I finally updated my cell phone.  Not that the other was particularly old – only maybe a couple of years – all right, all right, by tech standards it was a doorstop.

Here’s the thing.  I picked my old phone because I wanted to text more.  My brother was living in Saigon and that’s primarily the way we would talk.  Given the time change and all, we would text when I got into work around 3 or 3:30 am my time – 4 or 4:30 pm his time.  Mostly he would actually be up by then.

The old phone had big number buttons.  Easier to read – and more importantly, easier for my ham handed fingers to hit one button at a time – hopefully.  After perusing a tabletop full of models – all of which weren’t really phones as far as I could tell (kind of like plastic grapes and stuff in a centerpiece bowl on a table) – I picked one.  As it turned out, it was the cheapest phone you could get – funny how there are no price stickers on any of them…

I liked my old phone – mostly.  It did the basic things I needed it to do – ring, and send text.  It also had a camera – although for some reason you couldn’t actually send the picture it took to anyone – never did quite figure out the point to that one.  The one thing that did cause me grief was the ring tone.  I knew how to change the volume, but no matter who looked at it, the determination was the same – you couldn’t change the sound of the ring itself.  Big whoop – like I care what it sounded like – except after a while I did.

The ring sounded vaguely like the “Sex and The City” theme song.  I had never heard this song before – and to be quite honest – unless I end up on the wrong side of the bars in Gitmo and am being prepped for hard interrogation, I never anticipate hearing it.  It was first, and repeatedly pointed out to me by Murray Wood – he of the metrosexual moustache.  Yes, it did become a conversation starter many times – but still…  enough.

My new phone has a slide down (out) little keyboard that looks like a typewriter – not really with bigger keys – but a slide down thing anyway.  I was determined to learn how to change the ring tone – I mean it could sound like a daytime soap or something – how would I know?  I went online – apparently the instruction manual doesn’t actually come with the phone anymore – probably saving the planet by saving a tree I suppose.  Either that or they are just too cheap to ship it – and who could blame them.  By the time I had printed the nearly 200-page PDF file that would tell me finally how to control my mobile life, I had actually gotten a call.  And you know – I didn’t mind the ring tone all that much…

Speed dialling you right now…  Dave