The Vent and Rant Thread

[Terisa de morgan]

@Katsunami, Sorry about your friend. And, really, now I think how we lived without mobile phones

[cromag]

Sorry to hear about your friend, Katsunami, and the communications complications.

[John F]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

...

2- All Lead Acid batteries sold nowadays are sealed type batteries, causing you to have to cash up $130-250 every time your battery dies on you. With old batteries, the battery would die sooner, but $0.2 on distilled water was the solution!
...

Try shopping around a little. As an example:

https://www.walmart.com/ip/EverStart...5657#read-more

Has vents/can be refilled, and the price is $93.76.

[Katsunami]

@Terisa
@cromag

Thanks for the condolences. Even though he was about 50 years older than I am, I liked the guy for his positive attitude and inquisitive nature. (And he even liked classical music... pity that his favorite type was opera which I _really_ dislike, and mine is Bach's keyboard works, and symphonies/string quartets/concerto's in general.)

Fortunately, I didn't miss anything. He seems to have decided a year ago that he doesn't want anything with regard to a funeral, literally. Dead -> cremation, with the only attendants being his wife and children.

So, I'll send a condolences card and leave it at that.

edit: the communication problems have been resolved. I'm only waiting for the phone's case. I don't know on top of my head if PostNL delivers mail on Saturday; they do deliver packages, but if the case is put in an envelope, it'll fit into the mailbox.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

And, really, now I think how we lived without mobile phones

Aaah, happy days when we controlled our own lives. Now we have a Sillycone Valley cabal in cahoots with the Mediaocre Mogul mafia trying to do it for us.

Charles II had a cabal, we can only hope this lot will suffer a similar fate as his lot

BR

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Aaah, happy days when we controlled our own lives. Now we have a Sillycone Valley cabal in cahoots with the Mediaocre Mogul mafia trying to do it for us.

Charles II had a cabal, we can only hope this lot will suffer a similar fate as his lot

BR

I basically still live without one to this day. Do I have a smartphone? Yes. Do I use it? Not really. I don't even have 3 #'s stored in my phone; don't text, don't game, etc. I'll read a book on it, if I'm stuck in the Doc's office, instead of lugging a larger ereading device. I primarily carry it for emergencies, as of course we all initially did.

I live in a home and work in an office that are in mountainous areas. I get zero cellphone reception in my home--I'd have to walk outside at least 50-100 feet, to get anything. Text, email, even phone. Ditto the office. Thus, I've never developed the umbilical with it. I do admit that I see that people have become dead attached to them. No matter where you go--doctor's office, etc.--people are constantly on them. No conversation; no human interaction, F2F. Just glued to the screen. Given that I already spend a horrible amount of my day on the computer for work, I'm glad I'm not so attached to the phone.

Hitch

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I basically still live without one to this day. Do I have a smartphone? Yes. Do I use it? Not really. I don't even have 3 #'s stored in my phone; don't text, don't game, etc. I'll read a book on it, if I'm stuck in the Doc's office, instead of lugging a larger ereading device. I primarily carry it for emergencies, as of course we all initially did.

I live in a home and work in an office that are in mountainous areas. I get zero cellphone reception in my home--I'd have to walk outside at least 50-100 feet, to get anything. Text, email, even phone. Ditto the office. Thus, I've never developed the umbilical with it. I do admit that I see that people have become dead attached to them. No matter where you go--doctor's office, etc.--people are constantly on them. No conversation; no human interaction, F2F. Just glued to the screen. Given that I already spend a horrible amount of my day on the computer for work, I'm glad I'm not so attached to the phone.

Hitch

How I realized my phone decided it didn't want to talk to anyone was when my mom called my landline to tell me to call a freaking out cousin. I had changed my landline # and apparently my cell phone didn't want to accept calls that day.
I have no long distance on my landline. I had extended area but cell phones made that obsolete and it jumped from $5 to $15. So I got rid of it in a hurry.

[Hemmi]

I refuse to be controlled by a cellphone. I have one. I turn it on if I need to make a call. Otherwise, I have it, it's charged, but it's off. If I'm not at home, I'm at work. If I'm not at work I'm at home. If I'm neither place, I'm out running errands and shopping and I don't want to talk to you anyway.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Hemmi

I refuse to be controlled by a cellphone. I have one. I turn it on if I need to make a call. Otherwise, I have it, it's charged, but it's off. If I'm not at home, I'm at work. If I'm not at work I'm at home. If I'm neither place, I'm out running errands and shopping and I don't want to talk to you anyway.

And here I thought we were friends.

[4691mls]

I don't make a lot of phone calls and I prefer to use a landline if possible so as to have a consistently clear connection. Smartphone is handy for checking email when away from home, or checking weather forecast,or getting directions. I am not glued to it, though. If I go out to eat with other people, I want to talk to them, not to my phone. If I have enough time to sit and look at a screen I am going to be reading on my eink reader.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

I don't make a lot of phone calls and I prefer to use a landline if possible so as to have a consistently clear connection. Smartphone is handy for checking email when away from home, or checking weather forecast,or getting directions. I am not glued to it, though. If I go out to eat with other people, I want to talk to them, not to my phone. If I have enough time to sit and look at a screen I am going to be reading on my eink reader.

Or finding out if a restaurant is open. Or finding an open restaurant.

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by John F

Try shopping around a little. As an example:

https://www.walmart.com/ip/EverStart...5657#read-more

Has vents/can be refilled, and the price is $93.76.

Too bad it won't fit my car

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

I don't make a lot of phone calls and I prefer to use a landline if possible so as to have a consistently clear connection. Smartphone is handy for checking email when away from home, or checking weather forecast,or getting directions. I am not glued to it, though. If I go out to eat with other people, I want to talk to them, not to my phone. If I have enough time to sit and look at a screen I am going to be reading on my eink reader.

OMG, and this--the "clear connection"--too. I have lost track of the number of ppl who will call me, on some staticky, dropping-out line, rejoicing over how they've "cut the cord" (yer, right...) and now they only have a cellphone, not a landline. My sister's cheap husband did that--migrated their landline to a cellphone--and I haven't had a decent conversation with her since. Two years, and every time we speak I hear noise, rasping, dropouts, you-name-it. It's bloody distracting, and it makes me want to get OFF the phone, not make the call. I swear, I know it sounds daft, but it's affected our sister-time.

No, thanks. I'd rather be fiscally stupid and not plagued by absurdly-bad phone reception and the like. And it's not as though spam-callers don't have a throughway to cellphones now, either.

Not to mention, as 4691 says, any type of common courtesy during normal human interaction--dinners, family get-togethers--seems to have gone utterly out the window. Who the hell wants to eat dinner with someone who spends the entire meal on their smartphone, texting, doing social media, etc.? It's...deranged, to me. I guess I just don't have enough friends where I have to madly keep up with a few hundred folks all around the planet, 99% of whom I've never met, all of whom have to give me blow-by-blow details of what they had for lunch, or what cute thing their dog did today. I have like, two places that I "hang," MR being one of them, and that's it.

My comment on social media:

Spoiler:

I think that Facebook, et al, are just massive time-wasting, time-sucking hellholes that seem to thrive on the vapidity of self-involvement--or,
like Tw*tter, on the seemingly endless fascination of people with self-promoting, absurd "celebrities" like the godawful Kardashians and other Reality-TV personalities. (I refuse to use the word "stars.")

Hitch

[drjd]

Originally Posted by Hitch

My comment on social media:

Spoiler:

I think that Facebook, et al, are just massive time-wasting, time-sucking hellholes that seem to thrive on the vapidity of self-involvement--or,
like Tw*tter, on the seemingly endless fascination of people with self-promoting, absurd "celebrities" like the godawful Kardashians and other Reality-TV personalities. (I refuse to use the word "stars.")

Hitch

You've worded my thoughts very exactly.

That is why I don't have a Facebook or Twitter account.

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by drjd

You've worded my thoughts very exactly.

That is why I don't have a Facebook or Twitter account.

Me too! Fortunately I'm old enough that people in my age group generally aren't glued to their phones at social gatherings, but I have once or twice had the misfortune of eating out with a person who was on and off the phone the whole time.

Even though I still have a landline I have a family member who only ever calls my cell number. I've given up trying to figure out why.