FREEDOM!
I hear the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the back of my mind....
I want to march in the streets. I want to have a BBQ for all of my friends. I still want to climb up on an AT&T billboard and spray the word "Bulls***" across the "Fewest dropped calls of any network" quote. What a crock of crap. But you all know this already, if you've read one of my entries in here.
And now, after 24 months of serving my time, of tolerance and forced patience, I made the call yesterday, Sunday, 08 July 2007, to bring my phone number over to T-Mobile once again. It fully ported before I even hung up the phone with the T-Mobile rep, who was really a nice guy. Amazing. A 60-second transition, and all of my calls and texts and data were being enjoyed with my original number.
It's like a homecoming. The number was originally a T-Mobile number anyway. I just left because my midlife-crisis manager at T-Mobile was a toolbag and fired me wrongfully, so I left out of bitterness and also to support my great friend, Holly, in her position as a Retail Sales Rep with Cingular. Now we have both moved on - she's doing hair, and I'm with T-Mobile.
My new phone is GREAT! It does so much more than my Treo can. My Treo hasn't played an mp3 file in it's "RealPlayer" application in over a year. My new T-Mobile Dash (made by HTC) plays music AND videos in Windows Media Player.
Sure, it's no iPhone. But then again, this phone is for business - for checking e-mails, listening to the occasional tune, sending text messages, browsing the internet, and just staying connected to the world. It has WiFi, so it can browse at hotspots, at my house, or anywhere there's an open network. It has voice notes, voice dialing, and a great calendar/contact manager. It can handle multiple applications - and multiple calls, UNLIKE the Treo.
Poor Treo. What will be its fate?? Were it not for an offer from my buddy Garrett, its death would already have been ceremoniously planned.
Later this week, in front of witnesses, it would have been sacrificed under the front tire of my Ford Escape, slowly crushed and then violently flung against a cinder block wall - all captured on video to be posted to YouTube. BUT, crazy Garrett wants to add a lemon to his collection of Cingular phones. And in exchange for a $25 memory card for my new phone, he'd take it off my hands.
Decisions, decisions....
Part of me still wants that satisfaction of knowing that it's dead. That it will never freeze up again. Never drop another call. Never refuse to switch back from a call waiting call, or play a song. To never hear a broken up, constipated message tone when a text comes through. I'll almost miss it. ALMOST. But the new phone is slimmer, cuter, and much more practical. It can do everything the Treo promised and failed to deliver - and then some. So I'll have to decide its fate within the next 48 hours. Until then, it waits on Mobile Death Row.
I still have a lot to learn about the new phone - including how to shut it up when a message alert or phone call comes in. It embarrassed the hell out of me last Monday at Team Meeting when our business was interrupted by the boisterous theme to Hawaii Five-O. But this phone, at $23 after rebate, can only be better than it's predecessor. So, with the bar set amazingly low, this phone is sure to improve the quality of my life and get me back into the world of cellular sanity.
Goodbye, Treo.
You will not be missed.
P.S. Here is a photo of Treo's last tumble...as it fell onto the ground from Terri & Alicia's rental car in the parking lot of the country club at Adam's wedding. And yes, that is a cigarette butt next to it.
