Tag Archives: Windows

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‘Welcome to 2013’

The young man at the cellphone store didn’t mean to poke fun at my wife and me when he said, “Welcome to 2013” as we walked out of the place with our new cellphones in hand.

I turned to him and said I’m still stuck in the 1970s. We all laughed.

But with that, we’ve made the leap, purchasing a couple of “smart phones” that will do all kinds of things — a fraction of which we’ll likely use. But the stuff that’s included with these devices will be helpful.

I’ve appreciated the advice, recommendations and offers of help from my friends who’ve responded to an earlier blog post about the leap we were about to make. One of my sisters advised me against purchasing a smart phone, saying that “flip phones rock.” Sorry, sis. We made the leap.

We went with a Windows phone setup. I don’t need to explain this to most of the people in my life. They know what it is.

I will explain, though, that the purchase of the phones was every bit as complicated as I feared it would be. All the calling plans, data plans, texting plans, billing options, up-front phone cost variations were enough to give me a headache. And they did.

The sales rep who greeted us is a nice young man. We advised him up front of this truth: We are simple people who are not fluent in techno-speak. Our sons know this language; we don’t. “Explain this to me like I’m a 5-year-old,” I implored him, before backing off that request with the realization that a 5-year-old would understand all the jargon associated with 21st-century telecommunications. My wife then advised the young man to “talk to us like the old people we are.”

Well, the learning curve is a steep one for my wife and me. But this is part of life, I reckon. That curve will start to straighten out in due course, hopefully sooner rather than later.

You may keep praying for us.

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Beware of handheld devices

I cannot let a recent observation go without offering this commentary on it.

While working the other day at one of my part-time jobs, I noticed a young man — oh, about 30 years of age — doing something I thought had gone out of style with people his age.

He was reading … a book. You remember them, yes? They have front and back covers, with pages in between and they have words printed on those pages.

The event occurred at Street Toyota in Amarillo, where I work three days a week in the service department. Our waiting room often is full of customers waiting for their vehicles to be serviced or repaired, or perhaps to get a Texas state vehicle inspection sticker renewed.

Often as I walk across and around the service area asking customers if they need anything to make them more comfortable — such as a soft drink or a snack — I’ll notice people of all ages holding handheld telecommunications devices. Smart phones, I-Phones, Kindles, electronic tablets. This is especially prevalent among younger individuals.

Go to Westgate Mall — or any mall in America, for that matter — and watch the youngsters traipsing through the place looking down at some gadget in their hand. They don’t see anyone around them, oblivious to the throng that’s moving through the place, with so many of them doing precisely the same thing: operating a handheld device.

We provide plenty of reading material at our dealership: magazines, copies of the newspaper, etc.
The usual reading fare, though, is contained in these gizmos our customers pack in their pockets, their brief cases or their purses.

To see a young man reading an actual book took me back a decade or so when such an activity was a common sight. It’s become so uncommon these days, that I am moved to offer this brief salute to a tradition that hasn’t gone away completely.

Maybe it will eventually. I hope it hangs on forever.

One more thing: I do not possess one of those smart phones. It took me practically forever to purchase a cellphone. I’m holding out as long as possible before acquiring a telecommunications “upgrade.”