A Rare and Pleasant Victory

At long last, I find that I have won a round against my technology.

We finally settled on a new provider for our cell phone service, after all that rigamarole a couple of months ago about finding a new one. Kim went first, as befit her status as the person who actually understood what was going on. She bought one of their phones, paid up for a plan, and spent a month comparing how the new phone did against her old one. When the difference proved in service proved to be minimal, she switched over her old number to the new phone.

I made the jump a month later, with considerable tutelage and a fair amount of Drambuie.

The new system seems to be working fine. I can make calls in most of the places I used to be able to make calls in and a few of the ones I couldn’t before – it pretty much balances out. And instead of paying a monthly fee for the privilege of rolling over about 600 minutes every month, I pay one fee for a year’s worth of minutes, most of which I will only have to roll over at the end of twelve months. Or maybe they expire. I don’t know.

I do know that my old company sent me a final bill for 21 cents. I called them up about that and the service tech and I had a good laugh about it.

I checked tonight, by the way, and after two months of service and at a rate of 20 cents/minute for calls, my account has declined by almost $13. I think I’m good.

The one problem that I couldn’t solve when I made this switch was text messaging.

I do not text. I do not read texts. I do not wish to be texted, learn how to text, or be part of a society in which texting is considered a normal way to contact people. I think people should stop texting and learn how to write. And yet trying to get a plan that does not include this service is harder than planning a North Korean vacation.

I particularly resent the fact that I have to pay for other people’s texts to me.

Until today.

For you see, I discovered tonight that our new provider allows you to disable incoming text messages. One little toggle in my settings, and – other than the ones that the provider itself sends, which are apparently inescapable – nobody can send me any more text messages! And, knowing that, I no longer even have to bother with the ones I do receive, since I know who is sending them and do not wish to hear from them in this fashion anyway.

I like this.

Dave 1, Technology 0.

Now if I can just figure out dying piece of electronica is plaintively beeping at me every two minutes as I type this, perhaps I’ll score another victory tonight. And then won’t I be insufferable.