buzzer in my pocket

Those who read closely a certain blog may be able to deduce that much of my time since the Worldcon has been spent in aid of a friend from out of town who was taken from that convention to a hospital and is now at a different hospital, recuperating from surgery. I've run errands and spent time on cheering bedside visits. Others helped from the convention end, but then they had to go home; my particular virtue is being local.

Both this, and keeping in touch with B. during the con itself, have put a lot of usage on my cell phone, particularly the messaging function. I count myself fortunate that the Great Disappearing Act of July which disposed of a newish phone I didn't much like enabled me to replace it by reverting to the previous model which is much easier to use. For one thing, I didn't have to use any absurd or complex Bluetooth to add my preferred ringtone. All I needed was to open the browser and type in the file's URL. The phone downloaded the file automatically and then asked if I wanted to set this as my ringtone. Why, yes I do, and that took care of that.

But I haven't actually used the ringtone much, and not just because most of my calls are texts, which use a different, pre-set sound. Experience at the convention rapidly convinced me that it makes more sense to most of the time leave the phone on vibrate mode. I can feel that in my pocket better than I can hear the ringtone in a noisy room, and I don't have to constantly be turning it on and off as program items end and begin. The only catch is that it buzzes the same way regardless of whether I've received a call or a text, and I'm still training myself to look properly to determine which it is.

I'm also still getting used to typing messages by the system by which you type in a word's numerical equivalent and the phone guesses what matching word you want. No, I want 7378464 to mean "resting," not "serving." That sort of thing. The challenge is ignoring the phone's various guesses on the screen as you type digit after digit and try to remember where in a long or messy word you are.