Home phone. No cell phone. No answering machine. No call waiting. The bad news is, I may be hard to get in touch with sometimes. The good news is, if I'm having a face-to-face conversation with you, I'll look you in the berkeleying eyes and listen to what you're saying. I won't be fumbling around with the newest $200, $50/month gadget that makes me feel important, trying to berkeleying text and talk and have 20 conversations at once.
But that's me.
Appleseed wrote: Seeing "Whr R U " in print assures me sure I'm capable of murder. Is it that berkelying hard to add a-e, yo-? People are lucky the movie "Scanners" isn't real.
LOL OMG LMAO!
Actually I agree and as a family we always text in complete sentences (at least to each other).
I don't mind talking on the phone and for some conversations it makes much more sense. But day to day communication between the family (at least when we're in separate rooms) is usually done by text because the kids are in school or my wife and I are at work, so it's less disruptive and more discreet to text.
i was a cell phone hold out, i keep my pager almost to y2k, but then it started getting very difficult to find pay phones, the company was giving me a hard time, so i buckled in around 98 or so and finally got a cell phone. I finally get comfortable with that, and the berkeleying text messaging goes into full swing, but i couldnt answer them because im not going to spend 15 minutes trying to type out three words on an numeric phone. So now i finally cave in and get a phone with a alpha key board in it , adjust my brain so it thinks im sending mini emails (im good with email) and people want to have CONVERSATIONS with me through text... if you really want to talk to me, why dont you just CALL me?? drives me up the wall
I may be a bit old school but i can see the advantages of texting, and have started to use it. short notes, reminders, questions that dont require an immediate answer, its great for these things. but i prefer a voice conversation for most things.
On the up side, i now predict ill have my beeper back soon, as so many people dont even use their "phones" as phones any more, that its gotta be just a matter of time before they just put a text back option in a beeper and eliminate the phone part all together for budget service plans ;)
poopshovel wrote: Home phone. No cell phone. No answering machine. No call waiting. The bad news is, I may be hard to get in touch with sometimes. The good news is, if I'm having a face-to-face conversation with you, I'll look you in the berkeleying eyes and listen to what you're saying. I won't be fumbling around with the newest $200, $50/month gadget that makes me feel important, trying to berkeleying text and talk and have 20 conversations at once. But that's me.
That's me, too.
We had voice mail. I wanted to get rid of it, because it was costing me $7/mo. but my wife wanted to keep it. We compromised, and I bought a $10 answering machine. Nobody likes to leave messages. That tells me how important their phone call was.
John Brown wrote:moxnix wrote: I don't like phone calls, I don't like texts, Some days I am not even sure I like talking to people.I concur.
I'm getting quite misanthropic myself.
Well I can't survive without at a cell phone, I don't have a desk phone at work as my company only gives me a cell phone. I'm not keen on texting and insist on writing things out in full. Texting does have it's uses for short messages or when I can't talk or if I'm in a meeting. I really don't understand my daughter and her friends, I'll walk into her room and she's sat on her bed having 3-4 different text conversations, why not just call? Once or twice back and forth is one thing, but after that point just bloody talk to each other! What really bothers me most though, is when people carry text abbreviation over into e-mail and other forms of written communication. My sister and niece in the UK seem incapable of typing normally, it's to the point I really don't think her 12 year old can actually spell at all.
I use mine rarely enough that it doesn't bother me. What I hate is voicemail. The unknown factor of SMSes with the slowness and clumsiness of voice, all wrapped into one.
The only reason I check my voicemail is to get rid of the "new voicemail" icon.
The number one thing that irritates me about phones is people's inability to check their own messages because the voice mail system is "too complicated". Look, if I just had to sit through the auto-voice telling me about all 50 of my message options before I actually get to leave you a freakin' message, then you better berkeleying listen to it. Don't call me right back and be all "Yeah, someone called me?"
Technology took a step forward with cel phones but civilization took a step backward. I can't think of another invention I hate worse than cel phones. Fortunately, I was able to hold out until 2004. My then-74-year-old mom had a cel phone for SIX YEARS before I finally succumbed.
Still use that original phone, too. Three hours in a month is my current record for heavy usage. Never sent a text. Never will. Can't receive one either. My phone doesn't even have a camera in it.
Don't know why I hate them so much except for the intrusiveness and how they make others act like total shiny happy people. I embrace all kinds of new technology but I don't like land lines so much either so maybe it's the whole telephone call thing.
Got an old Western Electric rotary dial phone we use as a ringer for the whole house because I hate the electric warbling. When my stepdaughters lived at home, their friends would need to make a call from time to time. My wife and /or I would send them to the rotary phone just so we could watch them try to figure out how it worked.
After we showed them, they'd have a look on their face like they just mastered a non-syncro crash box or some other arcane technology.
LOL, I'd love a rotary dial cell phone. I wonder if there's an app for that :p
everyone is going smart phones, i wanna go opposite, get a Brick, and i mean BRICK... like the 80's Motorola Brick... 
I couldn't agree with you more. Bringing a cell/device to dinner, no matter how discreetly you check your messages, strikes me as offensively rude. Same thing with walking around a store/supermarket/public place. I don't want to hear your conversation while I'm in a lineup, and I sure as hell hope you drive your car better than you do the shopping cart you just cut that old lady off with. On a bigger level, aside from them offending me personally, I think they're just another insidious symptom of our society breaking down. Kind of like family dinners going by the wayside. Someone with a cell glued to their ear misses out on making a connection, no matter how small, with someone else. The lady with the shopping cart could have made eye contact with the shopper she cut off. Same goes for the lineup - instead of yakking - you realize the guy behind you is struggling with an armload and you move your E36 M3 forward and put a divider down for him - and he smiles in return. I've ferried young relatives, kids of friends around, and it amazes me when they whip out their cells and start texting rather than have a conversation in the car. It's losing the moment... everyone wants to be somewhere else.
In reply to EastCoastMojo:
I bet it still lacks the tactile feel of a real rotary phone.
I have one sitting in the closet with no real use for it.
The wife and i have cell phones instead of a home line. Honestly if they weren't handy in emergency situations we wouldn't think twice about chucking them.
VanillaSky wrote: In reply to EastCoastMojo: I bet it still lacks the tactile feel of a real rotary phone. I have one sitting in the closet with no real use for it.
I have a red one from a hotel lobby. We like to joke that it is the hotline to the prez.
poopshovel wrote: Home phone. No cell phone. No answering machine. No call waiting. The bad news is, I may be hard to get in touch with sometimes. The good news is, if I'm having a face-to-face conversation with you, I'll look you in the berkeleying eyes and listen to what you're saying. I won't be fumbling around with the newest $200, $50/month gadget that makes me feel important, trying to berkeleying text and talk and have 20 conversations at once. But that's me.
Same here, except that I do have an answering machine. Not much infuriates me more than someone texting while you're trying to have a conversation with them. And if I'm out and about, I generally don't want to be bothered.
Lesley wrote: ... I don't want to hear your conversation while I'm in a lineup, and I sure as hell hope you drive your car better than you do the shopping cart you just cut that old lady off with. ...
I agree completely. I hate standing in a lineup with kids today, always on the phone. 
VanillaSky wrote: In reply to EastCoastMojo: I bet it still lacks the tactile feel of a real rotary phone. I have one sitting in the closet with no real use for it.
Use it as the house ringer. Since you just need the sound, it can be located anywhere you can plug it into a phone jack.
I always thought phones were evil. even before I gave up landlines.. ever notice that when the power is out, the cable is out.. phones still worked?
I hate talking on the phone for the most part. Comes from answering 200+ calls a day in a former job position, and now spending 15 hours a week on conference calls listening to everyone bitch.
I hate texting with a passion. Nothing makes me rage more. I'm too old school to understand predictive text. (I meant PUMPKIN NOT PENIS.), and i hate reading the abbreviated bullE36 M3, it gives me an aneurysm and just makes me want to not be your friend or ever see you again.
I hate cell phones. I get a call, and i miss it. They leave a voicemail. Then i get a text asking if i got their voicemail. All within 5 minutes. What do i do? Do i text back and say "yes, but i didn't check it?" Do i check it, then text and say that i got it, then call them back? Do i skip all of that and just call them back?
Screw it, i'll check the voicemail.
"Hey man, call me back."
[aneurysm]AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!! Listen, you berkeley. Never call me or text me again!!![/aneurysm]
Ahhhh... i feel much better now.
And people wonder why i don't even bother setting up my voicemail anymore.
I love responding to texts with a phone call.
(Text) Hey what up
(I call) Hey man! Nothing much, just got home from work!
(They're speaking!) Hey, i can't talk now, i'm at work.
(Me) Then don't text me, and get back to work.
I have been in the cell phone industry for 12 years.
I am sometimes amazed at what we have achieved and many times embarrassed and ashamed.
Fundamentally, what I find most interesting we have changed from calling places to calling people.
How often do you actually dial and then open the conversation with, "Hello, is John Doe there?" That phrase used to be the standard opening.
Also interesting and gone are the detailed instructions that you used to leave at home for the wife or the baby sitter. For business travel in the past it would be common to leave details like:
"I will be at the Irvine, CA office all day Tuesday then spending the night at this hotel. The following night I will be at this hotel in San Diego; I have attached to this list all of the phone numbers. I now really find myself leaving for a week and just telling my wife, "Call me if you need me." Some times I am not really sure if she even knows what town I am flying to.
moxnix wrote: I don't like phone calls, I don't like texts, Some days I am not even sure I like talking to people.
Amen!
"Hey man, call me back."
Guilty as charged. Trying to break the habit.
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