Jolt Country

I have four cell phones. One my sister gave me (T-Mobile), basically in exchange for having me on a leash, she picks up the cost. I'm not a real hard user, I probably burn through about 10-15 minutes a month, if that; for long conversations I use my MagicJack phone or Skype. (Not that I'm going to have many long conversations now that my best friend died.)

I have my own cell phone from TracFone (Samsung) which has my original number that I've had since before September 11th, it was that long ago, but only has 7 minutes of time, but because of buying lease packs I have the number until about the end of 2012. I have a third (Motorola) that the lease expired in February but has like 250 minutes left, and the fourth that has like no minutes and no time. The only reason I got it was because it was only $10 and it would cost more than that to buy a replacement plug in USB sub-mini charger (my wheelchair snagged it and destroyed the cord on the original charger; buying a new phone, even if I threw away the phone, was cheaper than trying to buy a charge cord.)

With the exception of the Samsung I can recharge any phone I have with either the USB sub mini wall plug cord or a sub mini attached to my computer.

I have a fifth phone still in the package around here somewhere. The reason is, I want to merge my number from my Samsung - which uses a crappy proprietary power cord instead of a standard USB sub-mini - onto the minutes on the Motorola, plus the Motorola has something else: a built-in FM radio.

So if I have to, I can use the sign-up card from the unopened TracFone to cover any costs if I have to pay them to move everything over to the Motorola. I'm going to have to call it in, however, the last time I tried this from TracFone's website I ended up with a phone that was initialized instead of being able to merge stuff.

That's impressive, I think. I've only owned four cell phones in my life. The first was a Nokia 5160, the one with interchangeable face plates. God, I wish I had all the money back I spent on face plates. I left that phone in Vegas on accident and that was that. I replaced with a Palm Treo which was a great device and a horrible, horrible phone. It's sitting in my closet right now. I replaced that with a Samsung BlackJack, during my "ANYTHING BUT APPLE" era. It was okay, but it was no iPhone. A couple of years ago I bought an iPhone and put the BlackJack in the closet, next to the Treo.

Flack wrote:That's impressive, I think. I've only owned four cell phones in my life. The first was a Nokia 5160, the one with interchangeable face plates. God, I wish I had all the money back I spent on face plates.

I've never bought a face plate, I've never seen the reasoning for it. And I'm too cheap to pay for ringtones, if I could have put one on my phone for free - the way you can upload a wallpaper for one - I might have made one. I don't bother with wallpapers on cell phones either (I love them on my computer, however, I've bought three or four disks of wallpapers to get different pictures and I sometimes change mine depending on mood), but I did make one for an associate of a photo of his favorite cat for his cell phone.

Flack wrote:I left that phone in Vegas on accident and that was that.

I guess that told you the real meaning of "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!"

I've sometimes had to leave a phone on standby, is that close?

Flack wrote:I replaced with a Palm Treo which was a great device and a horrible, horrible phone. It's sitting in my closet right now. I replaced that with a Samsung BlackJack, during my "ANYTHING BUT APPLE" era. It was okay, but it was no iPhone. A couple of years ago I bought an iPhone and put the BlackJack in the closet, next to the Treo.

I've probably tossed a half dozen phones. I had one that the front dial plate went bad, it wasn't struck or anything, the plate just shorted out and it kept generating the "2" button. But I learned from that one that not having a backup of all the numbers saved in the phone can be a pain if you can't get to the phone book inside.

I had one that got smashed somehow. You could hear and talk, dial calls and answer them on it but you couldn't see what you were dialing or who was calling you.

My first phone was a much larger TracFone that was probably analog, really big and bulky, and I discarded it when I got the current number I have, which came from Sprint (I like the number, the last 4 are in sequence). Because of number portability, I took it with me when I moved to T-Mobile, then took it with me again when I moved to TracFone. I called Sprint to advise them I was moving their number to T-Mobile and the guy asked why, so I told him. "Because T-Mobile's phones work downstairs in the basement of our house, and yours don't."

Oh, a heads up: even if your contract isn't up and you'd owe them money, because of number portability you can still take your number with you to another carrier. The carrier cannot hold your number hostage. I wasn't on a contract with Sprint, I was month-to-month so it was simple to just cancel them, after the number was moved. Also, number portability works for landline and cellular numbers, you can move a landline number to a cell phone and vice-versa. The only exception being, of course, that if it's a landline you have to be in the same general area as where the number is assigned. I would not be able to keep my original phone number because I'm in Maryland and my original phone number was a Falls Church, Virginia exchange. And in fact, if TracFone had my current address rather than my old one at my sister's place, I'd have had to give up the number. But as long as I keep buying lease packs they don't care.

And my first incident which encouraged me never to carry a cell phone in my shirt pocket was when a phone I had slid out when I leaned over, and fell in the toilet. Because it was on at the time, it shorted out immediately and I had to get another one.

I am currently looking for a NOKIA Ngage phone, of the "sidetalking" style. The phone is going to be used for the next graphical text game I do, which will star our very own Flack O'Hara as the protagonist. In order to better depict the dystopia we find our player character in, the poor fuckin' guy has to side talk.