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Call me. I'll be in stuck in 2007.
Recently I've been caught in a weird place, technologically.
Even as I stay up late at night trying to completely digitize my oversized CD collection, I'm moving backward on the mobile telephone front.
My phone, loyal soldier that it's been, started showing signs of its imminent death a couple of months ago -- not charging when it should, dropping calls it shouldn't, not holding a charge for anything.
But I just chose to persevere. No reason to make any rash decisions. We just upped the cable package and bought this new external hard drive. We don't need another technology expense.
Then a week and a half ago it got really bad. All night on the charger and still a dead battery.
The battery's bad, I thought. And so, after a Monon Bell weekend of having to tell all my old college buddies to call my wife if they wanted to get in touch, I borrowed an extra battery from my mother-in-law.
After a day of good results, I was back in the same boat -- long sessions on the charger and no charge on the phone.
With Plan B failing, I moved on to Plan C -- a loaner phone from the Banner.
Now mind you, folks, this is no iPhone 5 we're talking about here. It's a satin red (Manly, right?) Sony Ericsson W580i, announced in March 2007 and long ago used, mistreated and discarded by a former editor.
Seriously, this phone was announced the same month I started my tenure at the Banner, and as of Monday, I'm the only newsroom employee who's been with the paper that entire time.
My screen has two settings, as far as I can tell: Bad and Worse.
"Bad" means only having to deal with a few black lines across the middle to upper section of the phone.
"Worse" involves the vertical bleed of any display color, making most messages indecipherable jumbles of colors.
And how did we ever text on tiny number pads that required us to hit the 7 four times to get an S? It's a ridiculous hassle.
Don't worry about texting and driving. I've given up on texting altogether.
I suppose sometime soon I'll bite the bullet and get a new phone. I'm pretty sure I'm eligible for an upgrade.
The only problem is I'd really like to finally take the plunge into the 21st century and get a smartphone the next time I upgrade. I just don't want the monthly data fees on my already high AT&T bill.
Maybe a couple more years with a C-student-phone is a better plan.
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