Toast for Brekkie

Tyrone is dead, long live Tyrese

It's true. The death knell has rung for the venerable Tyrone. He was a good cell phone. Like death in the 1800s, we'll never know the exact nature of the malady that took him down; just that, like so many before him, he was taken from us unexpectedly, before his time, in the prime of his youth. As my Mom would say, "They don't put on the gravestone, 'The peanut killed him.'"

Murphy's Law of cellphones: Tyrone's warranty ran out last month. Verizon has a neat little gimmick: they'll give you a new phone every two years. Sounds great, right? Until you realize that no warranty lasts more than a year, unless you pay for it. This gives them a full year beyond the warranty to wait for your phone to crap out before they have to pony up for a new one. If it dies during the second year, as has now happened to me twice, the customer is culpable. If you want the same model, they'll sell you a refurb sans battery (you mean I get to keep my old, worn out battery? yay!) for fifty bucks. You want a new model? Fabulous! But you get to pay full price. New customers get a discount. Loyal customers? Ask Samuel L. Jackson.

We live in a uniquely frustrating time. The digital revolution has ushered in innumerable advances that should make our lives easier. Instead, we use the added efficiency to heap more onto our plate, to cram more into our schedules, effectively negating progress and maintaining the same level of busyness. We do the same thing with cars. Engine advances? Huzzah! But rather than use them for better gas mileage, we choose more power.

Beyond that, though, is what happens when you port your life into the information age: random failure of electronic equipment. Yes, yes, we've all heard it a thousand times: back up your information. I've even had a hard drive crash on me, and I still don't back up. I read a study on msnbc.com recently that put the backup rate somewhere around an abysmal 2%. Apparently it's too expensive, time-consuming and difficult to be practical. Or else we're all too lazy because electronics have made our lives insufferably easy.

You would think with the internet, GPS, bluetooth and the like that information could be easily shared in the 21st century. I mean, it is the information age, right? Instead we swim in a sea of incompatibility. Sure, it's possible to use the cell network to back up your contact list online. But you don't expect us to just give that to you, do you? Of course not. With Verizon, as with most cellphone providers who seem to have every customer over a barrel, everything has a price.

Until now. What I refused to pay before, for the low low rate of $1.99 a month, is now free. Thanks for telling me guys. I know what you're thinking. "George, seriously. You have over 300 contacts. What's two bucks when you pay $110 a month for your cellphone plan?" My answer? Two bucks is two bucks. It's the principle of the thing. I shouldn't have to pay extra to back up my contacts, which are the most important part of my phone. Now, it seems, Verizon finally agrees with me.

But it's too late for all of that now. When Tyrone gave up the ghost, he really gave it up. Eric, the tech, refused to hazard a guess. "Could be any of a dozen things. It just crapped out." Thanks, man. That really helps. You should go into grief counseling.

So now I'm fifty bucks poorer and my only recourse is to go through my online phone bills and try to guess which numbers match all the people I know. No names, just raw numbers. As if I'm going to be able to do that.

So I ask you this: if you know me and want to continue to be able to contact me, would you mind giving me a call or emailing me your contact info? For all the people who don't read Brekkie, I guess I'm just out of luck until they call. I apologize in advance if you don't hear from me first.

Believe it or not, there is a bright side to all this. It's called a clean slate. Everything happens for a reason. In this case my contact list will never regain its original dimensions, at least not with the same people. But there's something refreshing about starting over. Now my phonebook will only include people who really want to talk to me.

It's interesting how things come in threes. This is not the first clean slate I've been handed in the past month; this is not the first loss I've dealt with in recent memory. Very soon the third cat will be out of the bag. And it will become evident that change and growth are good things. Watch this space. It may be drastic.

Some of you are probably wondering, as an epilogue, "Why Tyrese?" It's simple: the replacement is the same model. They look exactly alike. They could be twins. Heck, they are twins. But Tyrone's name shall be retired along with him. Let's all give a warm welcome to Tyrese.

Posted by George at November 6, 2006 09:24 PM