I just bought a new cell phone this week. It's quite a dandy. It's not a "smart" phone, but pretty intelligent nonetheless. It's an LG Octane. OK, first of all, the name of the company is LG, which stands for "Life's Good". That's right, Life's Good. When did we start naming our companies like this? I'm guessing it started when online companies like Yahoo and Google got big and made so much money it didn't matter what a company called itself. But those are internet companies. The internet is new and funky and exciting and weird. It's supposed to have strange sounding company names. But a phone company? It just doesn't seem right. I grew up in the monopolized world of Bell Telephone, and International Business Machines, back when a business's name meant something by God. It told you who they were, and sometimes what they did. None of this feel good, hippy-drippy, let's all be friends and get along nonsense. NO! This is business. Let's all be sensible then shall we. We've got money to make. Bottom lines to draw, and ledgers to balance. We have no time for your happy names, your silly monikers.
But that's the way it is, like it or not. The only constant is change. Roll with the flow or get run over. I've decided to roll with it myself. I got my first cell phone only about 3 1/2 years ago. Just a phone, no internet applications or mp3 player or movie player. It worked well enough. I've kept up with the national trend of getting a new phone about every 18 months or so. One phone I had to get because I dropped the old one in the tub with my kids. Because my credit is so shitty, I couldn't really enter into a contract with a phone company again, so I ended up buying one of those pay as you go phones that you can pick up at Wal-Mart. It worked well, but I knew that I was paying an exorbitant amount on it. I didn't know exactly how much until the last couple of months since I've been tracking my spending and keeping a budget on a website called Mint.com. It's pretty kick-ass. Here's a link if you want to check it out:https://www.mint.com/. It lets you make a budget with just about any topic you can think of, you keep track of your bank accounts and credit cards, savings and investments. It links up with all of your money institutions and gets your info to organize, and put it in order for you. You can set financial goals, track all of your spending and split your expenditures as well if need be. You can also look at your spending trends as well. I'm really diggin' it. I digress. So......since I saw that I was spending way too much on my little phone, I decided it was time to find a new one that cut down dramatically on my monthly bill, and I thought I might just be able to enter a contract with a major carrier now that I had a couple of years of paying my bills on a mostly timely manner. I ended up going with Verizon for a couple of reasons: for one, I get a 22% discount on it through my work, and two, I'm pretty sure I still owe AT&T $150 or so. Not much of a choice at all really. I was all hopped up at first to get the smart phone, but when I found out what my ex pays for her non-smart phone, and that you can't get one without internet, I decided on something a little less flashy, and less costly. It's still a helluva lot more than what I was using though. It's got a great camera, which I really wanted, and which also can record video. You can download all kinds of music onto it too, which I'm doing as I write. Only about 10 songs on the phones internal memory, but you can get as much memory as you want with a removable memory card, which is about the size, and thickness, of my thumbnail. It's all so very exciting. I ended up buying the memory card today, then went to the library to borrow as many CD's as I could, and am ripping them to my computer so that I may then copy them to the card to put into my phone. I'm like a kid in a candy store! Great, now the music companies will be after me for stealing their music from the library. You just can't catch a break around here. Sheesh!
Texting is not my forte, but now that I have a phone that makes it grammatically easier, I am much more open to the idea of it. I flip the phone open lengthwise, and it's got a full sized keyboard with all the punctuations, a space bar and the number keys up top. Then it's got a screen and speakers on the inside as well, so I can listen to an album, or a podcast while I'm texting away. Or maybe not, I haven't actually tried doing both yet. But it still kicks ass!
Technology is a great confusing tool that takes me a little time to get used to, but once I do, it's a piece of cake. How did we ever live our lives without cell phones? How could we survive without constantly being in touch? What was wrong with us? I'm sure my children will ask me that someday. I just hope I can raise them so that they don't feel dependent on technology for their every need and whim. They just need to get their asses out of the barco lounger and get outside.
That's all for now. Kinda tame I admit, but I'm just not feeling that controversial right now. It'll come back. Remember to pay your bills on time, and brush your teeth.
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