One-on-One

“There are two things you should know before we start,” I said to the comely young girl who exited the bowels of the Verizon store on Jefferson Road in Henrietta, the old Krispy Kreme.
She was aloof, yet very informative.
I got the feeling she was thinking “what’s this old geezer doing fiddling a Droid-X SmartPhone?” as she confronted me.
“I’ll have to show him the power-switch!”
“—A) You’re dealing with a stroke-survivor. As such, my speech can be compromised. In fact, you’re hearing it now: difficulty slinging words together for what I’m trying to say here, resulting in halting speech and stony silences.
—B) My ability to read manuals is compromised. Most of what I learned about this phone was by intuition. Usually the manual is just a starting-point.”
I find I have to mention these two things lest the listener think I’m angry.
“I’ve gotten so I can do a few things with this phone, like make phonecalls, use the calculator and alarm-clock, YouTube and the web, and even the events-calendar to some extent.
But if I try to find the geodesic coordinates of where I’m standing, VZ-Navigator, which was on my old phone, wants a fee.”
“You won’t need that,” she said. “Google-Maps.”
“Show me,” I said, handing her my phone.
We fired up Google-Maps, an app that was already on my phone.
It showed the exact location of where we were on a map, in this case along Jefferson Road.
“Cool,” I said.
I tried it again at home. It showed my location on a map, but not the geodesic coordinates.
“Okay,” I said. “We tried making this phone a hot-spot, but my laptop, a MAC, (which I had along) won’t connect. Looks like Verizon wants a fee.”
“They do,” she said. “About $20 a month.”
“What about tethering?” I asked. I had brought along a USB cable.
“Even more,” she said. “About $40 a month.”
“So it sounds like I need a Verizon USB receiver to get Verizon Internet on my laptop. I currently have RoadRunner to my house, but notice it slows to a crawl at certain times, like when others on the cable might be playing Internet video-games. —I was hoping Verizon Internet might solve this, especially if it’s 4G.”
“Except Apple is not working with Verizon. It’ll hafta be 3G. That’s the only thing Apple does currently.”
“Okay, my current browser is FireFox, and has 10 historied tabs running all-the-time.”
“Stick with RoadRunner,” she said. “We’re gonna charge you for exceeding a megabyte-limit. It’ll add maybe $500 to your monthly bill. That’s crazy!”
“Or as they say in the Unclaimed Freight ads: ‘IN-S-A-A-A-NE,’” I said.
She laughed.
“Okay, next question,” I said. “When I bought this phone, I set up a GMail account. I’ll be a son-of-a-gun if I can get it on my laptop.”
We fired up the GMail app on my phone.
It had maybe four messages, most from the GMail team, on how to add glitz.
“This is the http address you gotta use. Crank that into your laptop’s browser, and you’ll get your GMail account,” she said.
“Let’s try it!” I said.
“You won’t get Internet in here. Your laptop won’t get GMail,” she said.
I tried it later at home. Same hairball I previously got; it wants me to join. I don’t want to toss my AppleMail account.
Plus it says the user-name I propose is not available.
Well of course it’s not. That’s the user-name on my existing GMail account.
“And it’s not satellite-Internet,” she added. “It’s satellite-Internet over the Verizon network.”
“Same as my brother-in-law,” I said; “and he’s Sprint.
No wonder downloads to this phone take so long,” I said.
“Well, not that long,” she said, as I fired up my MyCast Internet weather-site on my phone, about a second or two.
“Slower than RoadRunner,” I said.
“Well, Google fires up quickly. That’s only two things; the logo, and the search-bar.”
Some other site might be multiple things — more loading time is needed,” she said; “and you’re doing our network.”
“And my phone is not 4G, and can’t be,” I said. “It’s 3G.
“The 4G Androids aren’t available as Verizon yet, maybe next week.”
“Next week?” we chuckled.
“Yet despite being a stroke-survivor, I ain’t about to give up on this phone,” I said. “It’s that much easier to use.
My old phone was jumping through hoops for every function, especially the calculator.
I was thinking of upgrading to 4G, if -a) it was actually satellite-Internet, and -b) I had any idea what to do with this thing.
But now you’re telling me 4G Droids aren’t available yet, and it isn’t actually satellite-Internet. And even if it were, using Verizon-Internet would kill me financially.
Thanks. You did good,” I told her as I left.
It was nice to not deal with a viper.

• “Henrietta” is a suburb south of Rochester, NY. “Jefferson Road” is a main east-west road through it. There was a “Krispy Kreme” on it, but that tanked and was replaced by Verizon in the Krispy Kreme building.
• RE: “Old geezer.........” —I’m 67.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, and it slightly compromised my speech. (Difficulty finding and putting words together.)
• “RoadRunner “ is Time-Warner’s Internet service; Rochester RoadRunner.
• RE: “The Unclaimed Freight ads......” — Unclaimed Freight sells furniture, and is a local advertiser in the Rochester TV market. They end all their silly ads with “our prices are IN-S-A-A-A-NE!