Exchanges with People that Make Your Brain Hurt

[Midnight Kitty]

I make lots of people's brains hurt with my stupid cell phone.  I got one for me and one for DH because he's blind in one eye and wanted a "simple cell phone with big numbers."  I won't mention the name of the company, but it is similar to Charleston Cricket.  My brain hurt when we signed up because there is an extra charge for voice mail.  It isn't much, but I couldn't wrap my brain around the idea of a cell phone that doesn't take messages.  We both pay the surcharge to have voice mail, but it doesn't always tell you when you missed a call or someone left a voice message.  It seldom tells you right away, usually it is a day or two later, and sometimes it never delivers the message.  Several people have told me, "Didn't you hear my voice mail message?"  I have to reply, "No, it didn't save it for me."

The phone doesn't have a camera/scanner and we did not choose the text option (costs a lot extra).  It doesn't tell people who send it a text that it doesn't do text messages and it charges me 10 cents per text message even though I never see the text message.  I really hate these phones, but the monthly charges are dirt cheap.  I guess you get what you pay for.

When people talk about their smart phones and ask about my phone, I say, "Mine's a stupid phone: It can't even remember my voice mail messages."

I'm looking forward to upgrading in the next month or so.  Any of you out there who love your smart phone/portable device, please PM me with your suggestions.  I hate going on line and reading the promotional literature or going to the outlet and having some high pressure salesperson chat me up.  I would rather hear customer comments.

[Piratelvr1121]

C:\Dos

C:\Dos Run

Run, Dos. Run


Sorry.  Couldn't resist

LOL!! Love it! : )

I played around one day with my cell phone's speaker feature (as in it allows you to dictate what you want it to do. Not an iPhone so it's not Siri but similar.

I tried to have it call DH.   

"Call DH'sname"
"Calling Karen."
"Cancel.  Call Dhsname"
"I do not see an entry for candle. Who do you want me to call?"
"Call Dhsname"
"Do you want me to open Kindle?"

I gave up.

[Thipu1]

C:\Dos

C:\Dos Run

Run, Dos. Run


Sorry.  Couldn't resist

That's especially funny for those ofus who remember both DOS and 'wingadingdingy and Jane'.

My, we are getting old, aren't we?

[PastryGoddess]

C:\Dos

C:\Dos Run

Run, Dos. Run


Sorry.  Couldn't resist

LOL!! Love it! : )

I played around one day with my cell phone's speaker feature (as in it allows you to dictate what you want it to do. Not an iPhone so it's not Siri but similar.

I tried to have it call DH.   

"Call DH'sname"
"Calling Karen."
"Cancel.  Call Dhsname"
"I do not see an entry for candle. Who do you want me to call?"
"Call Dhsname"
"Do you want me to open Kindle?"

I gave up.

Me and Siri no longer speak for this very reason.  She pops up every now and then trying to talk to me, but I just ignore her

[jpcher]

C:\Dos

C:\Dos Run

Run, Dos. Run


Sorry.  Couldn't resist

That's especially funny for those ofus who remember both DOS and 'wingadingdingy and Jane'.

My, we are getting old, aren't we?

Yes, the problems of getting old.

It took me a while to figure out who wingadingdingy was and what the heck that meant?

Ah, my tired old brain kicked in . . . I get it now!

(gotta love those filters!)

[Elfmama]

Starry Diadem, the way I always heard it was:

C:\DOS>

C:\DOS> RUN

Please, God, run...

Well yes, but that's not quite as much fun as the old wingadingdingy and Jane learn-to-read book!

I hated the D*i*c*k and Jane books as a kid.  I could already read well over that level.  It would have been a lot more fun as Wingadingdingy and Jane.

[P12663]

*snip*
Twik wrote:

"And the lovely "ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?""

Who is General Failure anyway, and why is he reading my hard drive?

Virg

(jumping in late...)

I've met General Failure - his first name is Al and he was very, very over-weight.  He really liked messing with hard drives.

[jedikaiti]

*snip*
Twik wrote:

"And the lovely "ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?""

Who is General Failure anyway, and why is he reading my hard drive?

Virg

(jumping in late...)

I've met General Failure - his first name is Al and he was very, very over-weight.  He really liked messing with hard drives.

What about Major Malfunction?

[RoseRose]

BabyMama, your friend isn't that far off.  The first iPods were sold in late 2001, so that's only 11.5 years.  Also, did you take your iPod to your nearest Apple store?  From what you said, you're probably right, but you might ask them if they can wipe and reinstall the firmware, just in case the problem is simply a corrupted OS.  It won't cost you anything to ask, and you might be able to save the device.

You can do it on your own computer if you have iTunes, at least with most of the devices.  Just plug it in to your computer, open up iTunes, select the iPod, and click restore.  It does wipe the whole iPod, but you can put everything right back on.

[BB-VA]

Starry Diadem, the way I always heard it was:

C:\DOS>

C:\DOS> RUN

Please, God, run...

Well yes, but that's not quite as much fun as the old wingadingdingy and Jane learn-to-read book!

I hated the D*i*c*k and Jane books as a kid.  I could already read well over that level.  It would have been a lot more fun as Wingadingdingy and Jane.

Very large POD here.  Not exactly literature that kept you on the edge of your seat.

[Piratelvr1121]

By contrast I've made my best friend feel old when she's shown me pictures of some items she grew up with and I wasn't quite sure what they were.  Such as the washing machines that had the rollers you'd feed your clothes through to dry them.

[FlyingBaconMouse]

C:\Dos

C:\Dos Run

Run, Dos. Run


Sorry.  Couldn't resist

LOL!! Love it! : )

I played around one day with my cell phone's speaker feature (as in it allows you to dictate what you want it to do. Not an iPhone so it's not Siri but similar.

I tried to have it call DH.   

"Call DH'sname"
"Calling Karen."
"Cancel.  Call Dhsname"
"I do not see an entry for candle. Who do you want me to call?"
"Call Dhsname"
"Do you want me to open Kindle?"

I gave up.

Me and Siri no longer speak for this very reason.  She pops up every now and then trying to talk to me, but I just ignore her

When a big storm last summer caused massive power outages, I tried to use the voice function for a text message and nearly told a friend that our local Chipotle was ill-clothed  (that's "still closed" in iPhonish, apparently).

[EmmaJ.]

By contrast I've made my best friend feel old when she's shown me pictures of some items she grew up with and I wasn't quite sure what they were.  Such as the washing machines that had the rollers you'd feed your clothes through to dry them.

My favorite (black and white) photo is my dad, my sister, and I sitting in front of our Christmas tree.  You can see some of our new toys in the background, and right beside me is a miniature toy wringer-washer.  I sure wish it had survived my childhood.

[BabyMama]

BabyMama, your friend isn't that far off.  The first iPods were sold in late 2001, so that's only 11.5 years.  Also, did you take your iPod to your nearest Apple store?  From what you said, you're probably right, but you might ask them if they can wipe and reinstall the firmware, just in case the problem is simply a corrupted OS.  It won't cost you anything to ask, and you might be able to save the device.

You can do it on your own computer if you have iTunes, at least with most of the devices.  Just plug it in to your computer, open up iTunes, select the iPod, and click restore.  It does wipe the whole iPod, but you can put everything right back on.

I've done the home wipe, no change. The nearest Apple store is almost 2 hours away. I bought a new iPod video this morning--for probably half the cost of the original one, and more than 5 times the memory. THAT made my brain hurt! 

[Twik]

Back in the late 70s, I worked for a large electronics manufacturer in Silicon Valley.  I was not even a tech; Just a "rework girl."  My supervisor assigned me to entering failure data into a program he wrote.  His program writing abilities were only slightly more advanced than my data entry skills.  I made a typographic error while entering data, so I hit "delete."  The delete button didn't do anything, so I typed in "delete."

How was I supposed to know that would delete the program itself and all the data.  My supervisor yelled at me.  A lot.  I was computer-phobic for several years because I didn't know how everything could go *poof* in the blink of an eye.  Elvis-has-left-the-room gone.  No warning message.  Nothing.  Probably because my supervisor thought warning messages were unnecessary and he didn't think about the possibility of the data entry clerk hitting the wrong key.

Back in the Palaeolithic Era, when I was in high school, we got computer classes in our last year. We didn't have PCs - we got terminals, with a certain amount of computing time leased from the mainframe at the local university.

Logging in and out of the terminal took a lot of arcane commands. Sometimes, you could think you were logged out, but you hadn't hit the final button to achieve that state.

In the first month, one student, Friday afternoon, was working on computing, I think, the value of "e" for logarithms. It's an irrational number, with no end. He THOUGHT he had closed the program, and logged out.

On Monday, the school discovered it had no computing time left for the year.