Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Trying to Keep Up LOL

LOL!

I think that means laugh out loud or laughing out loud, or lots of laughing or my favorite look out loony!

I am trying to keep up with technology. It races far ahead of me with everything changing in the blink of an eye.

Luckily I managed to do a good deed. But it wasn't easy. It never is. We found a fancy phone sitting on a picnic table in the public park I was riding my bicycle with a friend who was riding his bike too. My friend stopped and hollered at me "Look, a phone on the picnic table is vibrating." I pedaled back over. We studied the vibrating phone but neither of us had reading glasses with us. Best we could make out after squinting at it a long time was a text message had just come in that read "Call me when you find your phone."

We hung around for awhile staring at the phone, debating what to do. I tried to text back "We found this phone" but I couldn't figure out how to do it. Without reading glasses, neither of us could really tell what we were doing. Finally we took the phone and rode back to my motorhome. With reading glasses, I could now see the phone but whenever I tried to send a text, it wouldn't let me type a word. Just one letter and then it would hang up. Neither of us knew how to use this fancy phone. I kept punching buttons and finally figured out a phone number for the person who had written "Call me when you find your phone."

I called him and the call disconnected as soon as I said "I found a lost phone and.." I tried calling with my phone and through a miracle a man answered and I said I have found a lost phone and I think you were texting on it to call  when the phone was found. He said yes, it was his wife's phone and we will be right over. I thought WOW, how does he know where we are? I said wait, it's not on the picnic table, we were riding bikes and brought it to the campground. What picnic table he asked? The one where we found it. I gave him directions to the campground and a delightful couple showed up ecstatic to get their phone back. Phew!

Even funnier they remembered seeing us ride around the park on our bicycles. Life is goof.

On a side note, he said when he answered my call, his phone said I was calling from Greenville, South Carolina and he almost didn't answer the phone. I said well that is strange, as I thought this was Melbourne, Florida! We had a good laugh over that. Why does my phone say I am in Greenville? I haven't been there since 2014 when I went to a funeral and I don't even think I owned this phone then. How weird!

More strange technology....

Ally Bank has been a good travelers' bank because you can use anybody's bank machine and they reimburse your ATM fees once a month.

Today I went online to find out they've once again redesigned online banking promising "Everything you love about online banking in a smarter simpler design". I should be dancing over the moon. The techno gurus have justified their jobs once again.

But wait.

Dancing over the moon must wait. My balance and transaction history is not available with this new redesign.

This is smarter and simpler?

I want the old design. I am sure it was ancient, like over 3 months old. But it worked. 


I thought I would call them on the phone just for grins. Their message appeared that wait time would be zero minutes. I was ecstatic! I was trying to remember the answers to silly questions, all that tricky stuff they ask you to prove it might be you.

I picked up my flip phone. It's over a year  old, so it'a probably considered an antique by today's techno gurus. About a year ago I switched to Verizon because I heard rumors they were a large reputable company that wouldn't be as crummy as the last company (Virgin Mobile) that kept robbing me on phone cards that didn't work. Buying phone cards seemed like playing a slot machine. You toss in your money and you might win and you might lose. I lost all too often. We got into a huge snafu over cards I bought at Walgreens. The cards read they expired in 5 years.The phone company said I bought expired cards. Walgreens said it was a problem for me to take up with the phone company. Virgin Mobile told me to get a refund from Walgreens. It was a stale mate. Nobody would refund my money nor honor the cards purchased. I wasted a huge amount of time over that and still lost more money. 

When I decided to switch to a monthly plan (no cards) with Verizon, they wouldn't let me use my current phone. I had to buy another dadgum phone and learn how to work that. So I bought the cheapest thing they had, a little flip phone. 

Moving forward to calling the bank today...

Verizon wouldn't work today. Coverage map says I am in their area. I did the loops and hoops where I have to dial a code  *228 send to tell them I have traveled to a new tower then it restarts my phone and that takes time. Not sure why I have to do that. I did that at the first of the month when I arrived here. But I did it again. For good measure. I thought the whole purpose of cell phones was you could travel around and use any of their towers. Apparently I have to notify them I am at a new tower. I have no idea where the dotted line is between that tower and this tower or how to tell when I am in a different tower. The techno gurus keep this top secret. 

I called the bank, verified the number several times while it rang numerous times then a voice came on and said I needed to dial the area code and phone number. I did this about 4 times before I realized I had wasted about an hour of precious time, getting absolutely nothing done. 

I tried to post on blogger which also has gone through numerous rapid changes. It kept crashing when I tried the usual features. In frustration I filled out the FEEDBACK form and sent that off. I kept getting "Can't send feedback" messages  no matter how many times I tried.



I want to keep writing. I want to learn to stay on top of technology but honest to goodness I am bewildered at these "improvements" that seem to eat up my precious time.

Life is goof.

I am trying to keep up and I am falling woefully behind.

Smile, laugh, giggle, the jokes on me. Look Out Loony! LOL!

Oh dear, I have to  copy and paste and save this file somewhere else. I get a message from blogger "An error occurred while trying to save or publish your post. Please Try again. Dismiss"

 Two days later... here it is! The post!



2 comments:

  1. Good Grief! First of all why would they still sell a flip phone it they will no longer work? I use Straight Talk from Walmart, you don't have a contract and everything is unlimited. It costs $45. a month you do not have to buy anything else no cards no added minutes. The phone will work anywhere Verizon does. I have been using this service for 5 yrs and only had one day of down time. I guess at this point you might have a contract but check it out.

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  2. I understand the frustration with the constantly changing techno. My bank just introduced a "new, improved" website and it took me a week to find my checking account balance. I HATE all these constant changes! If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

    It was good to hear about the happy ending of the lost phone.

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Life is goof!