspect the various integrations, and apps, and all the other things will, in short order mean I am destine to be using an iPhone for years to come: Aaron pointed me to an interesting app, Theodolite which is a really nice tool for measuring distance, and heights, etc. It’s a theodolite. One can also take pictures in app. It’s got a lot of ways of recording data, so I can use, for example the Military Grid System I’m used, to which gives a purported accuracy of one meter, +/- 66ft [margin of error the phone tells me it has for my mapped location, when I was playing with it]. It, for example, plotted our living room as being in a parking lot across the street). I tested it by shooting an estimate from something I could see out the window, and the numbers seemed about right. I suppose I ought to pace it out, just to be sure, but I see no reason to doubt them when they say they are getting +/- about 2% using the tools I was using; to measure relative distance. If I find more apps I am not likely to want to give them up.
