Surrounded by Phones

It took about two weeks to figure out what to do for Gabriele’s cell phone. We were trying to keep cost down for what is basically a 9 month need. Unfortunately our Verizon friends-and-family plan is booked.

After several trips to Sam’s phone center, research on the web, calls to Verizon, and exchanges with friends and family, we decided to get Virgin Mobile’s pay-as-you-go. $80 phone. $25 per month. 300 minutes, unlimited texting, email, and data. The phone has a mini-browser built in, so it is inherently limited by what you can do with it.

On our third trip back to Sam’s, we had made our decision, but even then, the phone guy suggested another unexplored option: Metro PCS (which he did not sell.) But Gabriele was ready to buy, and so was I. It took about 45 minutes to get her phone set up. In this photo, she is standing in the middle of some of the biggest marketing and product promotion in America. Now we have to figure out what to do for Nicole…

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Messing With Google

Our plan was to meet at Danny’s mid-afternoon and then go to the airport to pick up Nicole returning to the Peace Corps. I drove from work. Kathy and Kelly drove from home. I got there early, so while sitting with Danny at his kitchen table, he got an email translation of a voicemail just left by Kelly on his cell phone. (Danny uses Google Voice to handle all of his voicemail.)

Now Kelly knows Danny does this and that Google will translate her voice message to text to send him. So she talks funny and even uses pig Latin to trick Google.

Somewhat exasperated, Danny reads the following out loud to me:

Hi if we Ian. Don’t you know I fit to get off that so if you need to call and tell us what exited to get off that house job her. Robert didn’t lose sweetie. 2 less okay doing drive in non 3 cross day. My name is Dan.

So he just called her back to find out they were looking for an exit number…. which they had already figured out. We all arrived over an hour-and-half before Nicole came up the escalator.

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