Dude! What Happened?

Isn't all of our modern technology supposed to make life so much easier? I mean, isn't that why the technology was invented? We should be able to apply modern gadgetry to our every day situations and relieve the stresses that confronted the people of the last decades.

Ok, this is what I'm really talking about. This weekend we were allowed to upgrade our wireless phones. We decided that it would be helpful in our little weekend junking business to have at least one phone that could do a few more tricks than just make calls. I looked around and kind of decided which phones we wanted and so we went in and made the purchases. We determined that Debbie's phone only needed to make calls and text messages and that my phone should have the ability to do data exchange and have internet access. Well, suddenly the stress level around here has gone through the roof! Yesterday while sitting in church, I tried to silence the phone and was so engaged in trying to remember the path to that feature that I nearly bit Jonathan's head off as he tried to hand me something. That was just the beginning. Without going too deeply into the details, I lost some important contacts from my previous phone and again, there was some loud exchanges between certain family members and myself. This whole thing was going downhill at a steady rate and recovery was looking pretty grim. This morning the darn thing thinks it is an alarm clock at 5:30 am and that would have been ok if I had had just the slightest clue as to how to turn it off. Oh my goodness!! I had to get out of bed and run into the bathroom so I could just figure out how in the world to silence this devil machine that I now own. Have you heard of the rule of unintended consequences? Basically it is like this. No matter how hard one tries to anticipate the affects a certain decision will have on one's situation, there will always be effects that are completely unintended. I have certainly experienced this law over the last couple of days. So far during this process I have not uttered any language that is not part of my normal vocabulary but there have been times when certain unacceptable words have been bouncing around in my cranial cavity looking for an exit.
Hopefully, there is a learning curve and I will soon acheive some level of competence.

Ok, let me tell you about the phone. In spite of my current frustration, it is a cool device that, in time, will be a valuable addition to our current assortment of technology. This device is called the Motorola Droid and falls into the smart phone category and is one of the hottest items in the current Verizon Wireless line up. You need to know, however, that currently it does have what might be considered a fatal flaw by many people. It cannot make a phone call using only a bluetooth headset. To make a call one must actually hold the phone in one's hand and make a couple of different strokes with one's hand. That obviously makes it a problem here in Oregon as well as many other states with the current hands free rules. I have been assured that Motorola is currently working feverishly on a fix that will be "pushed" to the phone in the next couple of months. I don't know how the designers could have overlooked such an obvious problem. Other than that, it is very cool.

It has a Google based operating system called Android. Google is a proponant of open sourced programing which makes a huge number of the applications available for the phone for free. Oh Man! You wouldn't believe the number of fun and useful apps that you can download for no additional cost.

It also comes with a 5.0 megapixal camera with a flash and a full qwerty keyboard.

Dude! That is so amazing!

This post is getting way too long but hopefully soon I can post some pics which I've taken with this phone. I have to go to bed but hopefully the dreams will be sweet before that obnoxious phone wakes me up again. (I'm not sure if I remember how I finally turned the thing off this morning.) Uggh!