“Droid!”

A heat wave rolled into the upper Midwest yesterday, raising the temperature here in Elkhart up to a high of 102° with high humidity to go along with it. It was a good day to stay inside with the air-conditioning on as much as possible.

We both had a really rough night the night before. As I reported in yesterday’s blog, I got a new Droid Razr Max smart phone, and it came with a nifty docking/charging station that I can use in the bedroom to turn the phone into a bedside clock. Well, that’s cool!

Except that just as we were falling asleep, this mechanical voice said “Droid!” We both said “What the heck was that?” and I told Terry that maybe the phone had finished charging and was letting me know. We just started to drift off to sleep again when the same voice said “Droid!” Darn it, that’s enough of that nonsense. I turned the volume down on the phone, rolled back over, and 20 minutes later what did I hear but “Droid!”? I pulled the darned phone out of the docking station, thinking that would solve the problem. Nope. 20 minutes later, right on the button, it said “Droid!” again. Okay, enough is enough, I turned the phone completely off, and left it off until we woke up yesterday morning.

I was talking to my buddy Greg White, and I told him about what the phone was doing, and Greg told me that’s why he turns his phone completely off at night. But I told him 35 years as a newspaperman would not let me do that. What if somebody needed to call and tell me that City Hall had caught fire or something? Greg said “Maybe when that happens, your telephone sends you a message that says “Droid!”” Funny man, that Greg. 🙂

I wrote about the problem on Facebook and a couple people told me how to turn off the sound and the notifications and the mechanical voices, everything except the voices in my head, but I’m used to them by now. We’ve been together a long time. Aside from that, I really like my new Razr.

I had an appointment to take my iMac to the Apple Store in Mishawaka yesterday, but between very little sleep and the hot temperature, I decided to reschedule for this afternoon. It’s probably just as well, since a power outage in that area yesterday really messed things up for a lot of people. I don’t know if the mall itself was affected, but from what I understood there were traffic lights out and other things going on in different parts of Mishawaka and South Bend, and I was just as happy to avoid all of it.

I did drive back to the Verizon Store, because they forgot to give me the 12 volt car charger that came as part of the package with my new phone. They also had not correctly transferred all of my phone numbers from my old phone to the new one. While I was there, I saw a cute toy that I just knew my buddy Greg would want, a little remote control helicopter that is controlled by a smart phone. The girl at the store said they will work with any smart phone, and since Greg has this thing for remote control helicopters, I almost bought him one. But they were out of stock, except for the demo model. Bummer. Get me all excited, and then leave me hanging. Kind of like a Droid.

Thought For The Day – Are you one of those paranoid people who checks behind the shower curtain for crazed killers? If you do find one, what’s your plan?

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