Family on the Phone

Today I continue my Cross Blog Conversation with Alyssa Avant. See Alyssa’s response to my last question on her blog. In this installment of our conversation, Alyssa asks me this:

“Amy, I know you have older children. Do they all have cell phones? How do they play into your communication with your children?”

I had three children, Alyssa and they are 11, 19, and 24. They all have cell phones actually. My oldest is on his own plan. My younger son is on a family plan with me and my daughter, the ‘Tween, has a prepay phone.

It’s time for Family on the Phone’s Sunday Link Love! I found just a couple cell phone blog posts this week and I want to share them with you here.

Maverick at Man About Town wrote an informative and interested post about a brand new feature soon to be available from Google. It’s called Google Voice and you should definitely check it out.

Tommy Schweller at Adazon shouted out about the new technology involving cell phones scanning bar codes. Can’t wait for this! Check out his post.

I hope you’ll check them out and give them some comment love!
photo credit: doobybrain

Surely you’ve seen reports of cell phone injuries, cancer, and other maladies from cell phone use. What do you think about it all? Well, here is my response to all the hoopla.

Cell Phone Elbow~Caused by holding the phone up to your ear from extended periods of time. This causes a tightness at the elbow. It stops the blood flow to the nerve that controls the small fingers. Tingling and numbness results. Doctors say switching hands while talking helps. I say, “DUH!” I mean doesn’t this just make sense? Also, getting an earpiece would help considerably if you are a long talker. I’m not saying in any way this injury isn’t real, just silly.

Blackberry Thumb or Texting Thumb~This is caused by texting on tiny little keyboards, especially I guess the Blackberry keyboard. Ok, now this one really gets me. Do these people ever think that maybe they are just texting too darn much? Remember Nintendo thumb? I do and I thought that was a little silly then but I do recall getting cramps in my thumb playing Super Mario Brothers for hours on end. Maybe I’m just as guilty here. However, I certainly stopped playing when the cramping began. That’s just me.

Today I’m doing something new for me. I’m participating in a meme. I like this one because it is different all the time. This time, the mission (and I chose to accept it) is to list a few of my favorite quotes. Since I LOVE quotes, I knew it was for me.

My quotes, since this is Family on the Phone, will all be about communication. That said, here we go.

• Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it. ~Edward R. Murrow
• When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. ~Ernest Hemingway
• Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people. ~William Butler Yeats
• The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives. ~Anthony Robbins
• There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it. ~Dale Carnegie
• Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80%  about how you feel about what you know. ~Jim Rohn
• Communication is not only the essence of being human, but also a vital property of life. ~John A. Piece
• The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that  it has taken place. ~George Bernard Shaw
• To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others. ~Anthony Robbins
• We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak. ~Epictetus
• Communication is the real work of leadership. ~Nitin Nohria

I would like to thank Naida from Randomness for her lovely Meme. I shall be participating again.

I’m tagging the following:

• Erin Hill at Mommy In Progress
• Jendi at Jendis Journal
• Angie Green at Virtual Assistant 3.0

A new study by Commonsense Media shows that 1/3 of all students with a cell phone has cheated at least once with their phone. They do this by texting, going online and by storing information on their phone. Amazingly 52% of  teens admitted to some form of cheating using the internet. A whopping 1 in 4 students doesn’t feel what they are doing is considered cheating. Of course, out of 76% of parents, although they believe it happens at school, only 3% think their child has cheated. Imagine that!

Now, are these results that remarkable really? No, not really. From writing on the hand to passing notes, kids have always found a way to cheat. Most parents will stick their head in the sand on this issue. Little Johnny would NEVER do that!

I am in love. It’s true. I am a Team Mobile customer and I was browsing their website today when I found my next phone.

Meet the latest Android-based mobile phone from T-Mobile.

It is the My Touch 3G. It makes my eyes a little moist to describe it to you. The features of this phone are phenomenal. Check it out for yourself. It will be available in August but you can reserve it on July 8th. It runs about $200.

These are the fantastic features:

• It is completely personalizable! It has themes and skins and you can customize menus, wallpapers and icons like you wouldn’t believe.
• Of course, it has the 3G network, meaning you can surf, talk, text, email and download music at lightening speeds.
• It has a touch screen display and a virtual keyboard and goes from portrait to landscape with ease in most applications.
• It has personalized widgets you can add and arrange however you like.
• It has fully integrated Google Search, Google Maps and Gmail and even has a Google Search Widget right on the home screen!
• With it’s 3.2 MP camera, you can shoot video or pics and send them to your family and friends using the Picasa or YouTube widget.
• A featured widget is Sherpa; a learning application which gets more useful every time you use it. It learns with you.

So now you know. I have a new passion and it’s name is the MyTouch 3G by T-Mobile. Sigh. Oh, did I mention it is beautiful? Well, it is.

I remember with great fondness when my parents got me what was called a Teen Talk Line when I was about fifteen or so. The phone company called the second line by this name because so many parents would get that second line just for teenagers so they could keep their main line free for important calls. Call waiting was not in existence yet.

My love of being on the telephone began at an early age and the phone was always attached to my ear. I would wake up to the telephone call of my best buddy and often fall asleep talking late at night. For an extra $12 a month, the main line was free and I was a happy camper. I don’t love talking on the phone as much as I used to mind you. But, I still log in my fair share of phone hours. However, my cell phone gets much more attention than my lonely house phone.

More and more people I talk to are getting rid of their land line phones in favor of just maintaining their cell phones. I haven’t done this yet. The reason is simple for me. I have DSL with my local phone company. I made a 1 year commitment on my DSL and it is a package deal. I don’t have long distance on my land line; I use my cell phone for that.

My other reason for maintaining my land line is my cell phone is not 100% reliable here in my home. It works great down the road but not always in my house. I can text all day long but sometimes I have to hold the phone just right to get a signal, which is a pain. Of course, I signed a contract on my cell phone too not knowing the service would be as it is. That said, I would be lost without my cell phone.

I also found what looks to be a great read on cell phones on Amazon. It is called Money from Thin Air: The Story of Craig McCaw, the Visionary who Invented the Cell Phone Industry, and His Next Billion Dollar Idea.

What about you? I would love to hear from my readers on this one. Do you have a landline? If so, why do you keep yours around? Have you canceled your home phone and gotten everyone mobile phones? Does this save you money? Are you happy with your decision?

Today I am continuing my Cross Blog Conversation with Alyssa Avant. To be part of the fun, please check out her part of our conversation.

Alyssa’s question to me is: “What kind of cell phone do you have? Are you a ‘Smart Phone’ gal or something different? Tell us all about your phone.”
Well Alyssa, I am a wannabe “Smart Phone” person actually. A smart phone just doesn’t fit into the budget right now but I plan to get one when the money allows.

Right now, I have a Samsung Gravity and I do love it. It has a Qwerty keyboard just like yours and I find this extremely convenient. I text a lot and it saves so much time. I have unlimited texting and picture messaging which I love because I’m always snapping pics with my camera on my phone and sending them to my friends.

In July, I plan to add unlimited internet as well and I can’t wait for that! I’m an internet junkie so that will be fun for me.

Now Alyssa, tell me about your husband’s cell phone use? Did he ever get another Blackberry like you did or has he stuck with his Nokia Flip Phone? How important is your cell phone to communication with him?

To read Alyssa’s response, check out her lovely blog and stay tuned for the next installment of our conversation here as well.

First, let me take a moment to wish all the fathers a wonderful Father’s Day! Have a great day dad!

Now, how about some Link Love for this week in June. I found a few good ones for you. Hope you enjoy!

The Scaglia Family Blog had a cute little post about two boys and a dog. Yes, having a cell phone for the ‘Tweens can be a good thing.

Larry Fish at Purple Slinky talks about the good and bad of cell phones, including cell phone drivers and restaurant and movie talkers.

Warren Riddle over at Switched had a very informative blog post about keeping your computer and your cell phone free of spam.

I loved Kathryn’s post at Dialaphone from the UK. She gives us a list of twenty Twitterers to follow if we love mobile phones! Yay! Cell phones and Twitter!

Ricky at Distant Creations posted a humorous post lamenting when cell phones were just phones without all the internet and such.

Jocelyn, a girl after my own heart, posts of her cell phone love. She’s a girl with a pink phone with rhinestones!

If you love cell phones and Skype, you’ll love Lindsay’s post at Frugal and Fabulous! She has posted about a giveaway for a wireless headset and a subscription to Skype. You just need to post comments, Twitter, subscribe and so forth for chances to win!

And one more for good measure; Geek Sugar lets us know about Loud Talkers. If you are one, be careful as you could end up being reinacted for someones good laugh.

That’s it for this week. Have a great week!

photo credit: emilio labrador

What is a Cross Blog Conversation? Well, simply put, a CBC is a conversation between bloggers which goes back and forth on their individual blogs. I will be starting a Cross Blog Conversation with Christian Writer, Alyssa Avant today. I will first speak directly to Alyssa and ask her my first question. She will answer that question on her blog and then ask me one. And so it continues several times back and forth.

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce Alyssa to you today. She is a Christian Writer, speaker and business owner with several websites. You can find all her information at her main website. Her self-proclaimed mission is to “turn the hearts of girls toward God”. Alyssa ghostwrites for several WAHM websites and blogs and also writes her own eZine. She is married and has three children under the age of five. Wow! Now that is one busy woman!

Alyssa-A little birdie named Kelly McCausey told me you just got a new BlackBerry! Please tell me what is your favorite feature of your new phone? How does it help you tope stay connected to all the areas of your busy life?

Now, Alyssa will answer my question on her blog and ask me a question which I will answer here.