Friday, November 10, 2006

Message Rejected 

Today I had to send an SMS. I hate texting, I'd rather talk.

The only person I text is my youngest sister, Erin. I figure it's okay to use capital letters and spell everything out with Erin because she'll just figure I'm a dork and not worry about it.

But today I had to text someone else and I started to angst about my texting. Would it reveal me to be an uptight user of Capital Letters? And paradoxically someone who doesn't use any punctuation?

The only reason I'll text 'ur' instead of 'youre' is because I hate not having an apostrophe. You can see my dilemma. I like to write as I learnt from reading as a kid - but I do remember taking pleasure then in noticing the conventions. Can I change my ways and find my unique texting voice?

I got over myself and, after deleting the message only once (a record!), I sent it off.

Message Rejected.

I've got this message the last few times I've SMSed Erin. I just figured one or both of us didn't have enough credit or charge (yeah, yeah... that too).

I walked down to the post office and asked the young guy there if I could put some money on my phone. I must have sounded like Mum, because he asked me if I knew which service I'm with. He did have twinkly eyes, so it's okay, I didn't feel like a lost cause, just not very technical. I bet he didn't guess I have three blogs!

Anyway, I sent my text again and it was rejected again. I surfed around the menus and found that the message centre phone number had about seven zeros on the end, making it a very long number indeed. So I hopped on the net, ran a search, discovered that the number should have two zeros (who'd have guessed the SMSs go through servers?), re-sent my message and voila! Message sent.

So, what I learnt is:


  1. I'll never get it if I don't do it. I have a blog and a talking watch, as if I can't learn to text a message.

  2. I shouldn't be afraid to make mistakes because I nearly always learn something useful. Eg. -

  3. The number 1 key is also the punctuation key. It has a picture of a reel-to-reel on it!

  4. Nieces under age two can't really use a mobile phone.



Nice try, Rori!
// posted by Deanne @ 00:54
Comments:
Know what you mean mate, but I'm trying! Tip #43: If you want to do a capital letter, put a fullstop in, the phone capitalises for you, and then you can delete the fullstop. Don't know how many people use this cunning trick, but it works for me!
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : Sat Nov 11, 10:20:00 pm AWST
 
Hey Mate, if both of us weren't on the net right now, I could ring you and discuss this text business more! I can capitalise okay, there's a button... let's see... the asterisk/star button that on mine also has an upwards pointing arrow on it. If I push that when I'm in lower-case mode, it'll capitalise just the next letter I enter. Ahh, I'm not just a scatty curly-headed type after all!
# posted by Blogger Deanne : Sat Nov 11, 10:45:00 pm AWST
 
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