Technology.

A brief tale of my cell phone escapades.

On the night of January 29/30th, I fell asleep with an open can of Fresca in my hand and my cell phone in my pocket, as usual. The cell phone is usual, not the Fresca. >_< When I woke up several hours later (this was at Kaitie's birthday party, which was a sleepover, so this probably all happened on the morning of the 30th), my leg was cold and wet and - this is the *facepalm* part - the can of soda was still mostly full and in my hand, right way up.

I went home, and decided to try to dry out my phone. Even though it was on the other side of me from the soda, it still got - how should I put this - it was still affected. >_< Much to my chagrin. In the process of drying out the battery casing area, I accidentally snagged one of the wires that connected to the SD card. This KILLED my phone, I realize now.

For the rest of the day, my phone would not hold a charge and was obscenely slow to respond. I was afraid it had gone senile. I FINALLY figured out that if I pulled out the memory card, it would function again. This caused me to lose all of my music, some five hundred plus songs.

Flash forward to late May early June. Now my phone has taken to turning itself off while it's charging, and doesn't like taking or making calls. For every fifteen minutes I spend on the phone, roughly, I lose a quarter of my battery life. Except for while I'm actually MAKING the call; then for every THREE minutes I lose a quarter of the available battery. Once I hang up, the battery starts recovering (very very slowly) until it's back up at 3/4 or full impulse power.

Skip ahead two weeks, to the morning of June 24. My phone, which I almost always keep on while it's charging, was off when I woke up. And it wasn't displaying the charging-battery icon thing. Last time this happened, it was a power outage and EVERYTHING was off. Or at least inactive. However, my clock radio was still functioning and my desk light turned on. My phone would not.

I took it out to the Verizon store (will address that later). The first thing they asked me was, "Did you try taking the battery out and putting it back in?" For the record, that was my first 'instinct' and I did it upwards of ten times myself. The guy then asked me if he could see my phone; I handed it over; he pulled the battery out and slid it back in. My first thought: I did that. Like, a LOT. WTF?

Then I got to the tech support desk. That guy went through the same procedure: he asked me the stupid question, did the EXACT SAME THING, and for some reason it worked for him. >_>

THEN Friday morning, the same thing happened. My phone was off and unresponsive. I fiddled with the battery a little bit and got it to turn on. Then, while I was at Hot Shots waiting for Teddy to finish up with Cross Country, it shut down, leaving me stranded.

So a VERY long story short, I believe some of the soda shorted out the battery (yes, almost 6 months later; IDK how that happened), as my LG Chocolate 3 is now dead. Completely. RIP Chocolate. The good news: I got an early upgrade, and am now the proud (?) owner of a Samsung Reality. Still with Verizon. The bad news: my parents have to shell out $50 for a phone with more intelligence than the computers that ran the space program ten years ago. More good news: One of those fees goes to phone internet access, which is (bad news) no longer optional, my poor parents' bank account... and I have unlimited texting to other Verizon phones. So. Technology marches on, confusing and confounding me as always.

Side note on the Verizon store: slight rant. Since when do you have to SIGN IN to a STORE?! It used to be you just waited in line for your turn and someone got to you in due time. You knew you would eventually be helped, and people were polite and didn't cut in line. NOW, evidently, you sign in on this silly touchscreen computer thing and they call your name when it's your turn. And the entire time, your name is up on the overhead screen showing your place in line and what you're going to be helped with! AND they want your phone number when you sign in! Am I the only one who thinks this is slightly more than creepy? I do NOT like the idea of anyone I don't directly know tracking my movements, and it's aggravating enough that my parents keep such tight tabs on me.

Also: more ranting. Phones in general. TELEPHONES are to be used to CALL PEOPLE. Not check email. Not send little mini phone-emails. Not check Youtube. Not draw. WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO?! I am not a technophobe; I'm really not. I appreciate the convenience of texting. But! Are there no SIMPLE cell phones left anymore? I miss my Chocolate. The QWERTY slidey keyboard on my Reality confuses me; it's too small to be of any proper use... oh well. It's not entirely bad. I just set up my email on it.

... *absorbed in internet phone*

Friends.

I have a good many close friends. I'm very lucky in this. My friends are supportive, unique, and caring people and I'm unbelievably fortunate that they decide to talk to me. ♥

So. Now that we've established that I love my friends. A brief commentary.

My friends-from-the-real-world I can kind of understand. We have stuff in common. We go to the same school, or went to the same school. We did *something* and we know about each other. We know what the other looks like, sounds like.

Something I kind of have a hard time understanding fully is this: Internet friends. People whom you've never met and likely never will meet. Don't get me wrong, I have a ton of Internet friends, at least on Facebook. Most of them are Fullmetal Alchemist roleplayers, or Fruits Basket roleplayers, or people I 'met' on some discussion in some group or on a page or someplace. The ones I've actually talked to, beyond just friend'ing, I really enjoy talking to. I've 'spoken' with Envy, Edward Elric (likely several versions), Kazuma Sohma, Kyou Sohma, Hatsuharu Sohma, and Riza Hawkeye.

It is to the last that this post is tentatively dedicated. About a week ago, I got an alert on Facebook that "Riza Hawkeye" had accepted my friend request. Considering it the polite thing to do, I dropped a "How's it going?" post on her wall and figured I'd never hear from her again as is the norm for me and roleplayers. To my surprise, three hours later she posted back.

To make quite a long story short, Riza and I have been talking for a good majority of my online time since that first post, and... I don't know. I really enjoy talking with her; it's one of the high points of my day. But, the fact keeps crossing my mind: It's all fictional. It may be that I'm being completely honest and factual and stating actual details from my day-to-day life, but... her account could be as made-up as the identity she's using. This is not me saying "OMG I'm talking to a LIAR!" this is me saying... I don't know. It feels real to me, but then my brain gets involved and I'm like, "How real can it be when you're talking to a *made-up person*?"

If I was brighter I could make this interesting and relevent and smart and actually make sense. But I'm me. I don't know... this whole thing is a challenge to my optimism. I really do mean everything I've posted on Riza's wall. And I want to believe that the friendship that's developed is real, because if it isn't, what is real? I meant it when I asked her if she'd be my older sister. Isn't that real enough?

I feel kind of like a little kid, questioning reality. I don't know. I really do love my older sister, and I think that for now that's all that really matters. That's its own form of reality, isn't it? ;)

Music trawls and eggs.

Spent an obscene chunk of the afternoon searching for music. Currently hooked on Hedley and the Goo Goo Dolls - two very different bands. Also actually ate something today, omg! Decided to get off my lazy butt and actually make something... I consider it practice for fixing dinner tonight. Hmm. IDK.

So. Have just covered the 'music' and 'eggs' portions of my day... I made eggs for a very very VERY belated breakfast. And then I'm doing something with meat and orzo and alfredo sauce for dinner. IDK exactly what, yet...

Coffee and writing.

So as an aspiring writer, I've taken the initiative this summer to make time to write. Usually, as I'm also a coffee "addict", this involves me spending close to 4 bucks for a crappy cup of coffee and then lurking in the coffee shop (a) regretting the $4 and (b) trying to focus on writing.

The last time I tried to do this (Monday at Hot Shots) I ended up writing crappy fluff songfic beginning thing. I'm not sure if I'm going to finish that.

Today, though, I wrote a brief rant about coffee, corporate greed, and atmosphere, then I wrote a short to-do list (none of which I can check off yet; I still haven't eaten breakfast) and then I started yet ANOTHER draft of Starlight. Omg. I'd like to continue with that, but I dunno if I'll be able to. I'm gonna type it up later if I have time.

Hmm. Do I have anything else to talk about? Probably not... oh well. I'll try to be better about posting here, if anyone reads this. Whatever.

Signing off.

Grah.

So methinks I should NOT fill out psychiatric self-evaluation forms when in the throes of self-induced misery, perhaps. Argh. Not that it'll change my answers at all, really... mayhap psychiatric self-evals plunge me into the throes of self-induced misery. Or maybe I'm just a moron. IDK.

For those of you reading this, I feel I should preface all this with: this is not new stuff. This has been bouncing around inside my head and I really feel sick to my stomach letting it all out because inevitably this will be construed as dramah0ring and it's not that, really I promise it isn't... it's my attempts to let you guys in. And unfortunately that means spilling out some of the excess with the incision...

Argh. Stuff this. Nvm.