Technology stinks

Last night someone, someone whose name I didn't even catch because the minute I heard from what company he was from I started to see red and bright white stars and I heard a high-pitched beeping noise with my conscience weakly wailing "DON'T DO IT AAAAADRIAAAAANE!" called me on my cell phone while I was studying for today's final.

Today's final was oral, in which I had to pull two slips of paper and talk about them for 20 minutes. One would be a reading, the other would be a site visit. Site visits I'm ok with. It was only the reading part of the oral I was worried about, because I realized last night at around 8 how woefully much I was supposed to know. By the morning I had narrowed down my survival options to a couple of different escape routes:

1. Right when I walked into the test room, I could eat all the slips of paper, thereby saving myself and all the people who would test after me
2. I could eat the slip of paper after I had chosen it, and tell her it was on a reading I was mildly familiar with
3. I could jump in front of a car on the way to the test and only get mildly injured

So last night while I was turning over what was more appealing, studying or tweezing my arm hairs one by one, Piccell Wireless called me. This man called to tell me that I had an outstanding balance on my phone and that they had texted me to inform me of this. Which, it makes sense, my credit card expired last month, but what really set me off is the way he said it.

He had texted me.

I had to enlighten him that my cell phone screen varies between looking like this:




this:



and this:



Even though he probably didn't care, I got to tell him that the phone I was sent was the worst investment that I could conceivably think of because they charged an arm and a leg for something that didn't even work. I was able to tell him that this cell phone was the biggest source of frustration for me, even including the time I didn't have a passport and was stuck in a foreign country for time: indefinite! and that if I had my way, that cell phone would have been put through a coffee grinder, been sprinkled with gasoline, then ceremoniously burnt to a crisp in the middle of a forest with a large group of my friends dancing around the bonfire.

And then he informed that I could have sent the phone back to get another one which, duh. I am not a martyr of technology for kicks. He didn't know, though, that I am a creature of habit. I have been eating salad with tomato sauce for dinner for 3 weeks now, and before that I was eating tuna and tomatoes for about 3 weeks straight. I've got a carefully planned out daily schedule, and no where in that schedule does "going to the post office that's open daily between 1:30 PM and 1:32 PM" figure. My cell phone is strictly functional. I ask for no bells and whistles, for no color screen or a camera. My cell phone is there to get the job done, and not to make it more enjoyable. If my cell phone doesn't work for me, then I am not willing to lift a finger for it because it was the one that let me down, and not the other way around. Besides, every time I reconciled myself to the idea that maaaaaybe I should send the cell phone back today, its screen started to flicker and I decided it was on its way to recovery.

Oh, and then anyhow, it took me 3 weeks to pick up the phone in July because, as typical of Rome, the "system was down" that evidently was integral in the whole cell phone handing out system. Piccell had to send me a second cell phone to be picked up in a different place where the "system" was functional. So, if they HAD sent me the phone, I'm guessing that I would have run into similiar difficulties, not have had the cell phone for 3 weeks, and then I'd be at the end of the program anyhow. So while Diana cowered in a corner to save herself from my fury that knows no bounds, I told this man that this company was the most useless thing on the face of the planet, even if they do happen to send out cell phones that are supposed to facilitate communication between people.

Tomorrow I have to send back the cell phone to a company based somewhere in the United States. I plan on enclosing a scathing note directed towards Piccell Wireless, which I will have great joy writing tonight.

But anyway, after my relieving conversation, I've never felt better, and my final was ok. Obviously, I have some anger issues I have to deal with.