RasterWeb: Rambles: pageme

I don't like pagers.

I've been able to avoid carrying one for years. That's the way I like it. So when we completed this huge project at work they said, "Hey, take this pager with you, just for the weekend." (Groan...) I was not pleased, but did it anyway. It never went off. Success!

I wanted to take a day off a week later and they said, "Hey, take this thing again." So I did, I even found out it had a web interface, so you could submit a form to send it a message. Kinda neat, but still, I don't want to carry it. This woman says, "Oh, pagers are great! People can find you anywhere, do you have a cell phone?" I say "Yes" and she says, "That's the best, people can just page you and then you can call them back right away!" My translation of that is "Hey! You're a dog on a leash, congratulations!".

See, I don't want people to always be able to bug me, I don't want to have to get back to people within minutes when I'm not a work. I know it's a 24/7 crazy-hectic fast-paced internet world we live in, but I need that time for myself and the family. See, we do have a cell phone, but we use about 10-20 minutes per month, everyone I ask says they use between 100 and 500 minutes. I pretty much just call the female and kids, I almost never get or make work related calls.

I think some people need the pager or cell phone to feel important. I personally don't think I need to feel important, I think I am important. Maybe that's the difference. Oh, back to the pager. I tested it at work and it functioned fine (web interface and by phone) so I took it home with me. While at home I showed the female how the web interface worked. Hmmm, I showed her how it should work. Nothing happened. I tried it by phone. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing... Cool, I had a pager that only seemed to work while I was in the office! Well, at least it didn't work inside my house... maybe the steel siding was throwing it off...

I had contemplated keeping this information to myself, but I figured I better let them know, so when things did completely blowup, they could do more that email me and leave me a phone message, as that's not enough I guess... I returned it with my story of the amazing non-functionality feature it possessed, and they asked that I "check in" by phone on my days off. Whew... Still a free man... but for how long!

P.S. When did "beepers" become "pagers" or are they different?

  Last Modified: 04.02.2001 by rasterboy