TOYS

D100.

Motorola RAZR V3m.

(I could have called this “cellphone follies,” but what it really is is “cellphone-fun.”)
“My father was born in 1944,” the Verizon-clerk declared.
“Well, so were we!”
“I had to bring my father up to speed with cellphones,” he said.
So therefore he felt like he was dealing with his parents; old fogies.
But there was one major difference.
Unlike old fogies who are utterly baffled by technology, we find it interesting and intriguing.
“It’ll give the geologic coordinates of where you’re standing?”
Sure, why not!? It’s broadcasting its location to 9-1-1.
I’ve had little opportunity to fiddle with the things, but Linda has.
She went outside and took a picture and promptly made it her background picture.
The cellphones can record a ringtone; so I could do a cheap-shot and just record the train-horn off my ‘pyooter.
My ‘pyooter also would record, which is how I made the “Aw man!” alert-sound, and 765 at that grade-crossing near Montgomery a start-up sound.
But I think I could also download the train-horn from the Internet, if I can make the phone web-savvy (it may already be for its GPS-site). —Can’t be rocket-science.
A web-savvy phone is more than train-horns. It’s also my weather-radar, and possibly fiddling FlagOut. Wireless steaming piles over the satellite!
Our new phones (pictured) are about the size of a wallet — thinner than our old phones, but wider.
Linda observes this makes them more user-friendly; a bigger display and keys bigger than match-heads.
Plus they’re using a menu that’s standard on all cellphones — so we were told.
Our old cellphones didn’t; and for Linda were somewhat confusing.
Although not for me. I think that was mostly 44. If he could blast around them old antiques, like he did in Altoony station, so could I.
After that the book became rather moribund. I started frogging around like 44 did. Just drive the little sucker and see what happens.
It’s kind of the way I learned a lotta things. Real men don’t need manuals.
So here I am with my new phone and wanna search a name in the memorized phone-book. The contact-list has a “search”-window, but I couldn’t see how to get to it.
So try this.
I typed in “Bill” and it typed “Bill” into the search-window; after which I entered and it went to the Bill-category — there are two Bill entries; home and cell.
VIOLA! Just like the old phone. I don’t wanna scroll through all the contacts. Just drive the little sucker and see what happens. Get outta here with that manual!
—A pleasant distraction from all the dreadful health-related dramas that seem to be arising.

“Linda” is my wife.

“The train-horn” is the horn of a railroad diesel-locomotive. It’s available at the GE web-site. It can be made into a cellphone ringtone, once downloaded.

RE: “765 at that grade-crossing near Montgomery........” I have an audio/video of Nickel-Plate steam-engine 765 approaching a railroad grade-crossing near Montgomery, West Virginny. (I recorded it myself.)

“FlagOut” is our family’s web-site, named that because I had a mentally-retarded kid-brother (Down Syndrome) who lived at home, and loudly insisted the flag be flown every day. “Flag-Out! Sun comes up, the flag goes up! Sun goes down, the flag comes down.” I fly the flag partly in his honor. (He died at 14 in 1968.) What goes on FlagOut are “steaming piles.”

“44” (“Agent-44”) is my brother-in-Delaware “Bill’s” onliest son Tom. He recently graduated college as a computer-engineer.

“Altoony” is Altoona, Pennsylvania, location of Horseshoe Curve (the “mighty Curve,”) west of Altoona, by far the BEST railfan spot I have ever been to. Horseshoe Curve is a national historic site. It was a trick used by the Pennsylvania Railroad to get over the Allegheny mountains without steep grades. Horseshoe Curve was opened in 1854, and is still in use.

RE: “—A pleasant distraction from all the dreadful health-related dramas that seem to be arising........” My wife has lymphatic cancer.