More Random Musings

I got this new phone about a few months back. It has all the bells and whistles, none of which I want or need, but it is this hybrid phone that has better service at our house than the Nextel alone. I have this pain in the neck boss that seems to think I need to be able to be reached even when not at the office. :( Anyway, I kept getting these jokes text messaged to me everyday. Since I am about 15 years too old to actually use texting, I couldn't figure out how to stop it, so I called Sprint. This nice young man explained to me that the jokes were coming because I had subscribed to a monthly service for them, at $9.99 a month. WTF!!! I explained that I had not, and he kept saying "Are you sure"? I told him that not only did I not know how to access the Internet from the phone to get this stupid service, but I didn't even know how to text, and couldn't he just block texting on my phone, because I didn't want it as an option. Now let me explain that at the time I was speaking with him, I had a huge canker sore on the underside of my tongue, thus swelling it and impairing my ability to speak properly. I sounded either drunk or mentally disabled. There was this pause on his end, and I know he wanted to suggest that I start texting, since this whole speaking thing didn't seem to be working out for me. But alas, he did not, he simply discontinued the service and refunded the three months of charges (yes, three months, I'm really on top of things). I did find it strange that Sprint could cancel the service and refund the money for me, yet they insisted that this was a third party service that they had nothing to do with. HMMM? My main point of this long rambling post, was that if people pay $10/month to have stupid jokes sent to them on their phone, do we really need global conferences on why our economy is in the crapper?

My boys have recently started reading The Hardy Boys Mystery books, and they both seem to really enjoy them. I have to read to Ryan and I, however, am having a hard time with the books. They are just so old fashioned. Not in a bad way, I just have to stop about every other page to explain something that doesn't exist anymore. Like getting a message by telegraph, having to call an operator to place a call, party lines, and having the ability to get on an unscheduled airline flight 5 minutes after getting to the airport. And we are only on chapter 2. The Hardy's are also friends with guys named Biff and call each other "Fella" and for some reason this really gets under my skin. At the library, I did find that there is an updated series, and I got one for Sam. It was about roller coasters, and they call each other "Dude" and play x-box. He didn't enjoy it nearly as much as the original,so go figure. It must just be me.

Strangely enough, Scott and I are having a similar experience with a new show that we are watching. Life on Mars is about a NYC cop in 2008 that gets transported back to 1973 after getting hit by a car. The whole time we watch we are saying "Do you remember those" or "when was the last time you saw one of those". It's pretty cool, but I have my doubts as to how long the show may last, since if you were born anytime after about 1970, you probably wouldn't get the subtleties, and without them, it is just another cop show.

So today I went and did early voting. I usually just go on Election Day, but this year we will be out of town. Early voting is fine (although the line was way too long, I can't remember ever waiting like that on Election Day). I do, however, have an issue with this "One Stop" voting. I don't think that registering to vote should be made that easy. If anything, make it more difficult, and weed out the slackers. You should have to put some kind of effort into figuring out how to register. If you don't care enough to put in the time and effort, you don't get to vote. And the no ID required thing, don't even get me started on that.