Finally Joining the 21st Century
(adorable photo found here)
If you must know, I’ll confess. I’m a bit of a technophobe. A late adopter. I don’t like change. I resist it heartily and look at it askance from the corner of my eye, pretending to focus elsewhere. Imagine my horror then, when our beloved Sony cordless phone recently stopped taking a charge*.
I know I seem all tech savvy. I work for a software company, I have an iPod and a cell phone and I (sort of) know how to use them. I blog, I maintain the html on my company’s website, I keep in touch with family via email, all of that. But mostly (with the exception of the work and the html), that’s Ted’s influence. I didn’t want an iPod (what’s wrong with my walkman?), didn’t want a blog (what would I have to say to anyone?), didn’t want a cell phone (what’s the point?), but Ted has pulled me, kicking and screaming, into the present. Thank God, because I pink-puffy-heart my beloved iPod and my blog, and I reluctantly admit that while the sound quality of cell phones continues to suck, the convenience of them rocks. I even text once in awhile now.
So, our phone stopped working, and we were suddenly confronted with inferior modern technology. See, years ago, we had an old fashioned answering machine that taped your messages onto an actual tape, one that you could take out and listen to on a tape deck or walkman, which you hardly ever wanted to do…but still, you could. And when people left a message, you could understand what the heck they were saying and call them back if you wished, and it was lovely and beautiful. Sadly, of course, our answering machine died, and the only thing on the market at that time were digital machines. We got one, and it sucked. People would call and leave a message, and we would struggle to figure out who they might be, and what they could possibly want. Seriously garbled.
We griped about this to my brother and SIL, and they went out and bought us a phone/answering machine combo which worked very well, but the frequency it was at bumped us off of our wireless internet connection. Damn. So, we signed up for messaging through our phone company, which is a terrible financial decision. At $9 a month, it’s ridiculous, and quickly becomes more expensive than a new answering machine, which we would happily buy if we could find one we felt might not totally suck, or an all in one combo, which we might buy if we weren’t so emotionally attached to our Sony.
So that was our status quo, until the phone died. Out we went in search of something decent. Our first try was a flop, as on most calls either we couldn’t hear the person on the other line, or they couldn’t hear us. Perhaps because our internet frequency was butting up against the phone frequency, but who knows. And really, if you’re a technophobe like me, you don’t care WHY. You just want a phone you can plug into the wall and depend upon to actually work. We tried again, buying a phone with a different frequency (5.8 instead of 6.0, if you care about such details), and so far, it seems to actually work! AND the answering machine feature seems to work! We can understand what people want when they call us. We can call them back and plan exotic vacations. OK, that part is a fantasy, but so what.
Because the answering machine feature works, I called the phone company to cancel that $9 a month messaging feature, and while I was there, I signed up for caller ID. I know that most of you have had it for years, but our phones were old and wouldn’t support it, so why pay extra? Turns out that by turning off the messaging and *69 features, we were able to select a package that includes caller ID, and we’ll still save $12 a month off of what we were paying before. That phone will be paid for in no time. OK, one year. But still.
And when the phone rings, and I look at the little display and it says, “Opinion Poll”, and I can ignore it? I feel all warm and squishy about it, sort of like my beloved iPod and my blog. Worth. Every. Penny.
*We tried to revive it, buying a new rechargeable battery pack, obsessively cleaning the connectors, etc. Finally we had to accept the cold truth that our phone had died. We bought it when we moved back from Philly 13 years ago, so I guess that’s pretty good nowadays.
11 Comments
Starshine
The funny thing is Brian and I decided to not even put in a home phone line. We only have our 2 cell phones. That could be an option for you guys if Maya has her own cell phone, too. We have our internet through our cable company. 🙂
J
Hey Starshine, I’ve heard of more and more people doing the cell phone only thing. I’m not there yet. Hey, I’m barely ready for a phone/voicemail combo! Truthfully, I feel like a land line is important in case of emergency, which is probably not even true. Also, I need to be able to use my fax machine once in a blue moon, for work. But the biggest reason that I don’t switch over to cell only is the crappy reception. I find the quality of the sound on the land line is so far superior to any cell reception I’ve heard, I can’t let it go. It would save money, though!
Do I sound like a curmudgeon?
Autumn's Mom
No you don’t sound like a curmudgeon! We have a land line for the kids to make local calls and for us to call them. We don’t pay for caller ID and I miss it!!!!!
Selina Kingston
Our phone is currently dying. I think I may have to join you in the 21st Century. I’m not ready though …..!
Ted
The break up of “Ma Bell” resulted in some of the crappiest phones out there – as we’ve found out. For every good phone out there, there are probably dozens that are horrible. So you run back and forth to a store, spend a lot of time trying to figure out who makes a “good phone,” and feel like you’re playing roulette hoping the phone you bring home, put together and plug in has passable audio quality. And while I’m in my old man “Get the hell off my lawn” mode, I’m with you on cell phones. The technology has been around for decades, but the audio quality seems to be getting worse. Why are you doing this to us free market? Why?
JMc
We are a two cell only family too….but the idea about having a land line in case of emergency lingers…it lingers without a research basis, but it lingers.
J
Yeah, I guess the reason to have one for me is that it works without electricity. As do cell phones, but if the power were out for a couple of days (which is a real possibility if the emergency were large enough…there were areas of San Francisco that were perfectly safe to be in, but had no power, for several days after the earthquake in ’89), the batteries would go dead. And you know you’d be using it a lot in an emergency, as family calls to check up on you, etc.
Linda Atkins
Well, very good! Sounds like a great thing. (My method is to leave the phone turned all the way down and leave the ringer off almost all the time. The only way I find out someone has called is if they leave a message, which telemarketers don’t.)
Linda Atkins
If you’re a curmudgeon because you like the quality of sound on landlines more than on cell phones, then so am I. I couldn’t be more with you on that.
OmbudsBen
We’ve been through a round of house phone failures lately, too. It also brought the technophobe out in me, as I remembered my parents house, with the same phone on the wall for years into decades, which made me nostalgic. (It just worked! nothing fancy–it rang, you answered, and could hear the caller! Yay!) I just wanted a simple wall phone like that–nothing extra. Something that could last a decade or two rather than a few years.
So we went to Best Buy and, of course, you can’t get that. But we did get a new cordless phone that sits on its own little launching pad, atached to the wall (sigh), with two satellites we can set up elsewhere and now nobody has to leave the room they are in, in all 3 floors of our house, to get to one of the 5 phones we have now that work–aside from the 2 dead phones that probably need a 5 cent part each to still work.
Progress? Perhaps.
J
Yeah, Ben, that’s us, too. We didn’t get a cordless, but instead one that actually has a cord. With a satellite that we keep in the living room. So far it’s fine, but I like the sound better on the old war horse phone we have upstairs. It will (hopefully) last forever.