Fathers Day

Just before Fathers day I had a catastrophic event happen to me. My watch band decided to crack and start to separate. I was devastated. You could hear my disappointment all over the house when I bellowed, "Oh No!". Deanna immediately asked me what had happened, thinking that I had either sliced through my finger or fractured my ankle. I replied to her query that my watch band had a tear and was on the verge for breaking apart. I quickly ran downstairs with my watch band teetering on disaster and used my "tech" brain cells to come up with a viable solution. This technique has been used for years by geeks around the world to save similar problems with their favorite coke bottle glasses. I grabbed the black electrical tape and began tightly winding its sticky elastic like tape around my watch band. After being satisfied with my engineering genius, I noticed that the black tape blended nicely with my black watch band to be almost completely camouflaged from the normal persons view.

A few days later I noticed that my timepiece was not held to my wrist like it used to be. In further examination I noticed that the electrical tape had given way to the pressures of holding the two sides of my now completely severed watchband. I then new that either I needed to purchase a new watch, or somehow find a replacement watchband for my Timex Ironman Data Link Watch.
Now, I must inform my readership that this is no ordinary Timex Watch. This deluxe model Ironman watch has many features not offered on any other watch that I have found. It has a chronograph, which isn't much of a new feature since all it does it count time as time passes. It has a count down timer which is awesome for keeping track of how long the hamburgers have been on the grill or how much longer you have to watch "Deadliest Catch" on your lunch hour. It has 10 alarms for waking you up in the morning while out of town. It has schedules, Appointments. It also has contacts that you can upload to it so that if you are out of town, you can still find the phone number to the Park City Condo. As you can tell, I really use my watch and all of it's features. The down side to purchasing this watch is that it comes with a price tag of $90.00 and I am not one to spend that kind of money on a watch so it really made me sick to think it was time to buy another watch.

So, this Fathers Day I ripped open one of my gifts to find a nice new watchband for my favorite watch in the world. I quickly figured out how to snap out the old band and install the new components. My wrist feels normal again and I don't have to struggle to yank out my phone every time I need to know the date and time. AND, I no longer spend too much time at lunch watching the latest episodes of "So you think you can dance".

Texting

I was talking to a friend the other day about using text messaging to communicate with people. He is a Dad of 5 kids and uses texting to talk with his kids while they are away. He went into a very convincing discussion about how his children could be on a date or at a movie and he could still be in contact with them through text messages. He knows where they are and what they are doing. He uses it the most with his teen age daughter and says it has kept them close. I queried him about how many message he or she would send per month. He said that he tries to keep her from sending more than 3000 per month. WOW, that is like 100 texts per day. I don't think I could even thumb and finger out that many pithy comments if I tried. I asked him about how much it cost to have the text service and he just replied that he has a plan with unlimited texting.

Anyway, a few days later I decided to try out my texting skills while taking my daughter to Sun Valley for a clogging performance. So, I sent a text message to Deanna every once in a while letting her know where we were and what was happening. I sent text's like this, "Were almost there", "its raining", "We R stopping at McD's". She would reply quickly and it was quite fun. After about 5 text's she sent this message, "Did you know it costs $.05 per text?". Well, that did it for me, I was done sending texts.

Today, I pondered over the idea that with our cell phone plan, maybe we had free texting between phones on the same network, "Sprint". So I called. I found out that Texting is not free between Sprint users, AND, THEY CHARGE $.20 PER TEXT FOR BOTH SENDING AND RECEIVING!!!!! WHAT!!!!!

Anyway, I thought it was Blogworthy, so I wrote it up and posted it.

Article from the New Era about Texting.