Transition Progress




A Few Reasons Why I Hate Texting

I hate texting for the below reasons. This opinion is, admittedly, out of the main stream. I thought I’d document and explain.

Everyone I communicate with has email to their phone. Email has many more capabilities. Most people lose their text archive when they get a new phone.

I’m sitting here next to my computer happily typing away and the cell phone over by the door makes this unfamiliar noise that means I have a text message. Texting’s the only medium that one can’t use on a full keyboard.

An exception is that some workplaces use Chatter, Skype, or Yammer successfully. Those are usually answerable multi-modally by computer or phone..

Texting got popular when people were too cheap to pay for minutes to talk and I think a lot of this continued because early iPhone weren’t very good for voice. Now, minutes are cheap and most phones actually work as phones.

Texting is supposedly less intrusive than phoning. But a call goes to VM and you answer when you choose. One is expected to promptly answer a text. If the sender or receiver happens to be in a different country you pay more.

Can’t we just simplify. Between phone, email, Facebook chat, Skype, Skype chat, and Twitter, there are plenty of ways to reach me. And call me “old fashioned”, but I think spelling and punctuation actually contribute to understanding. Half the texts I get make no sense.

I don’t have a texting plan, and I don’t really want one. Each text sent and each received cost me the ridiculous sum 20 cents. That usually costs me less than the ridiculous sum of $5 for the min 200 texts a month plan. Texts cost the carrier almost nothing.

Entrepreneurial Office Supply Extremism

One of the things about working for and with small businesses is that you have to do almost everything yourself. This morning when I was trying to print out a contract to sign, the ink ran out in my printer right before it printed the signature page. Of course the client needed it signed and scanned back immediately. I pulled the black ink cartridge out, went over to the sink, and blew into the air hole in the top of the little tank. Some ink squirted out. So, I put it back in the printer. It worked enough to print a few more docs. That’s an awesome entrepreneurial office supply hack if I do have to say so myself.