Has digital communication improved your life? (Bangor, Millinocket: leases, credit card, loan)

[tcrackly]

Originally Posted by gussie

Well my cell phone never worked here... so glad Casper you can connect to your family..I just threw my cell in the garbage...............................

I got a Verizon phone because relatives in Cooper told me that's what had the best reception. The skicker is that Verizon does not set up contracts Downeast. You have to arrange for it in more populated parts of the state.

[Casper1212]

Verizon bought out the cell provider we use down here. We liked the service with the old company. Don't know what it's going to be like with Verizon, but at least we don't have to buy out our contracts.
Back to the digital age, I think one of the best parts about the advancements is in photography. No matter how much you know or don't know about taking pics, you can usually get good shots with today's digital cameras. You can also download them to the computer and share them easily. The only drawback is the size. With most digital applications, they are making things smaller and smaller. And there are some cameras that are getting smaller that still take great pictures. But I needed to advance to a better camera for my job. The one I use now looks like the old 35 mm cameras. Can't exactly drop that in my purse. But I did get a holster for it so that I can slide it in there and have my hands free, and I don't have the expensive camera swinging around on a strap, bumping into things.

[ADSLubec]

Originally Posted by Casper1212

It's like everything else. It has it's advantages, and it has its drawbacks. Advantage--people can find you anywhere, anytime. Drawback--people can find you anywhere, anytime

Drives my boss nuts that I don't own a cell phone. Every year he asks for a list of employee cell phone numbers just in case there is an emergency at work and he needs to reach us. Every year I tell him there is no emergency important enough related to work that he needs to reach me that quick. He never gives up asking though.

He also hates the fact that we have no computer in the house in Maine and no telephone answering machine. If he wants to reach me I tell him try at night when we are home or e-mail me as I might check my e-mail at the library from time-to-time.

Life is too short for work to interfere with family time.

Alan

[Northern Maine Land Man]

"He also hates the fact that we have no computer in the house in Maine and no telephone answering machine."

Is this boss so young that he has never experienced the U. S. Mail?

[Maine Writer]

Life is too short for work to interfere with family time.

We're protective of family time. The answering machine is off 24/7 and the phone isn't often answered after supper. Sometimes the biggest advantage to digital anything is the ability to turn it off.

[forest beekeeper]

Originally Posted by ADSLubec

Drives my boss nuts that I don't own a cell phone. Every year he asks for a list of employee cell phone numbers just in case there is an emergency at work and he needs to reach us. Every year I tell him there is no emergency important enough related to work that he needs to reach me that quick. He never gives up asking though.

He also hates the fact that we have no computer in the house in Maine and no telephone answering machine. If he wants to reach me I tell him try at night when we are home or e-mail me as I might check my e-mail at the library from time-to-time.

Life is too short for work to interfere with family time.

Alan

I was once at a duty station where they hounded each of us for a cell phone number. I replied that "I have never been ordered to have one, so I do not have one". I was told: "Well i am telling you to get one". "Is that an order? I have seen a memo here that says only critical personnel are required to have one, and it has an addendum that lists who the critical personnel are [they were all high ranking officers]. I am not on that list. So when you say that you are ordering me to buy one, is that a lawful order? You are not a critical person, so you are not required to have a cell phone, so why are you trying to make me have one? By saying that you are ordering me to buy a cell phone, you are in violation of that written directive, so you are breaking the law. You can write me up on charges for not buying a cell phone, but you better write yourself up first for ordering me to buy one".

Each level of management loves to add their own layers of requirements onto each directive. They hated it whenever I could find where they were each violating written directives.

That got me by for two years, before I was finally given a written letter ordering me to buy a cell phone [they never did change the list of mission critical personnel]. I saved the letter though and used it when filing my income taxes. From then until I retired my cell phones were a tax deduction.

I have a cell phone. Our landline is good for DSL, but it's audio is terrible. So when folks want to talk to us, they commonly call our land-line then change their minds and call us again on my cellphone.

Our landline rarely has clear enough audio to hear each other speaking.

If I could replace either service, I would. But our cellphone is not capable of giving us DSL connection speeds, and our baby bell company is not capable of providing us with a landline that you can hear someone else speak.

So we are stuck with both.

Does this 'improve' my life?

sigh, well I can talk to folks not within eye-sight, and I surf the WWW. So I guess that my life has improved.

[Casper1212]

Having a cell phone saves hubby a lot of trips into work to fix problems and I don't know how I would work without mine. But think about how you reached someone in an emergency BEFORE cell phones, if they didn't answer their home phone, or didn't have a home phone. The local sheriff's deputies usually know where everybody lives and will deliver a message if it's that big an emergency. Used to do it at state police when there was a genuine emergency.

[gussie]

My father was a police LT. and had a police scanner. If anything was up there was a private channel he tuned into. My sister is Director of 911 in a town of 100,000 they issue her a blackberry as well.....

[reloop]

Originally Posted by ADSLubec

Drives my boss nuts that I don't own a cell phone. Every year he asks for a list of employee cell phone numbers just in case there is an emergency at work and he needs to reach us. Every year I tell him there is no emergency important enough related to work that he needs to reach me that quick. He never gives up asking though.

Life is too short for work to interfere with family time.

Alan

Amen I find it ironic that while we used to "call in" to work when we were sick, we now "call out."

I guess it's in the vernacular, but the subtle implication to me anyway, is that work is supposed to be numero ono - second would be family obligation. Pffttt...to that I say.

And speaking of work, I gotta run...

[Casper1212]

Just think. It if wasn't for all these horrible digital wonders, you guys would never have met. Trade offs are trade offs, and there's no getting around it. Use the computer or cut down a tree to make paper. Use your phone to call the neighbors or pollute the air and drain our natural resources by driving over. Use a digital camera or print on paper, using chemicals that will end up in a land fill or the water supply. I communicate more frequently with my kids and relatives because my cell phone plan and my computer internet makes it practical. I have a job working from home because I can send in my work from a hundred miles away via internet. I'm keeping my 'puter! And my cell! And my DVD player! And I just LOVE the digital photo frame my son gave me! They don't pollute, they save me money, and they make less of an impact on natural resources both in their creation and the process that creates them. If they had never been developed, I wouldn't know what I was missing. Or would I? No job, seldom talking with my kids, fewer souces for research, the list goes on. And on. And on.