Low Tech? 2

It has been a while since I last wrote in this blog.

The last time I wrote, I was using my storm about to give it up and go to a flip phone. During that time, I did give up using my storm. It was too big and bulky for me. Don't get me wrong I loved it, but I thought I could handle something without all the hassle. I decided to go low tech, kind of, with the LG Decoy. I got so far as to order it as an upgrade from Verizon and open the box to check out the phone. All in all it was a good phone. Convenient to say the least. It had its own bluetooth headset built in and can be removed at a touch of a button. While sitting at my desk at home, messing with the phone, I came to the conclusion that this may not do it for me. I would call myself a tech person. I would even go so far as to say that I am a "connected" person. I need to stay connected to the Internet. Whether it be email, rss feeds, or even facebook. Something to get me away from what I am doing at the present. That it why I kept the decoy in its box, and returned the faithful blackberry phone. There were issues for me going back from a regular phone to my BB phone. The main issue was I didn't know which one to go back to. I have the storm, the curve, the world phone 8830, and the pearl. The world phone is a no brain-er. No camera no play. The storm is new and high tech but I couldn't get over the accelerometer issues. I decided to activate the pearl. Once it was active, my girl and I went to walmart to walk around and get some McDonald's. While we were walking I was playing with the phone to get re-accustomed to the features. I tried video recording with the pearl but it would not record. Let me rephrase that. I can record just fine on the pearl. It was a matter of the pearl saving the video to memory. This was just fantastic. I want to use a phone and use all of its functionalities. I was disappointed but I tried to troubleshoot the problem. I checked the settings on the phone to make sure it was saving to the memory card. I checked the directory folder on the memory card to make sure it was the memory card and not the device memory. I verified all my settings with my gf's pearl, which can record video. But none of these items worked. It would say that it is recording but the file is always at 0kb. When we got home, I immediately went online and switched the pearl to the curve. Everything went well. I was able to activate the curve and use it. However, I forgot that the curve's trackball would not scroll up so easily. It would take me a few swipes for the cursor to go all the way up the screen. I have lived with this problem since I got the phone but I sure wasn't going to live with it now. I decided to do a little surgery to fix this problem. I took off the silver ring around the trackball off the phone. The trackball was easy to take off after that. Since the pearl and the curve use the same equipment I just swapped out the trackball and silver ring off of the pearl and placed them in the curve. Powered the curve on and I was able to scroll in all directions without a problem.

A couple of key points from this splurge of my mind:

• I want to be low tech
• But I need to be connected

• Thus I need my blackberry.

What else can I do to save some money.

In part one of Low Tech?, I stated that I had 5 lines and I wanted to consolidate those into 2 lines. As I was speaking with the Verizon rep to help me activate the pearl, she kindly helped me reorganize my lines and my plan. So instead of having 5 separate lines, she turned them into a family plan. I have yet to see the total bill for this change but it has to be better than what I was paying before. I will eventually ( meaning some time soon) cancel my 3 lines and just pay the 2 lines. In the end it will turn out nicely for me. I will most likely have to pay about $550 to cancel 3 lines compared to paying $3000 a year for all 5 lines. In the long run this will work to my benefit. I just hope I can pay this chunk in smaller chunks.

I guess low tech for me would be using what I have to benefit me without the need to spend a lot of money. For instance, I have multiple large usb drives I can use for back up and storage. I have several external hard drives for back up and storage. I have several ipods for music and videos and entertainment. I just need to calm down with my spending and use the tech that I already have. Wish me luck with that!