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*