Lost In a Cloud

            As with everything, there are always pros and cons to having a cell phone, internet service, cloud storage, etc.  I must be old fashioned in my way of thinking.  I would like my phone to act as a phone and my watch to tell time . . . although the watch has nearly become a thing of the past for me as I refer to my cell phone for the time and since I don't wear my cell phone around my wrist, it hasn't bothered me the way a watch often does.  It's a nice feature - though not necessary.  It is convenient.

             My first cell phone was through Voice Stream.  My mom and I had both purchased a phone plan that came with this Nokita - a phone my mom refused to give up until after she got dementia.

            I had mine for over ten years and may have had it longer but it seemed to have vanished during a day trip that I had taken with Roland and the boys.  The weird thing is, I don't remember having even left the car - so I don't know how my phone would have.  But whatever.  I had to get a replacement.

            I liked the size of my new phone and had asked mom if she would like a new phone also. She didn't wish to give it up because it had good reception. She didn't trust that the new technology would offer a very long. I think she was onto something.   Seems like many electronics that are offered today are meant to break down.  They become relics in less than two years anyway - so what's the point of making them to last? I like Adrian Covert's description here.

             When Roland upgraded his phone, he decided he would need the internet and thus got a touch screen phone.  That's all well and good for him, but I cannot use touch screens for the life of me.  Either it will not recognize that I am touching the screen or it will be hyper-sensitive and disappear altogether.  The touch screen for me, personally, is way more frustrating than it is worth.  Besides, if I am going to write something, I would rather have an actual raised keyboard and not a postage stamp-sized keyboard that is even more challenging to my actually small fingers that have somehow grown to the size of the entire keyboard. Not to mention having to read in such a limited space.  Give me a full blown monitor, please.

            Roland's last phone came with the option of a built in speaker to use rather than typing it out.  It didn't punctuate - not for me anyway.  Plus it is frustrating to have your words misspelled or butchered at "Google" thought you were saying something else.  And so I'd have to proof-read and make corrections - which actually seemed to amount to more work than if I had just typed it all in myself.

            Phones do not think - or do they?

            I hadn't charged my camera for quite some time, but Roland has a camera built into his phone.  The quality of picture is actually pretty good. I took only four pictures at Jaime's birthday party before the battery gave out.  We used Roland's phone to get more.  I was devastated when we took his phone home to charge it and it wouldn't charge.  It has been persnickety about its connecting devise.

            Roland took it to the big city of Roseburg to see if it just needed a new battery - or what the deal was.  It was beyond repair.  Oh, no!  The pictures!  I hadn't even looked at them.

            Roland not only purchased a new phone, but is now on a different plan.  Now I am impressed by the technology of the cloud.  Restored all the pictures not only to his phone, but I had him photo/Google the internet on his work computer - and there they were.  Wow.

             I was able to pull up some pictures from my computer of ones we had taken in 2012 - which were also from his phone.  I don't know why.  I could obtain pics through his phone on my computer until Dec 2015.  Everything more current had to be obtained through his computer.  Not sure how that works.

             And, okay, I get that the GPS thingamabob (gadget) that is located in the phone would know where we were when each picture was taken, but what impressed me was how it labeled the photos.  They were sorted into places and things.  So the folders were labeled "Christmas", "Sky", "Rainbow", "Cars" - how did it know that?  Okay, the folder labeled "cars" was more of houses though I suppose there were cars in the photos - but it certainly wasn't the main focus.  Actually, I don't know what was.  Roland said I had wanted the clouds.  How pathetic.  I have been told that I am "trigger happy" when I am taking pictures with the touch screen.

            So here are some pics that we discovered in the cloud:

Her pose reminds me of her brother, Randy