I've mentioned here on the blog many, many times in the past that I'm a dinosaur cell phone user.
I've had a cell phone since 1990.
I have had a $600 cell phone bill for a single month and I've paid over $100 for one marathon cell phone call back when the Cell Phone companies charged you $3.95 for "Roaming" and over a dollar a minute when you were outside your home area.
In that call I "Roamed" throught THREE different cell coverages areas in South Carolina on I-85 in less than an hour of calling.
How far things have come from those early days when I had a phone in a "bag" with a two pound lead acid battery that could start a motorcycle.
Today pre-teens call the department of family services if their parents refuse to give them a cell phone, and most kids can
Heck...most Democrats believe that a cell phone and free wireless Internet is spelled out in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights and before Obama and the Obamaramas are through I'll probably be able to make a phone call and check E-mail anywhere on the planet.
Except it won't really be free for people like me because there will be a substantial TAX hidden or unhidden somewhere in my life demanded to provide payment for electronic and information infrastructure delivered to hobo's, bums, and idiots spending their time texting the words " 'Sup?' " and "ROGL" and "OMFG."
I guess I should be happy that people living under bridges and overpasses share the same communication capabilities with soccer moms who leave the house talking on their cell phone and never hang the dang thing up over the next two hours as they walk the isles of the local grocery store and proceed through the checkout describing their lives on a boring play by play basis to their girlfriends.
So any way, my re-emergence into the profession of independent consulting engineering on a daily basis has forced me to re-evaluate our cell phone situation here at the Turbo Pup Compound on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River.
In all of our travels over the past couple of months I've noticed something...or at least something I had noticed previously started being more than a little bother and occasional inconvenience.
The way things went in our travels last week made me feel a little more like I was this guy holding his shoe to his head:
You see, after a zillion years as a Bellsouth Mobility customer, then a Cingular customer in the 1990's and early 2000's after the two companies merged, in late 2005 I made the executive decision to go with T-Mobile because my Forensic Injuneering associate also used their service and they had free "Mobile to Mobile" service.
We also got two Motorola Razors and a big rebate to sign up and we've lived with the service ever since--except I had to replace my phone with a crappy Nokia at some point in the process.
So any way, today finds us having virtually ZERO phone signal at the areas on the Florida Panhandle and the Georgia Coast where we like to visit regularly, and in the past three years cell phone technology has matured in areas where I can no longer tolerate not having Internet/E-mail capability while spending four out of the past six weeks on the road on business/vacation.
Thus after much consternation, discussion with fellow cell phone users, and consideration last night I went over to Letstalk.com and picked up not one but TWO LG Dare touchscreen Phones for get this...
Zero Dollars with a two year contract with Verizon after waiting on a $69.00 mail rebate.
There was a $70.00 connection fee however, but they allowed us to "Port" our existing phone numbers--neither of which are Knoxtown numbers--over to the new phones.
By Friday I hope to have the new phones in hand and by next week we should be taking pictures and surfing the Internet and dancing on air after a couple of years just tolerating the service and equipment we had because I'm lazy and a tight wad in some areas of my life.
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