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Jun. 28th, 2013
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Phone Folly
Jun. 28th, 2013 05:10 pmI seem to have lost my personal mobile phone (again). I have some hope that it fell out of its holster last night and is therefore in the hotel room. It doesn't appear to be in my van or any of the other places it might have been between the last time I know I had my hand on it and the time I realized my holster was empty. When I get back to the hotel, I will look carefully for it, and if I can't find it, I think I'll just have to go buy a new phone. The thing was utterly obsolete anyway, even as a non-smartphone, so I can try to look at the bright side of things that way.
Personal Mobile Phone a Write-Off
Jun. 28th, 2013 10:35 pmI had assumed that my phone — not my company-issued smartphone, but my personal ordinary basic flip phone — had fallen out of my holster in my hotel room, but when I couldn't find it anywhere in the room when I got back after work this afternoon, I decided to write it off. I went to the same Verizon store where I'd bought it (about five or six years ago), but because I didn't have a password I forgot that I even had, they couldn't help me. I went back to the hotel and logged in to my Verizon account. (I had the password for that.) I checked the phone's usage. To my annoyance, I found that starting at 8:19 PM last night, a lot of calls started being made on my phone. None of them were very long, and none seem to be international, so I don't think I'm going to have a massive bill. (I'm still within the calling allowance.) 37 calls were made in total, running late last night and throughout today until about 6 PM. One of the numbers called (three times) was the front desk of this hotel. I went to the front desk and asked if they knew anything about a lost phone. (I'd checked yesterday morning as well.) The clerk there said he knew nothing. That's what all of the staff here say, no matter what you ask them, it seems.
Although I didn't have the "billing password" (I found it later), I was still able to suspend service on that number. That phone is, unfortunately, a write-off. I say unfortunately not because it was valuable (it was utterly obsolete and fully depreciated, you might say), but because now I've lost my entire contact list. So if you were in my phone contact list, you're gone, and I'll have to start all over again. Irritating, that is.
I assume that what happened was the phone fell out of my holster as I was getting out of the van last night, and someone here at the hotel picked it up and decided it was a free resource and started making calls. Given the look of some of the clientele here, I'm not surprised.
At this point, with the phone suspended (I checked by calling it; it has a suspended/disconnected service recording), there's no urgency in doing anything else until tomorrow. I have some early-morning errands in Fremont, but there's no need for me to wait around to do anything here. Once my errands are done, I can head home and stop by a Verizon store in Reno or Sparks and try to get a new basic (non-smart) phone there. I really don't need or want a second smartphone, you see. For my own personal phone, I can get along just fine with a basic phone, since I make and receive very few calls. I do want to have a phone again before Westercon, though, because that's one of the times I tend to need to be reachable on short notice. I also hope to get a phone without a built-in camera, although that may be nearly impossible, as almost ever model I've seen has a camera whether you want it or not.
Although I didn't have the "billing password" (I found it later), I was still able to suspend service on that number. That phone is, unfortunately, a write-off. I say unfortunately not because it was valuable (it was utterly obsolete and fully depreciated, you might say), but because now I've lost my entire contact list. So if you were in my phone contact list, you're gone, and I'll have to start all over again. Irritating, that is.
I assume that what happened was the phone fell out of my holster as I was getting out of the van last night, and someone here at the hotel picked it up and decided it was a free resource and started making calls. Given the look of some of the clientele here, I'm not surprised.
At this point, with the phone suspended (I checked by calling it; it has a suspended/disconnected service recording), there's no urgency in doing anything else until tomorrow. I have some early-morning errands in Fremont, but there's no need for me to wait around to do anything here. Once my errands are done, I can head home and stop by a Verizon store in Reno or Sparks and try to get a new basic (non-smart) phone there. I really don't need or want a second smartphone, you see. For my own personal phone, I can get along just fine with a basic phone, since I make and receive very few calls. I do want to have a phone again before Westercon, though, because that's one of the times I tend to need to be reachable on short notice. I also hope to get a phone without a built-in camera, although that may be nearly impossible, as almost ever model I've seen has a camera whether you want it or not.