Modern Technology and times

[greenpondmike]

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Just wait till we start blowing up each others satellites,, you'll need more than just batteries to survive.

I believe in prepping, but I also believe you have to live till you die. What I mean is not letting worry and anxiety rule your life to the point that you have no life. No offense, it's just that I don't want to be too concerned with crossing bridges till I get there.

 

[orbital]

I believe in prepping, but I also believe you have to live till you die. What I mean is not letting worry and anxiety rule your life to the point that you have no life. No offense, it's just that I don't want to be too concerned with crossing bridges till I get there.

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I know, my overall point is we have far too many eggs in one basket w/ the digital everything world that is being forced on us.

It's not hard to see people loose any grasp of common sense when things turn south.



I didn't mean to step over bykfixers last post,, hell all his posts are good.

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[greenpondmike]

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I know, my overall point is we have far too many eggs in one basket w/ the digital everything world that is being forced on us.

It's not hard to see people loose any grasp of common sense when things turn south.



I didn't mean to step over bykfixers last post,, hell all his posts are good.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Whoops, I apologise. Yeah I agree with you. I also agree with you about bykfixer.

 

[bykfixer]

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I know, my overall point is we have far too many eggs in one basket w/ the digital everything world that is being forced on us.

It's not hard to see people loose any grasp of common sense when things turn south.

My comrads at work and I were discussing that and how we get used to it, and even expect it. I had a 10:30 e-meeting yesterday to discuss some bridge repairs in the near future. Now it used to be an engineer who had a fancy phone that could accept a few calls at a time. Now we have face to face tele-meetings through the magic of celular service (whatever that actually is).
My e-calendar reminded me of the meeting. Ok, but is it a zoom, a team, what? My microsoft outlook calendar said it was on my google calendar. Huh? I have a google calendar? Where is that? I'm clicking on stuff on the laptop provided by the client. Nope, you can't get in this e-door buster your token has expired. Get out my company iPad that uses the clients network and enjoy dueling firewalls (whatever those are) to no avail. Now I started this an hour early just in case.

So far the telephone I'm using for hooking to the internet worked great. No issues at all. So as a last resort I get out the company laptop with company network and try to get to the meeting that way. But now my phone won't hook to the internet. Without being on the internet somehow my microsoft outlook calendar knows I have a meeting in 15 minutes, in 10, in 5……by now I am livid. I'm trying to do all of this in the front seat of a pickup truck. I'm spiking my nearby gloves, tossed my water bottle out the window and the bag of cheerios I was eating from split open when I slammed it on the seat and now there's cheerios everywhere. 4 minutes……3 minutes, at 10:30 exactly the internet connected and poof I was in a conference call.
Now that I think about it I don't know if it was a google, a microsoft or what kind of meeting it was to be honest. All I know is we discussed some new never been done technology that I saw used back in the 1990's. Yup, they tried it then and didn't like it so now a new breed of engineers are trying it again for the first time.

 

[greenpondmike]

Sorry you went through all that bykfixer. I sure hope the engineers figure out why that bridge technology was rejected in the 90s.
My friend and his wife are having apple firewall trouble and he has been locked out of his iphone and ipad for almost a year now. I suggested to him not to spend their money on those things when a cheap android will do just fine (mine was $39). Nothing wrong getting an iphone if you have the money, but when a person like my friend is trying to live a sirloin lifestyle on a hunburger budget things just don't work out as good sometimes. Now he keeps his wife's iphone and she goes to work without one, but she only has to drive a mile or two. I believe in good security but sometimes too much can get in the way.
I'm glad to hear that it finally worked out for you.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

My microsoft outlook calendar said it was on my google calendar. Huh?

Oh, I've had days like this also. I think we're reaching the point of being hopelessly interconnected. It seems there's a new social media app almost every day that people stampede to without abandoning their previous ones, leaving a tangled web of devices and accounts that can cross into each other's lane far too easily. The "cat lawyer" is a case in point.

 

[bykfixer]

The day of the Oklahoma bombing my brother in law and I had gone on a fishing trip and had no radio in his basic stripped down Isuzu pickup truck. We got home that night and everybody was gathered around the tv. We were kinda shocked but at the same time had a great day of fishing go unspoiled by bad news. I heard about 911 when the federal government shut down a project I was doing because we were working on putting in underground pipe near a major fiber optic network.

In 2001 I got my first celphone. I had to walk 50 feet outside my home to get it to work. I used to travel a lot for work and most times there were no signals. If there were I was roaming at like $2/minute. I discovered that when my phone bill was $1000!! Yikes. In a tizzy I ran over the Ericson phone with my truck like 25 times and it did not faze it. I spiked it like a football until my arm hurt and that only scratched it up. That was one tough telephone. Ah, but it did not hold up to being soaked in diesel fuel overnight wrapped in a newspaper and set on fire in the Best Buy parking lot where I bought the dam thing. When I felt like it was melted enough I scraped it up with a shovel and tossed it into a neaby pond. Take that you stupid phone!! Mwew-ah-ah……
About a year ago my iPhone fell about 2 feet onto a tile floor and the screen cracked in about 20 places. What? That Ericson would have put a dent in that floor.

Now speaking of technology, I joined here in 015 and about 99.9% of my posts have been from a smart phone. All three of my wifes sons use "pay as you go" celphones and actually come out way ahead at the end of the year versus buying the latest iPhone or Samsung. Perhaps your friend can look into that greenpond.

 

[idleprocess]

In 2001 I got my first celphone. I had to walk 50 feet outside my home to get it to work. I used to travel a lot for work and most times there were no signals. If there were I was roaming at like $2/minute. I discovered that when my phone bill was $1000!! Yikes. In a tizzy I ran over the Ericson phone with my truck like 25 times and it did not faze it. I spiked it like a football until my arm hurt and that only scratched it up. That was one tough telephone. Ah, but it did not hold up to being soaked in diesel fuel overnight wrapped in a newspaper and set on fire in the Best Buy parking lot where I bought the dam thing. When I felt like it was melted enough I scraped it up with a shovel and tossed it into a neaby pond. Take that you stupid phone!! Mwew-ah-ah……
About a year ago my iPhone fell about 2 feet onto a tile floor and the screen cracked in about 20 places. What? That Ericson would have put a dent in that floor.

The last flip phone I used was a 'batphone' for work that got passed around to the designated on-call. It a 'lite' ruggedized Samsung of some flavour circa 2014, selected because one of the other supervisors was rough on phones. That thing routinely lasted at least 2, sometimes 3 weeks on a charge. The phone required absolutely no positive regard on the part of the user - beefy well-engineered tough plastic housing, a sturdy hinge mechanism, and a screw-on battery cover ensured it was more than sufficient for the butterfingers and merely careless alike.

Of course, the rugged flip phones we remember were simpler devices far less capable than the modern smartphone which by necessity has more innards, less protective housing. However I've found that even the most rudimentary TPU case offers surprising drop protection for yours truly who lacks the sort of ... unnatural grace ... that so much modern design presumes and has dropped almost entirely glass smartphones onto tile floors and concrete more than a few times.

 

[greenpondmike]

.....:thinking:

 

[greenpondmike]

"Perhaps your friend can look into that greenpond"

I don't know bykfixer. His wife needs a phone at the present, but they are too stubborn to go that simple and easy route. That's a good ideal though. I have all I need for $25 (almost $30 with tax) a month on a $39 smartphone. My wife has the same type phone and plan and both are non contract plans . Our needs are well met.

 

[bykfixer]

Exactly. I had a pay as you go for a while. When working in southside Va the only signals were not Verizon. So I had heck I forget the carrier back then but they were called Virgin phones. When I worked a little east of Richmond Alltell was the only signals so I carried that. It was a nextel Nokia. Loved the walkie talkie. Later Verizon was the only signals so I carried a Verizon pay as you go.
Eventually I started dating Mrs Fixer and we went in together on a contract thinking if we could split minutes without arguing we may just get along ok.

One thing I miss is flashlights with slider switches. Twisties and clickies are ok but I love me an on/off slider switch. Bright Star made really good ones with a positive detent in the middle for signaling. I bought a $3 Dorcey 2aa LED light recently because it has a slider. The beam sucks. The tint sucks. But the slider is sweet.

 

[greenpondmike]

My mother in law bought me one of those 2aa dorcys for Christmas. It's useful and the slide switch seems durable.

If you had a virgin mobile phone you would have been using the native sprint network. I just got away from verizon pay as you go as the signal went from fairly good to bad. I now have simple mobile that uses the t-mobile network. We get unlimited everything, but the internet slows down after 3 gigs per phone. It is still manageable though- I'm on slow internet now. I have to replenish my minutes sometime after midnight tonight and I will be back fast again.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

I now have simple mobile that uses the t-mobile network. We get unlimited everything, but the internet slows down after 3 gigs per phone. It is still manageable though- I'm on slow internet now. I have to replenish my minutes sometime after midnight tonight and I will be back fast again.

If you have wi-fi at home or work, make sure it's set up to use that for data when it's available. This will enable you to use less of your cell plan's data bandwidth. I do this and I don't think I've ever gone over my limit.

 

[greenpondmike]

If you have wi-fi at home or work, make sure it's set up to use that for data when it's available. This will enable you to use less of your cell plan's data bandwidth. I do this and I don't think I've ever gone over my limit.

Thanks for that suggestion PhotonWrangler. I only have wi-fi at my mother in law's. I used to have it at the dodge/jeep place I was guarding, but I got replaced a week ago by a high tech alarm system.
They have wi-fi at this fuel terminal I'm at now but I don't have the password.
With the plan my wife have it is all unlimited, so we can't go over. The month before last I used 12 gigs- that's 9 gigs on slower data.

 

[bykfixer]

Sprint! That's it, yeah.
I use about 2 gigs a month on my phone. Now my work phone is used as a hot spot for internet connection since much of my work is online these days. I usually get a notice in the first week of each billing cycle that the 10 gigs was used up.

One day I was at my office for a meeting as normally my work truck is my office. While at the physical office the company server went down and everybody filed out of the building like it was a fire drill. One older guy stayed. I asked why he wasn't leaving. He said "I save my work to my hard drive, they all use the cloud"……

A few months before that my company laptop had been migrated over to new one with Windows 10 from 7. The IT guy said he could migrate it over in about 10 minutes. Then when he saw my 500 gig hard drive was over half full he started walking in circles and raising his hands in the air in a freak out mode. "Why is your hard drive so full? Have you not heard of the cloud? This will take days"…… I replied "the last guy just saved my hard drive into a big ole folder in about an hour and I just used that afterward". That was when we went from XP to 7 and the IT guy was a Chinese designer who spent most of his time trading stocks on the Shanghai stock market. But he always made time for me because I was interested in what he did and how he did it. Heck, at one point he granted me administrator status and let me do my own IT repairs as he would explain to me over the phone how to do it.

So I tell the new IT guy "look, I gotta go, just migrate my hard drive onto your cloud and I'll download it tomorrow"……it took about two weeks for everything to show up. But being taught to back up often I knew what stuff I needed right then and put it on a 64 gig flashdrive I carry everyday.

So the day the server went down and everybody at the office had left except the one older gent he and I talked about old school versus using the cloud until lunch time. I texted that young IT guy and said "next time you wonder why my hard drive is so full remember today when nearly everybody was left with nothing to do except our old pal Archie"……

I used to make my young trainees back up their computer once a month. Oh they'd moan and groan "why do I have to do this when we have the cloud?" I said "one day the cloud won't be available"……see we have a password system where you have to be on a hardline to change it. As a bonus you do not get a reminder either. We work in the field. One by one each youngster experienced the "expired password" phenomenon where access to the company cloud is cut off. It only took one time for each one to say "can I use the backup hard drive today?"

 

[bykfixer]

Meanwhile the simple bobblehead dog has climbed aboard my current work truck.

He's been with me since 2001
With all of todays modern gadgets, that little dude still bobs his head up and down or side to side each day. He has probably travelled a half million miles or more.
His name is……wait for it……
Bob

 

[greenpondmike]

That's cool, I like Bob the dog. Those type of dash ornaments are the best kind IMHO.

Yeah bykfixer, an external hard drive is what I like to use for backup.

 

[greenpondmike]

.....:sleepy:

 

[greenpondmike]

Well, in the old days they used to get a opossum out from under a rock by jabbing him with a stick. I wonder in these modern times how folks would do that?

 

[Katherine Alicia]

Well, in the old days they used to get a opossum out from under a rock by jabbing him with a stick. I wonder in these modern times how folks would do that?

Look for the external Wi-Fi antenna (he`d need that because it`s hard to pick up Wi-Fi through rocks) then cut the cable, he`ll soon come out to investigate why he`s lost internet conection. 😉