Road Rage

Why Cris, old boy! What the devil are you doing up and on your blog at 5:30am?

Well Dead Reader, I have a Blackberry. And from time to time that Blackberry gets Email. And from time to time, while on the road I set the phone to alert me to incoming messages so I don't miss important work or family related news while traveling.

All reasonable, you think? Responsible family man on a business trip out of town wanting to be available to family and staff needs, right? So there am asleep in a smelly old Holiday Inn when my phone starts alerting me to incoming mail from Overstock.Com and some Holiday Card business and it is 4:30 in the freakin morning!!

Sure I get out of bed, go across the room to check the phone, both times. Of course I go back to bed, I mean it IS this middle of the freakin night... the only reason I am staying in a hotel is so I can sleep the extra couple of hours it would take me to drive here. I mean if I had driven home last night, in order to get back to the state capital I would have had to get out of my comfortable new Serta Perfect Sleeper with the downy soft memory foam topper at em... about 5:30am.

So I go back to bed and toss and turn and figit and finally get up and vent to you, my faithful friend and reader. Yes I used the singular because I pretty much know who actually reads this (thanks Mom) ANYhoooo... Maybe I can go back to sleep and grab another hours rest before it is time to return to the training. I will try because I am responsible that way.

Yes I turned my damn phone off! Yes I want to hunt down and flick rubber bands at the SOB who signed me up for alerts from Overstock.com... a site I have never visited. But I am too mature for thoughts of violent and well deserved retribution. I am a man of piece and love. So I think I watch some porn and try to go back to bed.

RE: Blackberry

OK so I called tech support and they did an excellent job of 'splaining to my dumb ass why I could not access the internet. I am pretty sure the store clerk was supposed to set that feature up as well as move over all my ringtones. She did not. She gave me a card with the number for tech support.

So here is the deal. I ALMOST got a Smartphone. No, not an I-Phone because I use US Cellular, due to personal and regional coverage reasons. I had a choice of two smart phones. I looked them over and took a consultant group with me that included my wife, son and two co-workers. The general consensus was I am not smart enough for a Smartphone, but one of the co-workers plans to upgrade to a Blackberry (From a MotoQ) and they can 'splain to me how to use it.

The big deal breaker on the pretty smart phone was the on screen keypad. I didn't like it. It took like 30 minutes to boot up and when I saw the two-letters per key design, I wanted the Blackberry Curve.

So I took the day off because I have been a bit blinky lately and need to burn some sick leave. I downloaded all my Scottish bagpipe ringtones off of Myxer and of course, nobody in the house can figure out how to load them.

We surf the net, check this blog, play on Facebook and check EMail just fine. It's the ringtones that make me feel like a loser. Oh, and I couldn't get Hulu to play Scrubs reruns. So I guess I had two failures. Other than that... it's a cool phone. I think I will enjoy everything but the bill.

Phoney

You know when I grew up EVERYBODY had a phone in their house. As a kid I started talking on the telephone at an early age and that was how I spent time with friends, my father who divorced and moved away, and as an early teen that was the first form of dating. Heavy breathing into a telephone in the darkest corner of the house as you hope the middle school girl on the other doesn't notice you are so excited just from the sound of her voice you have start breathing through your mouth just to keep you body oxygenated. Also... all the blood left your brain for another part of your body... but that was NOT the fault of the telephone. That was hormones and THAT is how they are supposed to work at that age.

And NO I do not still phone school girls and breath heavily through my mouth while afraid to say anything more wordy that "Cool" for fear they will think I am a loser. I have added the words "awesome and radical" to my repertoire of love.

So everybody had phones and some had two different lines. A Parents line and a kid's line. Then we started adding phones to the bedroom, the den, we put phones in the computer room and soon loud ringing filled the house whenever an incoming call came to the house. Life was good and all was well.

Then we got cell phones. Our land line phones that were located in every room had a loss of service that grew more and more pathetic until the service was dropped. Now we each have a phone. We each have a different number. So now I come in from a long day of work, I place the phone on a charger next to the computer and I go about cooking dinner, splitting atoms and saving the world on a daily basis, as I do every night. But suddenly, for the first time in my life the phone doesn't ring throughout the house when I get a call. My little phone buzzes or plays bagpipes (all my ring tones are bagpipes except for Mrs. Cris... who is the theme song from the Grinch) but I am off living life in another room and oblivious to the calls of others. Suddenly I have four phone lines, I pay over five times more a month for phone services and yet I am nearly unreachable.