don’t text me
In the past month or so, I’ve started receiving text messages on my mobile. It’s a little weird to me, since I’m accustomed to using technologies like this before most of friends. When I get them, I think, “Oh, do they use SMS? Why not just email?” Of course, it’s always “they” because my phone is apparently unable to display the sender’s identity. I hit the “extract number” and the “extract email” functions, but it invariably fails to identify the sender.
To me, this technology is worse than useless. Walking into the library this afternoon, I received a text message that read only “Busy?” Why, as a matter of fact, I am busy wondering who sent me a text message. My provider charges me for each message I receive, so I wound up paying a nominal fee to waste my time. I set my preferences to automatically delete all incoming messages, but apparently this one went through anyway.
In short, don’t text my phone. I won’t read it, and, if I do, I won’t know who you are. I certainly won’t text you back. From this point forward, I’ll assume anyone texting me is a loser who isn’t techie enough to read my blog, or, even worse, someone who reads my blog and texts me anyway.
[...] I’ve complained before about my mobile phone, but I just discovered another quirk that really takes the cake. My phone just vibrated, and I immediately pulled it out of my pocket. It told me I had one new voicemail message, so I hit the “call voicemail” menu option. The nice synthetic-voice lady started talking and informed me that I had six new voice messages, and the first dates back to June 24th. I’m going through a very stressful time, so I just hung up and went back to what I was doing. But, if you’ve left me a message in, oh, the last two or three weeks, you now know why I haven’t returned your call. [...]