Mumblefratz

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

To summarize for those not wishing to go back and read through all the preceding, this is the story of me, and currently I'm telling the story about how my thoughts on religion have evolved over the years and how that has affected me. I previously mentioned how I was raised in Lutheran school from 1st through 10th grades even though since 2nd grade I had substantial doubts centering on the precept that being a true christian required an absolute faith in christian orthodoxy. By the ti

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

[quote who="DrJBHL" reply="41" id="3776655"] When I saw your post, Mumbles, I had a premonitory feeling as to where you were headed...a radar of sorts, if you will, possibly influenced by recent losses here, and in my lady's family (her parents). Thinking about the end of life...it doesn't really worry me with regards to myself, as whatever lives will die. Personally, I used to believe in a sort of nebulous deity compatible more or less with Judaism, but that too, passed. Regarding

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

Anyway to continue with my narrative. I was 7 years old and had many years to go before I was done with enforced religious training and I basically decided that I put more trust in things I could touch, feel, see and demonstrate for myself than in something in which I could do none of these things. At the time my example was a light that went on when I flicked the switch up and off when I flicked the switch down. If it ever failed to turn on then either the light needed changing, the fuse nee

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

[quote who="Jafo" reply="37" id="3776646"] I never had a choice re going to Sunday School.....my mum was the teacher...[e digicons];P[/e] I grew up to have a healthy disrespect for Church....simply because it interfered with my weekends. [/quote] A very understandable and not particularly unusual response of rebelling against the excess of the previous generation. It's something I did as well. I often thought that there's a somewhat cyclical nature to gen

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

[quote who="starkers" reply="36" id="3776644"] Hmmmm, there seems to be a preoccupation with death here and I'm curious. I'm 67 in 3 weeks and I only ever think about death [my own] once in a blue moon. I understand that it will come one day but rather than dwell on it I tend to think about life and living. I even make plans for the not-so-near future.... just in case I'm still around to see them through. Shoot, I'd even consider marrying again.... if somebody 'd have me, that is.

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

If you're young and healthy, or even not so young and healthy, death is not something that's given much thought, it certainly wasn't for me. In my experience that's really the best. I assume for most people that die early (and early is a very relative term) death often comes quickly and unexpectedly either by trauma or major illness (heart attack, stroke) and in that case you really don't have much time to dwell on it. In the case of the other extreme where you're old enough to find death imm

Lies, Damned Lies and covid-19 statistics in Current Events JoeUser Forums

Has anyone else noticed that the nature of the reported statistics on covid-19 has subtly changed over the course of the pandemic? I'm sure things are different from one state to the next but at least in Massachusetts we started off reporting new hospitalizations of confirmed COVID-19 cases and then switched to reporting new hospitalizations of confirmed AND SUSPECTED covid-19 cases then at some point stopped publicly reporting new confirmed and suspected covid-19 hospitalizations and

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

[quote who="starkers" reply="33" id="3776425"] Thing is, I don't like mobile or landline phones at all, but they are necessary for me these days. [/quote] I truly do understand. I was just somewhat lucky in that I never did ever really have to have one for work and made it to retirement without one. However, I'm pretty much done with discussing the cell phone thing and am ready to move on to the real reason for starting this thread. The cell phone thing was just a ho

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

One more final preparatory statement before I really get to my point. Each time I post something I end up spending a lot of time trying to explain something that most people probably get right away but that no matter how hard I try to explain it there's likely to be some folks that either don't read my explanations, don't care about my explanations or don't understand my explanations. It's also possible that the fault lies in the inadequacy of my explanation, and if that's the case th

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

[quote who="starkers" reply="30" id="3776352"] Hey Mumbles, long time no see. It's really good to see you back in the forums again, especially since many of the old-timers have either stopped coming or have passed on. Anyway, here's to looking forward to your continuing narrative. [e digicons]:)[/e] [e digicons]:thumbsup:[/e] [/quote] Thank you [e digicons]:grin:[/e]

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

Back to my narrative. This is actually a kind of a funny story about how one day I skipped work, drove all the way down to the Foxwoods casino and within about an hour had a heart attack. Anyway I had played poker starting in my fraternity and years after at a weekly home game of one of my friends. In later years I didn't play all that much but once Foxwoods opened I would sneak down 2 or 3 times a year and play poker. My wife didn't really approve but what the heck. Anyway one Friday

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

[quote who="Publius of NV" reply="26" id="3776293"] Mumble, you and I are about the same age. I went to high school in the Boston area and took a couple of classes at MIT as a high school senior (Special Relativity and Fortran programming). But I went another direction and got a BS in physics from Caltech and then an MS from UC Berkeley. Worked for 40 years as a software engineer, retired at the end of 2017. My wife and I have used cellphones since the Palm P

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

[quote who="Chasbo" reply="25" id="3776264"]... I'll leave the philosophy lessons and social discourse to you guys. ...[/quote] Probably not a bad idea.

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

To put to bed my particular form of Luddism; I will not enable the wireless connection to my ISP, I don't allow any programs on my PC to automatically update themselves, I will not use a debit card (although I do use a credit card) and I will most certainly not participate in online banking or in any form of online access to any funds or assets I have. I also will never put a camera or microphone on any computer I own. That's pretty much it. The reason I won't use a debit card

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

[quote who="Daiwa" reply="21" id="3776257"] For better or worse, a smart phone has become an indispensable tool in my line of work and I find a lot of conveniences come along for the ride. Just wish privacy concerns didn't tag along, too. I could probably resume a land-line-only life but it would be noticeably less efficient. To my way of thinking, if you're willing to communicate via the internet on a computer, it's really no different using a smart phone - the compute

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

[quote who="tid242" reply="20" id="3776254"] Hey there. I don't recall interacting with you in the past, but this is a great thread MumbleFratz. I'm /way/ younger than you, but one of the things that I've learned during my time here on earth is that life is far too short to learn from one's own mistakes and experiences. In order to adequately navigate the world one must be able to learn from the experiences, mistakes, and wisdom of other people as well. So I appre

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

[quote who="S J N" reply="18" id="3776149"] I'm 70 and I received my first cell phone, as a gift, 7 years ago. Reason..my car broke down twice in 1 month. Could not find a pay phone and had to ask a restaurant to borrow their phone. Since then my flip phone is always in the car for this purpose. I have a land line at home and am happy to live this way. I'm also NOT on any social media as I don't need everybody to know my business. Almost everyone I know is addicted to their ce

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

That's way more than I intended for today perhaps tomorrow I'll go into my motivation for starting this thread.

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

[quote who="Jafo" reply="8" id="3775935"] Quoting Mumblefratz, reply 5 I probably will eventually get to a conversation of a political nature but my intent is informational not confrontational. And when that happens your post will be relocated appropriately. Hi, BTW .... can't belie

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

[quote who="Chasbo" reply="13" id="3776102"] I'll be 68 in less than a month. As far as the cell phone goes you've a right to feel any way you want. You sound like an old man when you talk about "cell phones". Most people refer to them as smart phones. In any event it seems to me that you've never used a contemporary smart phone. They are great. I rarely get phone calls. I use my phone for so much more. There's quite a lot of useful things packed into phones now a days. They r

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

As kind of a postscript to the above the only phone I have these days is an old fashioned landline with both phone and access with Verizon. Most people I know have given up their landlines and gone completely cellular. I find all the dropped calls and poor reception really annoying. And no, voice over IP is NOT a landline regardless of what your ISP says. Just recently I had to call Guitar Center a couple of times about an order I placed. The sales support folks were working from home

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

OK about the cell phone thing. I wasn't always the Luddite that I am today. When I was younger I embraced every new thing like it was sliced bread. It was only much later that I began to resent what seemed to me change just for change sake. The cell phone thing is only a small part of it. More later. My first real encounter with cell phones occurred somewhere in the '91 - '92 timeframe. I had friends that had some form of mobile phone as early as '79 but they were big clunky t

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

Politics is not really the point of this. It's really about the events of my life that have shaped my opinions. My personal politics is only one of the facets of my life and all told not that major a one so I'll probably hold off on it for awhile but as I said in the beginning feel free to move this to wherever appropriate, these days I'm pretty much beyond the possibility of being offended.

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

Daiwa, Another blast from the past. Good to hear from you as well.

Reply to Never Owned a Cell Phone in Everything Else JoeUser Forums

So on with my hopefully not too narcissistic post/blog. I need to add a few more prefacing statements, I don't want to belabor the point but I'd like to be as clear as possible to avoid misunderstandings. I came to this family of websites because I played Galciv 2 for a number of years. Later I became involved in a number of heated political arguments on the Joe User site because I'm a progressive liberal democrat and most folks here seem to be staunch conservative/libertarian