Your Unsaved Changes Will Be Lost

I don't do Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.  I don't tweet and I don't text.  I don't shop online preferring to support local businesses.  Nor am I into smart phones.  I do have a cell phone which I got about a decade ago.  It makes and receives calls (when I turn it on) so if faced with an emergency and if I have my little book with everyone's phone numbers in it (no, I don't program them into my phone), I don't go into panic mode unless I then find myself in a place with no cell-phone coverage.  Now all those public phones are a thing of the past.  With a dime ... and then a quarter ... and then a calling card .... they came in quite handy.  And you didn't have to make sure you had a pocket or a bag to keep one in.

Then my computer presents problems with such messages as "An error occurred ...."  Or "It will take some moments while we upgrade your ..."  Or the modem is behaving improperly.  Or the wi-fi apparently didn't like the last thunderstorm.  Or the grid is down.  Or the grid isn't down but acts as if it were, so you have to fiddle with things you know nothing about to try and fix some oblique problem.  I admit to liking a computer for writing as opposed to typewriters of old, but then you have to have a separate printer to get any hard copy. (Though hard copy itself may be obsolete one of these days.)   Plus pay more than $100 for an ink cartridge to fit into the printer. You used to get a typing ribbon for a couple of dollars and that would do for all the letters you wrote for a good year or so.  Of course, I realize no one writes letters anymore.

A bunch of hand-written and typed letters from the old days.   Yep, I kept them!! 

Then who besides me finds it harder now to hear people on the other end of the line if those people are on smart phones or cell phones.  I prefer my land-line which gives me a better connection.  More grounded, you might say.  So often, nowadays, it sounds as if the person on the other end is multi-tasking deep in some Mayan well or talking while surfing a kahuna.

Then there's the nuisance-phone-call thing ... like several a day sometimes. About the back brace they say I ordered -- but never did. Or my Microsoft connection which is about to fail. Or some problem with my bank account. Or something else which I don't pay attention to because I've already hung up by then.  One nuisance person called and asked if he could speak to me and I said, "No, you can't."  "Why not?" he asked.  "Because you're a fraud," I said. "I'm not a fraud," he replied, then giggled and hung up.  (I've gotten so I can recognize their voices.)  I used to keep track of nuisance-call numbers so I could report them to the Do Not Call listing, but then I realized the callers kept switching numbers.  They also began using local numbers so you'd think it was some friend.

Then, not long ago, when I was on the phone to one of our Top Computer Companies, I kept getting interference from their Hold Music.  There I was, trying to hear what they were telling me as we worked together to solve a computer problem, all with Johnny Cash on the line, too, as if he were blowing bubbles through a Ring of Fire off in some bog.

"Your call is important to us."
     "Our options have changed."
          "I'm either on another line or out of the office."