No, not ours. For once we are innocent.
Recall that our friend and skating coach Joan had had an accident at a company dance—in which a woman in stiletto heels crunched Joan’s foot and gave her a ‘stress’ fracture on the outside of her foot. For a skating coach, this is depressing—and she’s unable to work, and it’s right before the fancy Las Vegas vacation she’d been so looking forward to after a very rough year and two stints in the hospital. She’d gotten clothes. Shoes. I mean, this is a woman who deserves this vacation, and it looked as if she couldn’t go. Her foot in a cast. Unable to drive…let alone dance.
Well, we felt sorry for Joan, and figured her husband would be at the business expo in Vegas, and Joan would be home limping about the house. So we decided to give her a call to ask (Thursday) if she’d like to go visit the pond place (with ponds) out in the Valley and go with us to Scotty’s, our favorite Valley watering-hole.
I ring her cell. This strange background noise comes on, and a deep male voice which isn’t her husband. I say: “Joan?” He says, “No, but that’s probably who this phone belongs to.” Me: “She’s lost her phone. Where is this?” [Sounds like a bar, not improbable, but which?]
He: “This is the security office at Caesar’s Palace. Right across from Cleopatra’s barge.”
Well! Now the only thing to do is ring her husband’s phone and tell him where Joan’s phone is, but we haven’t got the number. We turned this duty over to OSG, who does have the appropriate number, and do not feel quite as sorry for Joan as we did. 😆 We hope she’s dancing, if only on one foot, that she wins a ton at the tables, and meanwhile we’re going out to the pond place after planting rhododendrons in sincere hope, this time, that these ones live.
Heh.
24 hours later I still haven’t gotten a call back after leaving voice mail for Joan’s Spousal Unit about Cleopatra’s Barge. I am hoping HE hasn’t lost HIS cell phone also! I think I’ll call again now.
Carolyn — I got only voice mail with retries of Joan & Spousal Unit’s cell phones so just got off the phone to Son. They should have returned to town late last night. Son will try another avenue of contact to alert them that Joan’s phone is under guard by Cleopatra’s centurions.
I just heard from Joan, advising her she was at the center of an international incident. Thankfully, she got her phone back just before they flew home so all is well. Her foot is better, too.
Leave it to Joan! and I’m so glad she got her phone back!
Cell phones can be useful tools. Though I consider them more of a social disease. Found plans on the net to turn an old VCR into a cell phone signal blocker. Haven’t done it yet, but a 90′ umbrella of silence would be very nice around my office.
As for the stiletto heels, think I would rather have a horse step on my foot. Get well silly human
Mmmm, cell phone blocker. If it wasn’t some type of illegal, I’d be tempted to install that here at our library. It’s only partly the cell phone conversations, although they can be irritating; what galls me is the people who have their ‘cute’ ringtones on volumes you could hear during a rock concert, and they usually go off repeatedly. We have signs all over requesting people to take their phone calls outside, and still get the cow-like stares of incomprehension when we ask them to do so.
Actually, some better restaurants and theaters already employ cell blockers. Unfortunately, the commercial models are quite pricey, hence the plans on the net.
As a library think your only legal obligation is to put up signs to tell one is in operation, and of course clearing it with the city or county board, or whoever is over the public place.
What I want,(which is illegal in this country,) but sold in Europe. Is a device that looks like a remote and can be pointed at a cell phone in use to hang it up. I would get into more trouble than I did with my first laser pointer with one of those babies.
Uh no. Major no no with the FCC. Interfering with a transmitter or receiver licensed by the FCC is bad mojo. A church in maybe San Francisco got busted if I recall a few years ago.
In fact, I remember a case where someone complained that a neighbor’s Ham radio was causing problems with their TV. The FCC investigated and actually the TV owner had to fix his TV because it was leaking RF energy that was potentially causing interference for the Ham radio.
This is why cable companies have vans roaming through their coverage with RF detectors to prevent a poorly terminated cable from spewing all sorts of RF into the ether.
Now maybe these cell blockers have gotten organized and gotten licensed by the FCC also now, but I doubt it. The major cell companies have much more lobbying power with Congress who appoints the FCC members.
Your phrase “cow-like stares of incomprehension” is wonderful. I receive those stares many times a day with students being asked to follow a rule or when I ask for their homework! Haha Back to cell phones, isn’t it strange that people smart enough to buy and set up a cell phone can’t READ a sign in the library and understand it?
oh gee, I had one of my associates use her push-to-talk today at lunch, I was right beside her and the chirp darn near broke my eardrum, not to mention the volume of the speaker when her boyfriend replied. OUUUUCCCCHHHH!!!! When I’m with other people, my phone is on vibrate, unless I forget to change it, and even then, it’s usually on low volume. I don’t have a silly ringtone, I use the standard ring that you would hear from a regular telephone, just not that loud.
Cell phone conversations should be banned from tables where people are eating. The atevi have the right idea, no business at table, save it for the brandy afterward.
I should clarify, I didn’t have her use it, she used it herself….sorry….
How nice that she got to go on vacation and that she got her phone back! Nice when people get to have a good time and even the little things that go wrong can be corrected.
International Incidents! How Exciting!
On the other side of the cell phone hatred thing…
As a homebirth midwife, on call 24/7 and often on a COME RIGHT NOW basis, there is no single item that has had as positive and useful an impact on my life as my cell phone. I worked at a birth center in Austin Texas for 6 months in the early 90s, and only went out 2 or 3 times because using the answering service pager was so stressful, and it was so difficult to find a phone to call back and find out what was going on. With a pager, I was tied to being local and indoors or at least somewhere in close proximity to a telephone. Another thing is that rather than wasting time when I am needed quickly, I can call and cancel the rest of my appointments for the day, arrange childcare and leave my son a voicemail on his phone telling him where to go after school, and line up a dogsitter, all while I’m on my way.
If I am in a business that has cell reception blocked whether on purpose or as an architectural byproduct, I don’t stay long enough to make a purchase. My cell phone has reduced my background stress level by 50% at least. I would give up my fax machine, email, and my washer and dryer before I would give up my phone.
I can certainly understand that. I curse them regularly when someone is, say, reducing speed on the highway unexpectedly to answer a phone (on June 10, it becomes illegal in Washington, and you will get a really stiff fine)—but it certainly makes shopping trips less harrowing. Jane and I shop for different things, and we are each easily seduced into side trips of our particular interest. With cell phones we can find each other in large stores. I go for a month and more never using the phone for a call—or getting one. But if we are shopping, that may do for my phone use for a month.
I use mine so infrequently and get calls on it so rarely I’m the one who forgets to turn off a cellphone—and when will I get a call? When I am somewhere you absolutely don’t want a phone to ring.
Then I’ll forget to turn it back on for our next shopping foray, and Jane will want to do me in.
Cell phones seem to be in the process of filling that classic sf theme of telepathy. Only it is engineering rather than mutation / evolution doing the work for us 🙂
I used to depend on my cell phone when I was still working….great for reaching clients to remind them to wait outside. When I drive now I am generally alone…..having broken down on RT 95 without a phone….having one is *much* better.
Favorite cell experience: At my local post office waiting to make a left turn in my RED 4RUNNER, a woman yammering away on her phone walks into me. When I put the window down to ask if she was ok I got “What the f**k are you doing here?” “Ahhhh, waiting to make a turn?”
Well if the call came from Cleopatra’s Barge, you can be sure your friend was having fun. 😉
@Apf: Cell phones plus bluetooth headsets, you mean. I’ve been at conventions where I had my phone set to auto answer and vibrate, so I’d just start randomly talking to my imaginary friends. 😉