Back to that aging and technology thing

What I'm Reading: All the Way Home, by Jenyfer Matthews

What I'm writing. Chapter 5, and my guest blog column for June 12 at Title Magic.

Admitting defeat, yesterday I took my new phone and the two pages of instructions I'd printed from the manual. The ones where the steps on the page didn't match the steps on my phone menus. I learned I'm totally out of it when it comes to understanding technology terminology. Sometimes it's nice to be a little old lady, because the kids at the phone store don't expect you to have a clue, and they're very patient.

When I bought the phone, the sales guy took my old sim card and transferred all my contacts to my new phone. I could press 'contacts' and there was my list in all its jumbled glory. And the phone made calls to those folks. As I mentioned in Saturday's blog, however, I couldn't get some of the features to work, such as the personalized ring tones. After all, it's nice to know immediately if it's your agent calling. Or your husband.

Well, guess what I learned. All those contacts were "on" my phone, but they weren't "in" my phone. Or is it the other way around. Seems that the sim card list isn't really integrated into the phone's memory, or something like that, so I had to copy any contacts I wanted to edit and once they were in the phone, the step by step menus worked. And there are even different icons so now I know who's inside and who's just hanging on my sim card. Which I'm supposed to sync with my PC, which is somewhere I'm not ready to go just yet. I can see me crashing my entire computer. Or exploding my phone.

Maybe I'll just find the instructions for solitaire. The phone's supposed to do that, too.