Blog: Up To Date With Modern Telephonic Technology

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You find me today at the very CUSP of TECHNOLOGY, as I have been getting my Mobile Telephone fixed! And it has WORKED!

I've had my current phone for about six years now, which feels pretty recent to me but apparently is like lugging around a ZX80 when all the cool kids have got a QL. I use it for Whatsapping my HOMIES, checking my email, and reading the Guardian Live Blog to see if the election's happened yet (SIDEBAR: it is underway now, in case you don't have a Mobile Telephone to tell you), and so the fact that it's a bit old has not generally been a problem. HOWEVER, in recent months that has changed as the memory has started to get completely full up with BLOAT, so I haven't even been able even to take a PICTURE without it bursting into tears.

I have dealt with this in the traditional manner i.e. ignoring it and hoping it mends by itself, which is how I have dealt with another telephone-related issue for DECADES. For LO! when I got my very first phone, over TWO DECADES ago, I signed a contract with a shop in Leicester (I was still living in Leicester, THAT is how long ago it was!) and have been on the exact same contract ever since. For several years WISE COUNSEL has asked "Why are you paying three times as much a month for your phone as you need to?" as many many other DEALS have arisen that were much better, and so FINALLY last month I decided to sort it out.

THUS I spent several happy days going back and forth to our local VODAFONE SHOP, where a succession of Nice Young Men patiently EXPLAINED things to me. They didn't always get it RIGHT but they were so NICE about it all that I didn't really mind, and at the end of it they had SLASHED my monthly phone bill to a THIRD of what it had been, so I was much pleased.

ENERGISED by this success I realised I could probably sort out some other issues too, and so went and bought myself a second SD card. This tiny tiny little piece of TECH boosted the memory of my current phone to more than our ENTIRE ACADEMIC DEPARTMENT had had on ALL of its servers when I got my first one, and so I used it to set about downloading APPS. This was GRATE fun as I've spent the past year or so gradually deleting APPLICATIONS to save memory, but now I was spending it liberally. Why bother GOOGLING how late my train is going to be (because it inevitably IS) when I can have an APP to tell me? Similarly, why look at Twitter Dot Com to find out which "celebrities" my football club has booked for Personal Appearances over summer when THE POSH APP can do it?

The APP that I really wanted to have back was for PODCASTS, but this involved a FURTHER problem. About six months ago the JACK socket on my phone broke, so I had to manually download MP3s of podcasts onto my computer and then physically transfer them onto an MP3 player like some kind of MEDIEVAL SERF. "I can just get that mended," I thought. "How hard can it be?"

QUITE HARD turned out to be the answer, as the local Phone Repair SHops in the shopping centre were all LIGHTWEIGHT operators catering only to FANCY DANS with phones made since the days of lockdown. "Try a local phone shop" one of them said. "But you ARE local", I thought. Anyway, some more GOOGLING brought the realisation that a) London's Fashionable Tottenham Court Road is FULL of local phone shops (that aren't local to me but still) and b) I was going to get my HAIR CUT nearby on Saturday so could pop in.

THUS on Saturday afternoon I handed my phone over to an Earnest Middle-Aged Man in a BOOTH on Tottenham Court Road and wandered off for a haircut. Almost immediately I thought "hang on, I didn't get a receipt for that or anything" and this wasn't helped by the FACE on my hairdresser when I mentioned what I'd done. "I'm sure it'll be fine," he said. SEVERAL TIMES.

It was not perhaps the most relaxing attendance at a SALON ever, but happily once he'd finished and we'd done the traditional Looking At The Back Of My Head In A Mirror, I skipped back down the road to find that all was well and the jack socket was WORKING again! HOORAH! Well done, solid urban craftsman! THUS I am now loading up on about a million different podcasts again and planning LONG WALKS to listen to them. Obviously at the moment it is going to be pretty much ALL ELECTION STUFF, but if anyone has any recommendations for AFTER all that, I would be very pleased to receieve them!

posted 3/6/2024 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

my podcast recommendations: Walk The Pod The Price Of Football The Rest Is Entertainment The Taskmaster Podcast Taskmaster The Peoples Podcast The Bugle Robot Talk No Such Thing As A Fish Pod Save The UK The Allusionist Tailenders Comfort Blanket Adam Buxton
posted 4/6/2024 by Tim

Hmmm... OK - well: line breaks in comments don't appear when the comment is posted!
posted 4/6/2024 by Tim

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