Kids and cellphones

I did have a cell phone, when I was 18. I bought it, and paid for the time on it, myself (I started working at 14). It was back when the Nokia 5110 had just came out. I bought that and a metallic blue faceplate for it.

Now, when I was 15, I had my own pager that I carried with me in school. This was because my mom had been very ill at the time, and that was the way I was notified to call home immediately. My parents bought me the pager, a Motorola T10 Talkabout, and I paid for the service.

In my daughter's case, my wife and I decided she should have a phone because we wanted her to have a way to contact us once she started doing things away from the house on her own. I'm happy to pay for that, and since it's an add on to the plan my wife and I already have, her phone doesn't cost that much extra. We share minutes, and none of us make many calls. We are much more about texting, which is free. We also didn't get the data plan for her. Although her phone technically can access the Internet, that's not why we got it. When my boys are old enough, we'll probably do the same with them.

An even better contingency is a cell phone. I don't know about skid row, or wherever you live, but pay phones disappeared in Boston many years ago. Prepaid phone card

When I was a kid we obviously didn't have cell phones, but I was allowed to have a pocket knife before I was allowed to have a wristwatch.

Whew. Grumpy Old Man thing out of the way, I recently saw a story about a couple girls that got lost in the woods. They got rescued because they had they'd been given their grandma's old cell phone. It wouldn't make regular calls, but you could call 911 on it. Then when the helicopters got in the area one of them had those LED sole sneakers so she took them off and banged them together to signal the helicopters.

Just to wax for a moment, I think it's amazing the technology we have today. My niece and nephew are going to grow up in a technological wonderworld. My niece, for example, thinks that everyone owns a tablet. She wonders why mine won't play Angry Birds (it has a MIPS processor, which is incompatible with most modern cell phone and tablet applications). She takes to it like a duck to water. She talks about watching her favorite shows all of the time, because my brother has Netflix, just like I do, and so for her it is normal that everyone has Netflix, and she can watch her favorite show (Victorious) whenever she wants.

I remember when I had to record movies onto a VCR if I wanted to watch them later (SLP gets six episodes of the Simpsons, baby!), and I'm sure older folks would say, "VCR, hell! I watched whatever our three channels got!" at which point someone older still would say "watch TV? Hell, no, our moms made us play outside!"

The point is that technology is advancing so fast, to the point where a child having a cell phone, or being proficient in using one, is commonplace. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just amazed at how fast technology has moved, and will move.

/end waxing philosophical

Shouldn't SLP get you twelve episodes of The Simpsons?

Oops! Yes, I was thinking of how many hours SLP mode allowed. Yes, 12 episodes of The Simpsons.

Remember recording things in SLP even when you didn't need the extra time, just because SLP would freeze-frame without distortion bars?

Yes. I recorded a number of documentaries† just for that very purpose. I still have a VCR, though now I use it to transfer, clean up, and re-author home movies and such, which is a pain in the ass, by the way.









† Of course we all know I mean porn.

Man, I remember asking for a TV/VCR combo in '01 to record Enterprise on. Ah, good times.

For Christmas one year, my brother and I got a 13" TV/VCR combo. You'd have thought we won the lottery. I was like, "we can watch TV and record it at the SAME TIME!"

We only owned 2 videos (Spaceballs, and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier), but we watched the hell out of them, and recorded a bunch of Simpsons, Babylon 5, and TNG episodes. I wish I still had those. Most of them are long gone.

Anyhoo, for my birthday a few months later, my dad bought "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective." I flipped out. I was like "this movie is brand new!"

Bizarrely, those are EXACTLY the two videos I picked up at a thrift store a few years ago, making them the only VHS recordings I've purchased in probably almost a decade...

HA! When I first finally broke down and got ATT&T cellphones (for emergencies, etc) I got HAMMERED with massive phone bills. I didn't know shit about "minutes" and whatnot. Now I do, and have a flat rate unlimited Verizon and Boost. The phones themselves are basic, but still:

I can't figure out half the functions! I try to adjust the volume, I take a picture of my hand.

I'm in the woods, scouting for deer in preparation for September bow season.
I see a cute looking tortoise next to a log, and put the phone right next to his face and take a few pictures. Now I can't find the pictures on my phone!

But yes, kids today need phones like kids needed shoes 100 years ago. They can get by without them, but why put your kids at a disadvantage? They don't need the best, but they need the minimum to keep up.

Tracphone here. Once a year I buy 400 minutes/365 days just to keep it running. I use it so often, I currently have over 1600 minutes.

And, IIRC, you could fit 6 TNG episodes on a Betamax T160 at BetaIII speed.

I just finally threw out my DS9 VHS (recorded off air) tapes yesterday, since I've finally bought all but the last season on DVD.

Well, we all know Betamax was the superior format.

Anyhoo, for myself, I have an LG900 (they're only $29 now, I think), and I use Net10, and maybe I use about 20 minutes a month. I have an assload of minutes, and as long as I drop $10 every month on it, I could call England and talk for about 20 hours without using up all of my time.

Zel has Straight Talk...unlimited time/data/text for $50 per month.

We are constantly in contact when he is at work and I am home alone and if we go out we need to be able to call for help in an emergency.

Straight Talk is a good plan. I'd have it if I ever used that many minutes. As it stands, I only use my phone in emergencies, or as a point of contact. I currently have 500 minutes, but that's due to switching home phone services, where I had to use my cell phone for all incoming and outgoing calls until the new service was in.

None of the VCRs I owned would do that very well at the slower recording speeds but they all would at the highest recording speed.

But I probably owned better VCRs than most people.

Flow bought me one when I graduated from high school. I had to pay for it monthly but the initial cost was his. I did use my moms at college for the first couple of months untill I could get my phone.

My parents probably could have but didn't. If my dad had had one when I was in high school I might have gotten one.

Hell there were still phone BOOTHs when I was in high school.

How did we ever survive being out of touch for 6 or 8 hours at a time?

We had active supervision on the part of responsible adults, was how. Parents who actually engaged in active parenting. Teachers and support staff at school who actively paid attention. We were allowed to be kids and teenagers, instead of prematurely assigned a level of autonomy that kids have no business being entrusted with.

One of the funny bits from "Star Trek IV: The One With The Whales": When Kirk is romancing Dr. Gillian at the pizza place and Scotty calls him on the communicator and he tries to play it off as Gillian notes "You have a pocket pager." Nowdays the exchange between Scotty and Kirk would be mundane--apart from the mention of "beaming" and Scotty calling him "Admiral."

The wireless microphone transmitters I use have a clip on them that goes on your pocket or belt. When I'm putting a mic on someone we're going to interview, I'll tell them "It clips on like a pager" so they'll know how to attach it.

There's going to come a time when people won't understand what that means.

When I first read this I thought you were talking about Flow buying you a VCR. I had visions of one of those crappy "rent to own" VCRs that were a staple of college dorm rooms in the 1980s.

I hate to say it but pretty much every tween has a cellphone these days and if you walk into any school all of them seem to be using them 24/7. I would recommend an unlimited plan or at least a plan which limits their overage time for texts, voice, and data. Some plans will even allow parental controls so that after a certain number of minutes the kid can't call her friends any more but the parents number can still be called thus allowing them to contact you in emergencies yet limiting the size of the bill wrt yacking to friends.

http://cell-phone-parental-control-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

My parents gave me a pager when I first started going out without adult supervision. Then, when I turned 16 and got a car, my dad got mom and I the first generation Motorola bag phones.

It was to remain on at all times and the rules were: Except in emergencies, the only outgoing calls I could make were to my parents. I had 100 minutes per month of incoming calls. If I went over, even one month, I could only answer calls from my folks.

I expect to do the same with my kids. A basic, no frills emergency only phone when they start going out without adults and then a "phone of average intelligence" when they start driving.