"Smart" Phones Revisited

So it has been a few months now since we were sucked into the fold and converted to Smart phones.  What is my reaction so far?  

1. I like carrying my phone in my pocket and this phone, while not the largest, just barely fits comfortably in my jeans.  Of course, because of the replacement cost, I had to get a protective cover built like a tank.  You could drop it or throw it against the wall and it would survive.
2. We got hooked on games- the free ones that are also free to play, like Words with Friends. This certainly has played havoc with battery life.
3. Battery life is a bit atrocious , since the temptations to run all kinds of apps is very high.
4. Signals are reliability using 4G Lte is pretty good, but there clearly are still holes where coverage is very bad.
5. Android is easy to use, but there are some things I'd like to see different, for example: There should be a nice way to say "I'm done with this app, give the memory back and don't run it in the background.
6.  So far, I haven't bought any apps and every need has pretty my been filled and much, much more.
7. We have been very careful about accessing important things like bank accounts while on the phone, and we will certainly eschew the automatic charge-card via phone, for as long as possible.
8. It actually costs us less now, on the sharing-data family plan than it did before paying for minutes AND paying for data AND paying for so many texts per month.

So now that I have accepted my fate, I think that there are less reasons to be unhappy with my carrier than I was before.  I don't like the phone stores, whether AT&T, Verizon or Sprint. I feel like I am being treated as though a second-class citizen that can't find his butt with both hands.  Their prices are high and they do all their manipulations in the back room while you are waiting for what seems forever in the display area.
Two better experiences, one at Best Buy and another at Costco, who are both dealers in phones from many carriers were much better experiences.  They worked in front of us and explained what they were doing during the whole process.  Neither of them treated us like the audience at a magic show.

Would I go back to a feature phone, probably.  There is really nothing so important that I couldn't live without it.  My wife, on the other hand, uses it as a business tool and is forever using the voice to text feature to communicate with clients and their agents.  She has Bluetooth in her car and loves the hands-free features including the reading her texts out loud.  She'll never go back, but maybe the need will wain eventually.

The Indian and the Hooker
A Manitoulin Island Indian picks up a hooker off the streets of Sudbury .
'How much you charge for hour, sister?' he asks.
'$100,' she replies.
He says 'You do Indian style?' 'No' she says.
'I pay you $200 do it Indian style' 'No', she says, not knowing what Indian style is. 'I pay you $300' 'No', she says.
'I pay you $400' 'No', she says.
So finally he says, 'OK, I pay you $1,000 to do it Indian style..'
She thinks, 'Well, I've been in the game for over 10 years now. I've had every kind of request from weirdos from every part of the world. How bad could Indian Style be?'
So she agrees and has sex with him.They do it in every kind of way and in every possible position.

Finally, after several hours, they finish.

Exhausted, the hooker turns to him and says, 'Hey, I was expecting something perverted and disgusting. But that was good. So what exactly is 'Indian style?'

The Indian replies 'You send bill to Government.'

I was visiting my son and daughter-in-law last night when I asked if I could borrow a newspaper.
"This is the 21st century, old man," he said. "We don't waste money on newspapers. Here, you can borrow my iPad."

I can tell you, that friggin' fly never knew what hit it ...

Drinking last night
Last night I was out with a few friends and had a few too many beers.

Knowing full well I may have been over the legal limit, I did something I never had done before. I took a bus home.

I arrived safely without incident, which was a real surprise; as I have never driven a bus before and I am not sure where I got it from.