Day Four With the iPhone -- Update

Well, that trick didn't work. I lured my grandchildren over with promises of alcohol and On-Demand movies (don't worry, they are both over 21), only to learn that they, contrary to what I thought, don't even have iPhones!

Instead they have something called Android phones, which are essentially so different from our iPhones that they couldn't help at all. Or claimed they couldn't, anyway. Good thing I didn't bring out the good scotch...

So, still on that learning curve... I can always put some dark window tinting and a sign that says "free candy" on my van and cruise the grade schools. I'm sure that won't cause me any problems at all...

If posting seems a little light in the next few days, it's all the fault of that damned phone.

Day Four With the iPhone

After managing to pull out what hair I had left (I'm getting to look more like my avatar every day anyway...), I've finally reached a point where I am kind of getting acclimated to my new iPhone. After many too-numerous-to-count "how do I..." Internet searches, and in the meantime accidentally erasing all of my contacts, I am feeling more comfortable.

But there is so much that feels, to me, non-intuitive about navigating the menus, etc., in the damn thing. I definitely will have to get the grandchildren over here and give us some lessons. Problem is, they are so fast on their phones that I don't think we'll be able to keep up.

In the meantime, I guess I'll have to ask Siri for driving directions to the nearest App Store.

Welcome to the 21st Century

I just did what I said I would never do, and that was get a Smart Phone -- i.e., a phone that was smarter than me.

We are now the proud possessors of twin versions (only diff is the color) of the iPhone 5c (hey, I know it's not the latest and greatest, but I'm an elderly shut-in on a fixed income here...gimme a break).

Talk about a learning curve. It's like going from a rotary dial phone to a Star Trek communicator. Or it seems more like going from two tin cans on a string to telepathy.

I'm not a knuckledragging Neanderthal, nor am I a neo-Luddite. But I am forced to admit now that I am ... apparently ... a technological moron.

And after I criticized Ted Cruz for the same thing. Tsk-tsk.

It's actually a bit embarrassing. We were always "early adapters" to new technology. Our first cell phones, back twenty-some years ago, were the size and weight of bricks -- they reminded me of WWII walkie-talkies. Over the years we upgraded them, and upgraded them again, until we were satisfied with the LG "Rumour" phones that featured a slide-out keyboard for easy typing. We kept those for a long time. Too long it would appear, since advances in technology swept past us like a rip tide.

They actually were adequate for us, for the several years that we had them, and probably still would be. But when She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed saw another dealer at the antique mall, where we have a space selling "collectibles" and other junk, snapping photos on her iPhone and immediately posting them to Etsy and Ebay, she got "phonis envy" and suddenly we HAD to have iPhones...

So we got them. I can't say enough good about our provider, Credo Mobile (the woman at customer support literally spent over an hour on the phone with us); the main problem wasn't with them, it was with me, the putative "electronix expert, yup-yup" in the house.

Like I always say, it's a time of "agonizing reappraisal"... But not really, since we are stuck being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st Century. At least I don't have to feel technologically all 19th Century when I deal with my grandchildren. Who at least know, intuitively, how this shit works.

Maybe they can give me some "training"...

The Day the Music Died

If you are of a certain age, you will recall 1972 when Don McLean's abnormally-long ballad, "American Pie", hit number one on the charts and was widely interpreted as being "about" the 1959 deaths of musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valenz and the Big Bopper.

But there are more connections, some that may be kind of fanciful and some not, and they've all been put together by a guy named James Waller in a "culture map" that is surely worth taking a look at, if not for the music-connection theories then for the clever use of Internet technology that illustrates them.

It's called, naturally enough, The Day the Music Died. See how Buddy Holly connects to Charles Manson and the Altamont Concert!

Oh, and while you are there, take a look at another culture map, this one called Propaganda by the Deed: Anarchism in Revolution.  Or take your pick from dozens of other culture maps -- they have a lot of them.

It's true that these are some ultra-simplified presentations of some super-complicated connections, but I'm a sucker for this kind of thing... See my New Years Eve post on apophenia.