BEING PHONEY

Klaatu and Deepgeek and I had planned to record an episode of 
"Information Underground" today.  The first thing I did this morning, 
just about, was fire off a confirmation email to them both just to firm 
it all up.  Awesome.  Then I wanted to make sure my cellphone was 
charged up.  Great.  Only, where the hell is my phone?!

Long story short, I lost it.  

I use only cheapie Tracfones, because I'm a cheapie kinda guy, and I've 
purposely let the "Android Revolution" pass me by.  All I want to do is 
make calls and maybe send the occasional text.  No biggie for a cheapie.  
So, anticipating a long show (as we have done solid hour-longs so far), 
I ran out and bought a new one.  What the hell, it was only 10 bucks, 
and guess what?  It's EXACTLY the kind of phone I like!  Candy bar 
configuration; no shitty "Web" capabilities; and best of all...no side 
buttons!  Oh-my effin-gawd I hate buttons on the sides of phones!  I 
press those damn things all the time, and change the volume, switch to 
speaker phone and back again, pocket dial people.  Grrr...and when any 
of these things happen because of the buttons on the sides, I just want 
to call up the designer of the damn thing and shoot him/her dead, over 
the line.

Anyway, this new one doesn't have buttons on the side whatsoever, so I'm 
a happy camper.  Now, activating was a different matter, one that ranks 
about a 0.5 on the DMVAS, which stands for "Department of Motor Vehicles 
Annoyance Scale" -- that is, how annoying something is compared to doing 
pretty-much anything at all at the local DMV office.

----------

DMVAS

Items below 0 are "Less Annoying" than the DMV, while items above 0 are 
"More Annoying" than the DMV.

   5     Spending time with the family (bad times)
-     -
   4
-     - 
   3
-     -
   2      The average conversation with my mother
-     -
   1
-     -
=  0  =   BASELINE -- STEPPING FOOT IN THE DMV
-     -   Activating this Tracfone
   1      Getting up in the morning
-     -
   2
-     -
   3
-     -
   4
-     -
   5     Spending time with the family (good times)
   
----------

It was slightly better than the DMV because I didn't have to stand in 
line for an hour behind a smelly good-ol-boy, but it was at least as 
time consuming.  In the end, though, I have a new phone, it's a phone I 
like, and I was able to port over all my unused minutes.  I had some 
photos on the lost cellphone that are now gone, but whatever.  I don't 
like cameras much either.

Anyway, I get this phone up and running, and I keep refreshing my mail 
to see if the guys have written back to confirm, but no dice, no dice, 
no dice.  Finally I notice that I'm refreshing a folder of Sent Mail, 
and that I have new mail after all.  Okay, they've both written 
back...only, it's no dice.  Turns out dg can't make it.  All that 
running around got me a replacement phone right away, for which I'm 
glad, but I didn't need to hurry as it turned out.  Oh well, we'll just 
reschedule it.  And now I can use my new phone to keep track of that!

LAST MINUTE UPDATE: Little Bronx found my lost phone!  It was in his 
secret hiding place.  A hiding place that I don't hide in.  That means 
he'd found it and was playing with it, I suppose, but I don't mind, 
since we now have an extra fully usable (but fully loathed-by-me) phone 
for Mrs. Bronx, for when we go on vaycay and she has to leave the work 
phone behind.  I'm not unsatisfied.

.