OT. Cell Phones

IIRC, mobile phones have been around even longer than that but few people had then and they were very expensive to use.

I check mine 3 to 6 times a week. My voicemail message tells people not to leave a message unless they know I'm expecting them to call, so uusually when i get a message, it's not one of those and it annoys me.

I don't feel I've changed, but my official portraiteur says I'm older.

I look at mine pretty frequently, since I use it as a timepiece. But not 344 times a day.

Geez, I check mine once a day for the battery charge. Once a day to make sure I do not have any notifications (voice mail, text messages). And check for the lump in my pocket when I get out of the car to make sure I have it with me. But that is not exactly looking at the thing and I do the same thing with my car keys.

Unless I am calling someone or it rings or I am taking a picture of an indignant trout that I just ruined his dinner, it is out-of-site-out-of-mind.

Maybe it is just because I don't like texting?

I heard that Leonard Nimoy got tied of folks showing them their flip phones.

I do that too when I am out and about. Use the clock in my subi twice as much tough as I do not have to dig it out or pull over.

Maybe four or five times on my cell to time in and out of appointments. Did not realize how much I found wearing a watch annoying.

Ours lives out in the car . It gets turned on sometimes , usually if we're on a trip or in an emergency .

You sound like my brother. He might not even have one if my sister in law didn't buy him a flip phone. We were at the farm one day when he decided he could actually use it to make phone calls.

Habits die hard. I've sometimes went back after I realized I'd forgotten my wristwatch even though I'm surrounded with devices that are more accurate. About the only time I use it is for 1 minute rest intervals at the gym although the Planet Fitness app probably does that along with coaching you.

We've had cellphones for years . It's just that now we live where there is no reception (or TV or most radio) and we've gotten out of the habit of having one turned on . I might leave the property once a week or so ... and even then reception is spotty until you get to town .

The first 'mobile' phone I saw was a salesman's in the early '70s. We had fun calling home and when our wives asked where we were saying "sitting by the pool at the Ramada". It was 'mobile' about as much as my first 'portable' computer that weighed 21 pounds. It was basically a 'car phone' of the era in a brief case.

My first was a bag phone. I was really cool. Company phone but I had one.

Ther is a such thing, usually given to yo for free from your cell service, called an "extender". What it really is is a tiny cell phone hot spot that fowards your traffic to the phone company through the Internet. Several of my customers have them.

I turn off my phone or silence it most of the time.

I feel no need to being connected to the world all the time.

The result is a lot of peacefulness.

:-)

Andy

Our current unit - our very first ever smart phone - automatically connects to our WiFi . Which is connected to our landline . I even use it occasionally to make a call when my wife is on a marathon call with our daughter-in-law . Oh , and ours is not a contract phone , it's pay-as-you-go . They don't supply free hot spots .

Around that time there were car phones and you could listen to them on radio bands. I had fun listening to stuff going down like drug deals and a guy calling his wife on the way home saying he was stopping at a guys house and then call his girl friend and say he was coming.

Mine is only on when I am outside the house.

You could pick up cell phones on a scanner in the early days too.

I got a cell phone when my brother's health started to deteriorate. My boss had been promoting the idea by saying since I hike remote areas alone it would be a safety device. I pointed out remote areas aren't big on cell coverage.

When I fell on the ice last year and was on the way to the hospital my phone was on my desk. A bystander had called 911. I've gotten better at carrying the thing although I rarely make calls. I do have Slack and use that and have used it for Zoom meetings.