Diary of a Wolfeman

So the Ratboy, after breaking his third phone, called me up the other night from CellCo’s store at the Mall.

“Hey Dad – tell this sales clerk that you agree to extend our phone contract for 2 years, and they will give me a deal on a new phone!”

“Is it going to be cooler than mine?”

“Well yeah, you just have that plain little flippy. I gotta have something cooler than that!”

“So let me get this straight: you want me to assume an extra two years of legal contract so that you can have cooler gadgetry than me?”

“Uhm…yeah.”

“I think not. We’ll go down there this weekend and get me a cool new phone, and you can have my plain little flippy, which will tide you over until you can afford to buy a cooler phone.”

“Man, you suck.”

“Or I could just keep my phone, not sign a contract, and you can wait until your next payday…”

“Okay! You win.”

Woohoo! Write that down in the calendar! Rod, tell the man what he has won:

Well, I looked online first, and CellCo is hawking the Samsung T609 for free after instant rebate (why do they say that shit? If it’s free, say “free” and be done with it.) The phone includes a 1.3 megapixel cam, bluetooth and speakerphone. (It has MP3 playing power too, but who gives a rat’s ass. I already have one.) Cool, huh? Well, apparently not very, as Samsung has already discontinued that model and CellCo doesn’t carry it in the store anymore.

So, what else is there? A close facsimile: the MotoRAZR V3. No 1.3MP cam, but it has everything else, and I got it for only $30. (The V3t has the better camera, for $70 more. Not enough in the piggy bank for that.) Not a bad deal on a pretty good phone. Extending the contract was a no-brainer: CellCo has the best pricing for calling plans I have found, so it isn’t like they had to twist my arm. (So why am I obscuring their name? TANSTAAFL.)

Immediate trip-ups: Moto inverts the functions of the # and * keys while entering text, so I will be changing typing modes instead of hitting a space until I get used to it. The phone is too slim to be held to the ear with your shoulder – as B found out when he got his and dropped it in a bucket. Unlike my Sammy, the RAZR takes decent 1-inch pictures. (The Sammy took almost-viewable regular-sized ones.)

Yeah, basically picking nits here. I liked the Sammy, but now I can get a bluetooth headset, which will come in darn handy.

On a side note, I was tripping through CellCo’s website looking for a new ringtone, and I came across one from Oingo Boingo that I never thought I would see: “I love little girls”. For those of you who may not know, this song came out of Boingo’s full-on sarcastic social commentary phase and is sung from the perspective of a pedophile.

Yeah – not really the song you would think to pick as a ringtone. Unless, of course, you happen to have a phone with cutomize-able rings, and a buddy that married a gal ten years younger than him… Muahahahaha!

Of course, the EMC was sonly 18 when we got hitched, so pot-and-kettle wot?