The Future of my iPhone

Today, I am struggling with a decision.

My iPhone, which was purchased the end of July, 2016, is full.  I use it just as much as a camera as I do a phone/text/way to browse the Internet.  The memory is full of photos, and I've been having issues taking the photos off (I won't bore you with the details).  I had to take apps off just to install the latest operating system upgrade, which was an urgent one due to security concerns.  I had to take apps off the phone.

Now, I don't have room for the next operating system upgrade.  

Do I buy the latest iPhone, the one just released (iPhone 13)?  I used my first iPhone for four years.  This one, I've had for five years. My strategy has been to get a new, current phone, and keep it for a long time.

A much better camera than my iPhone SE first edition tempts me, but is it necessary?  I enjoy photography but the limitations of the iPhone (especially with macro photography, for which it would be difficult to purchase a supplemental gadget to attach to my iPhone) frustrate me. So does my SE 1st Edition's inability to take good photos on cloudy days (which we have too many of where I live.)

My son talked to me and said 'Mom, if photography is going to be a hobby for you, you can't cheap out.  I suggest you buy an iPhone model a year or two old, not worrying about the latest built in camera, Spend the difference in money on an actual camera with features you want and decent photo editing and storage software".

But my cell phone is always with me, meaning my camera is always with me.

Then, there is 5G.  Do I really need to upgrade to a 5G ready phone?  Will having 5G matter to me?  Perhaps a year old iPhone model (one of the iPhone 12's) will do.

I'm retired but working part time.  Still, I have to watch my spending.

I want to keep taking good pictures for my readers, like this autumn clementis.

I know, in the scheme of things, this is a minor thing to worry about.  But if anyone has suggestions, I would appreciate it.

One more note:  due to Yom Kippur, I will not be posting comments until this evening (this post published automatically and was prewritten).  

Thank you in advance for any suggestions (I know some of you have made suggestions before, but I think I need one more small push.)

Keeping in Touch Through Photography

It can be hard to keep in touch with people in these times.  We find all kinds of ways.

I do not have a lot of friends.  I'm an introvert and don't make friends easy.  But I value each and every person I call friend.  The same goes for all of my readers.


I text photos with a cousin and a cousin in law.  One is recovering from surgery and I do the flower photography, one a day for her.  For the other, we exchange flowers.

I also text flowers occasionally to my late mother in law's best friend.  She's 89, still feisty, still restless, still loves to be around people.  It's been hard for her.

Then there's the woman I call my "guest photographer".  Once, before she retired, we used to sometimes take lunch together and we would go out and walk, and take pictures.  I miss those walks.

I used to see my guest photographer a lot more than I do now.  In fact, I've only seen her once since the pandemic started and it was for about five minutes.  So we try to keep in touch by email but then life happens.  She's a caregiver (for both people and animals) and has a packed life.

Zoom?  I'm not a fan and I'm not sure her rural internet service would support it even if I was. 
Guest photographer keeps sending me photos by email (she lives out where there is spotty cell phone service) and today I decided I would publish some of her photos. 


So, I will take a short break from photography.  Today's wildflowers are brought to us by my "guest photographer" using a DSLR and not an old iPhone like I do.  Enjoy!

This is meadow dropwort, which is considered invasive in some parts of the country.

I am not sure I have ever seen this, but it is beautiful and I understand it has a light fragrance, too.

A far away shot.

A small butterfly (I'm not good on butterfly ID) on black eyed Susan.

Last but not least, a blue wasp.  Guest photographer thinks it is a type of mud daubber.

It's wonderful when you can spend some of your days in nature.  My hope is always that pictures I post bring you some joy.

And please, stay safe.

How are you keeping in touch with friends?

The Purse Dial

One day, several years ago, spouse and I were shopping in a Home Depot, when suddenly, my purse started to talk to me.

"Hello, hello?" my purse said.  I stared at it, realizing that the voice sounded familiar...

It was someone I used to exercise walk with at work before she retired.  I grabbed my phone before she hung up and we spoke for several minutes.

It was my introduction to purse dialing.  I quickly learned how to set my phone so it wouldn't happen again.

Fast forward to February, 2020.

I was at work, but my spouse (retired) was home.  Suddenly, the phone rang.

Spouse was watching TV, and our cable system has a really nice feature if you get your TV and phone from them - caller ID on your TV screen.  Anyway, although our phone's spam filter cut off the call after one ring, the caller ID came up.

It was someone I knew who had cancer surgery back in December. (Her prognosis is good.) It's been a slow recovery for her.

She would not have called during the day, knowing I'm at work.  Thinking something bad had happened, my spouse went for the phone but, as described above, the ringing stopped before he could reach it.

Then the phone rang again.  Same number.

This time, spouse managed to answer.  My caller had no idea she had dialed our house.  She was trying to find something in her purse.

They ended up talking for over a half hour.

I'm not big into calling people but these times are not normal times.  I called her and we caught up.

Now, I wonder how my New York City friends and relatives are holding up during this terrible time. This person lives in New York City.

I'm calling this person once a week now. Somehow, we end up spending almost all our phone time discussing life during COVID-19 and some of her trials and tribulations. I'm not a big "keep in touch by phone" person and I had not been reaching out to her like I should have been.  The coronavirus changed that.

Is it grim?  Not at all.  Believe it or not, we laugh constantly.  Is her situation funny?  Well...sort of yes and no.  But this person is a big believer that you could laugh or you could cry, and she chooses laughter.  At least with me. 

That purse dial? It was meant to be.

In the next few days, I'll share how I keep in touch with a couple of other people.

Here's another take on friendship in the time of Covid-19.

While we are at it, it's a little late for this St. Patrick's Day, but let's change the subject and drink to the everyday heroes in our lives.

New York City was my home for some 21 years.  I grew up there.  I've walked down the streets on the news reports.  I've ridden the subways perhaps thousands of times.  But the familiar is no longer familiar.

We watch as our world changes, maybe forever.

We need each other and our friendships more than ever.

I am so thankful for the technology that brought me together with a friend.

This is Only a Test #blogboost

I wonder how many of my readers are old enough to remember this:

Ah, those dreaded tests of the Emergency Broadcasting System.  Even when a radio or TV station (like in the above example) tried to lighten it up, it was never a fun thing.

As a alumna - nay, survivor - of the "Duck and Cover" era, I still cringe when I hear the sirens calling out local volunteer fire departments.

Do you remember duck and cover? 

They still have the tests, of course,  They are monthly now, and are just a small inconvenience.

So, I read with interest about today's test.  At 2:18 pm Eastern time, (1:18 pm Central, and so on through all the time zones of the United States) FEMA and the FCC will run a test from the Wireless Emergency System that will appear on every smartphone. A similar test will run on all TV stations

The WEA test message will have a header that reads "Presidential Alert" and text that says:

“THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.”

Yes, it's only a test.  This system will permit the President to contact our population in case of an emergency situation.  Although....

Let's take a short trip down memory lane, to earlier this year, when a "this is not a drill" alert created 38 minutes of panic in Hawaii.  Few in Hawaii will ever forget January 13, 2018.

So, let's think about this a minute.

What if there really was a national emergency such as a missile launch against our country?  Or, a hacker gets hold of the system?

The one good thing about the "Duck and Cover" era (and you are welcome to watch the entire movie above) is that people were encouraged to be prepared.  Maybe it wasn't in the right way, but we had a system of public fallout shelters, and a system of various types of sirens for both natural and man-made disasters. 

We still have a system of warning sirens, but not that many of us know about it.  Ironically, the people of Hawaii do. 

And, when I lived in Kansas years ago, we did have tornado sirens and TV stations had a special symbol in the bottom right of the screen when a tornado watch was in effect.

So, it's nice that we will have this modern warning system - but then what?

One day, it may not be a joke.  How many of us would know what to do?  Do I?  Would you?

Day 3 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge #blogboost

Waiting

I sit, turned off, ignored.

I was once your Magic Phone.

I stored your memories,

I recorded the flowers,

The sunsets, the vacations.

But now my voice is stilled.

Another feels your soft caress

Of fingertips on her screen.

Another looks your questions up

And snuggles in your embrace.

I remember you.
Do you remember me?

Identity Theft?

Yesterday, I went to the local Verizon store to upgrade my phone. (Verizon is one of several major cell phone carriers in the United States.)

I had my phone over 3 years so I should have been eligible for a new phone.  But wait, not so fast.

 "No", I was told, "someone called on September 11, 2015 using your account, gave the correct last four of your account owner's (my spouse's) social security number and and upgraded to an iPhone 6S; you can't upgrade until 2017".

In the United States, we don't have national ID's but our social security numbers, a number given out by the Federal government shortly after a citizen is born (well, not when I was young but that's another story) act almost like a universal ID number.  All sorts of companies use them.  If your number is stolen, you are in trouble.

I had to call Customer Service, which contacted Verizon's fraud unit, and it is straightened out now- well, at least I can upgrade. The fraudulent call came from a neighborhood in NYC, almost 200 miles from where I live.  I knew this when the rep named the neighborhood because I grew up in New York City.

I asked if this means my spouse has had his identity stolen. "Not necessarily" we were told.  But this comes on the heels of us receiving a letter from our health insurer telling us they had been hacked. Still, if someone did get my spouse's social security number, how was it associated with his cell phone number? (my spouse only gives that number out to family).

Besides this being past creepy, I'm still trying to figure out what had happened. And, why weren't we notified by email? I was too stunned to think, but the fraudster must have changed my  address.  But we got a communication in the mail from Verizon about 10 days ago.  Something just doesn't make sense.


Has this happened to any of you?

Civil War Sunday - The Lost Texts of the Civil War

Today, a light-hearted post.

In 2012, when I visited the Antietam Civil War battlefield in Maryland, I discovered, to my horror, that my Verizon phone had encountered a dead zone. (Apparently, the entire length of I-81 in the states of Maryland and West Virginia are part of this dead zone.  And, as of this spring, that situation still existed.)

It got me to think: what if the Union or Confederate troops were fighting with modern technology and used Verizon as their service?  (maybe there would have been no battle, and maybe that would have been a good thing, considering the horrible casualty toll of this battle.)

Could you imagine a United States Civil War with Internet, texting, and social media?

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who has wondered.

For example, I found this blog post "Scouting the Civil War with Cell Phones" which explained about the technology of "cellofonies".

I found out about the Lost Texts of the Battle of Gettysburg of the United States Civil War recently, and (since I am hard at work trying to take care of some personal business), bring them to you for your amusement.

Next week, back to my normal Civil War blogging.

Photos and Memories

Recently, I blogged about the dying art of letter writing.

Yesterday, I read a post about a blogger and his visit to his maternal grandmother.  She had kept a treasured photo of her childhood.  She showed it to him.  The photo was about 75 years old, and was of a 10 year old girl, dressed formally, with a frown on her face.

You guessed it - the elderly grandmother was the young girl in the photo.  He marveled at how many details of the taking of the photo his grandmother remembered.

So he took a picture of his grandmother, and other pictures during his visit. He promised to give a photo to his grandmother.  He didn't print one of of vacation photos, though, not one.

 I have over 3600 pictures on my phone.  My son (my 20 something son!) calls me a "digital hoarder".  He's right.  I have even more on a computer I don't use that much.

Number of photos printed out from my phone = zero.  What do they include? Well, pictures of my spouse's now 103 year old aunt.  Pictures of my mother in law, my son, my spouse, a family reunion from 2012, and several vacations.  Lots and lots of memories.

And this photo I took at the house of one of my spouse's cousins.  It's a photo of an old family photo.

Think about it.

How many of us have spent treasured times with elderly relatives while they showed us pictures of our families from years ago?  How many memories were passed on?  How many stories were told?

Here's a personal memory.  Years ago, in an album, I ran across a photo of three young girls.  It was in black and white.  One of the girls looked just like me (almost exactly like me!) but the dresses they wore looked like something out of the 1920's.  They posed, formally.

Fortunately, someone had written on the back of the photo.  The photo was of my mother, and two of her sisters.  And yes, it was taken in the 1920's.  I looked at this photo and marveled, just as the blogger had done. Except my mother was long dead, and could not share her memories of the day.

Will I be sharing photos with my yet-to-be-born grandchildren one day?  Or will those photos languish in a landfill somewhere, in a computer long discarded?

Do you print out your treasured digital photos, or display them in a digital photo frame?  Or are you a digital hoarder, like me?

If An 84 Year Old Can Use an iPhone So Can I

Today, the Ultimate Blog Challenge is over and tomorrow I start the WordCount Blogathon.

And on June 2 I start the Author Blog Challenge.

But that is not why I am sweating bullets.

The reason is simple:  yesterday, I got an iPhone.

What have I done????

What gave me the courage to leap from a 4 year old Trac Phone, one that can make phone calls and not do much else (no camera, no keyboard, just a very basic phone), to a (gulp) iPhone 4S smartphone?

Three reasons.

1.  My young adult son upgraded his phone to an iPhone. This wasn't a surprise.
2.  Then my sister in law, who is 12 years younger than I am, upgraded her phone to an iPhone.  I know she was thinking about it, and now she acted.

But then came the clincher.

3. My 84 year old mother in law got an iPhone!

And that is when I said to myself:  "Self!  If a woman who was born during the Depression, grew up during World War II, saw her loved ones go to war and back, worked in New York City and later for two magazines whose names you would instantly recognize, raised four children including a son with autism (in a day without any supports for such a Mom or such a boy), and got her first computer in her 70's can still have the zest in life to take this leap, then I can do it too!

Sometimes you just have to close your eyes and take that leap.

I applaud my mother in law's faith that she will be able to learn this phone and do what she wants, which is to keep in touch with family and friends from her chair.  For her, mobility is more of an issue each and every day. She is a courageous woman.

And sometimes it just takes that one thing to make us take the leap into the unknown, too, to leave the comfort zone of our everyday life.

That's why I blog, and take on blogging challenges.

Good luck to you, if you are in the Blogathon or in the Author Blog Challenge.  And wish me luck with my new iPhone!

Nothing Like a Smartphone to Make You Feel Stupid

I reject the "you are growing older, so you just can't learn new things" (I'm somewhat close to turning 60) argument - except when it comes to certain technology.

I grew up in an era where telephones were large, clunky things with a dial. They hung on your kitchen wall.  They had a dial tone.  You waited for the dial tone before you dialed.  (At least I didn't have to turn a crank and ask the operator to dial the call - I'm not THAT old.)

You used them to - make phone calls.  Phone calls consisted of using the dial, which had a disk with holes in it, to dial numbers.  There was an art to it.  If you didn't dial properly, you got a wrong number.  There was only one type of ringer.  It rang.  The person answered.  He or she had no idea who was calling until they answered. There was no such thing as caller ID  Or an answering machine.


Calls were billed using "message units" in my native New York City.  If you were in the Bronx and wanted to call Brooklyn, you had to be prepared to take out a bank loan if you spoke more than 5 or 10 minutes.  I forget how much a message unit cost, but it was a lot.  Long distance was even worse.  The calls were billed at rates that varied depending on the time of day - or night.  Overseas?  We never even tried.

Now I live in an era where my son and girlfriend sit on the same sofa and text each other.  Neither would know how to dial a phone with a dial.  Nor can they imagine a phone that doesn't also take pictures, act as a GPS, or allow you to connect on Facebook or browse the Web.

Right now I have what I call a 'stupid phone'.  It makes phone calls, plus has some other functions that I have absolutely no idea how to use, because I don't use them.  It's a Trac Fone, so I've never had a plan.  That's the nice part. However, Trac Fones have many limitations.  You can't download any kind of QR reader to them.  You can't text things to those five digit numbers.

I am tired of watching people whip out their phones to take pictures or record videos at special events.  I'm tired of needing a GPS (we don't have one) and not being able to use my phone.  And, when my son told me at Easter dinner Sunday that he was going to upgrade to an iPhone, I was set to join the wonderful world of technology.

Let me tell you what happened.  (My younger readers, please forgive me.  Your day will come.)

Son has Verizon, so we went to "his" Verizon store.  I was greeted, and directed to a knowledgeable sales rep who looked like she was about 14 years old.  That was actually comforting, because I figure the younger you are, the more knowledgeable you are when it comes to phones.  And she did have the figures right at hand.

My son was paying about $80 a month on his plan. I figured adding a second line would be about $10 more.

Nope.

It was about $70 more but part of that is a data plan upgrade required for an iPhone - his plan will be going up, too, if he does get an iPhone.

The sales rep welcomed us to look around so we did.  There were all these displays - phones for calling, phones for texting, phones that were smartphones.  There were even iPads.  Of the smartphones there were 4 or 5 different manufacturers. After the Galaxies, the Droids, the LG's and so forth, my head was spinning.

We left without making a decision.


I don't know what our decision will be.  But with the proliferation of QR codes (there was even one on the cover of the latest issue of my Consumer Reports) I figure I had better join the smartphone age before I am left out of things all together.

I've heard too many stories from people my age, kind of half embarrassed, relating how they struggle to use their phones.  I don't want to be one of those people.  I want to learn the features.

Maybe I'll be on that sofa one day, with my son and girlfirend, texting them and sending them photos.  And posting on their Facebook walls.

Is there anyone else out there of "a certain age", who has taken to smartphones?  Or, do you use the phone as a phone, and ignore the other features?

Drowning? Text a Lifeguard

I'm still in disbelief about this and it's been almost two weeks.

I go to a water aerobics class at our local Y.  I've been in this class for years.  The lifeguards are college aged young people, for the most part.  They do, I am sure, a wonderful job.

 A couple of times over the years, I have made reports where I felt the lifeguards weren't paying attention.  As young adults will do, sometimes these lifeguards have friends come over, and talk to them.  I'm not thrilled about that.  Their job is to watch people exercising in the water, including a number of seniors.  It takes just a second, if someone had a heart attack, to (heaven forbid) slip under the water.

A couple of weeks ago, the class had not yet started.  Right before our class is a lap swim period, and it was winding down.  They were taking the lane markers out of the water, but a couple of people were still swimming.  And, there were some water aerobics class members already in the pool. 

What was the lifeguard doing?  She was....texting.  OK maybe she wasn't texting.  Maybe she had her cell phone out and was making random motions on the keyboard.  Or was surfing the net.  Or was watching a TV show.  At any rate, the more I think about this-I don't care if the class hadn't started, there were people in the water.

I don't want her fired.  I want to know that the Y has a policy about this type of thing.  I was wrong to let it go so long without a report.  I've never gotten feedback regarding my previous complaints.  But I hope the Y doesn't think it is OK for their lifeguards to be paying attention to their cell phones while on duty.