nice imagery.

Mike G wrote:I still find it weird to be jacked out of reality and into a parallel dimension like that

Oh, don't get me wrong... I find it distasteful. Just inoffensive

Mike G wrote:I still find it weird to be jacked out of reality and into a parallel dimension like that; like people in a checkout line who buy something and pay for it without ever pausing their iPod and being able to hear what's going on. But I'm sure that's just age showing and my kids will find it totally normal to live in one world with your eyes and another with your ears, all the time

Being "relatively" young myself and definitely the target demographic for all these tech devices, I have plenty of friends who are plugged into their IPods 24-7. I am far too ADD to try to shop and listen at the sametime, and I really do think, especially as a woman, that its a major safety hazard to not be able to hear what's going on around me as I walk down the street.

So, I guess I'm an old lady in a 26 year olds body. But, I also find cellphones in restaurants rediculously annoying: but agree that there are people who need to be able to answer calls from babysitters, answering services, etc.

The problem is not the cellphones, the problem is that people have no vague idea what manners are anymore. A more far-reaching and hard to solve problem than just banning cellphones.

Funny you should mention this, because I observed this a little earlier this year at Watershed in Atlanta. There was a woman a couple of tables over who was eating alone, but she had a headset on and was talking to somebody through her entire meal... appetizer, entree, dessert... straight through with no break. She wasn't speaking any louder than anybody else in the restaurant, so while I found it odd, it was also totally inoffensive.

I still find it weird to be jacked out of reality and into a parallel dimension like that...

I agree that living in a parallel dimension from the beginning of a meal to its end is weird, but--to take a totally hypothetical example--if I'm having a tomato and feta omelet all by myself at Mitchell's and I feel like touching base with my wife, I think a 5 minute phone call is totally unweird and within the bounds of propriety as long as my voice isn't louder than that of any other patron in the restaurant having a conversation. Not sure anyone here would disagree with that, but I thought someone should at least attempt to define the acceptable non-emergency uses of cellphones in restaurants, because I think there are some.

if I'm having a tomato and feta omelet all by myself at Mitchell's and I feel like touching base with my wife

Get a room, you two and your omelet!

Yeah, a phone call is one thing-- but a lot of people seem to live in perpetual communication via headset with their home base, or maybe there are just a lot more incidents like the one in Airport '75 (where Charlton Heston has to talk Karen Black through landing the airplane) than they tell us about!

Mike G wrote:Get a room, you two and your omelet!

A topic for another forum altogether.

Mike G wrote:but a lot of people seem to live in perpetual communication via headset with their home base

I wonder where home base was for the woman I saw on the Blue Line last July. She was wearing a Santa hat and carrying on a lively conversation on her cell phone, the entire ride while we were underground.

aschie30 wrote:

Mike G wrote:but a lot of people seem to live in perpetual communication via headset with their home base

I wonder where home base was for the woman I saw on the Blue Line last July. She was wearing a Santa hat and carrying on a lively conversation on her cell phone, the entire ride while we were underground.

A CBS2 News Story from August, 2006:
[url=http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local_story_216171449.html]Cell Phones Can Now Be Used In Subway
U.S. Cellular Users Can Now Have Conversations In Subway Tunnels[/url]

Hi,

This evening I took my niece to Charlie Beinlich's for dinner. She is 17 with all the latest electronic gadgets. While she wasn't taking phone calls when interacting with us, she was text messaging. When I complained about having her less than full attention. She stuck the phone under the table, beyond her ability to view and allegedly continued to tap out a text message to her friend. When I commented she must be text messaging way too much if she can pull off that trick, then she finally put it away.

I was never in favor of her getting the text messaging feature for her phone. Nothing has yet to change my mind on the alleged advantages.

Regards,

germuska wrote:

aschie30 wrote:

Mike G wrote:but a lot of people seem to live in perpetual communication via headset with their home base

I wonder where home base was for the woman I saw on the Blue Line last July. She was wearing a Santa hat and carrying on a lively conversation on her cell phone, the entire ride while we were underground.

A CBS2 News Story from August, 2006:
[url=http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local_story_216171449.html]Cell Phones Can Now Be Used In Subway
U.S. Cellular Users Can Now Have Conversations In Subway Tunnels[/url]

This was way before any cell phone was able to be used in any subway.

aschie30 wrote:

A CBS2 News Story from August, 2006:
[url=http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local_story_216171449.html]Cell Phones Can Now Be Used In Subway
U.S. Cellular Users Can Now Have Conversations In Subway Tunnels[/url]

This was way before any cell phone was able to be used in any subway.

They were testing it out for a few months before it was officially announced.

eatchicago wrote:

aschie30 wrote:

A CBS2 News Story from August, 2006:
[url=http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local_story_216171449.html]Cell Phones Can Now Be Used In Subway
U.S. Cellular Users Can Now Have Conversations In Subway Tunnels[/url]

This was way before any cell phone was able to be used in any subway.

They were testing it out for a few months before it was officially announced.

Maybe I'm not remembering exactly when this happened, but this was definitely well-before any time when anyone could use a cell phone underground. Did I mention the Santa hat?

"please speak up -- everyone here wants the details of your conversation."

this is about what i do. when someone is having a conversation too loudly, or one of those evil walkie-talkie phones, i'll often stop what i'm doing and stare with rapt attention, as if i'm straining to hear.

if the person looks at me, and they often make a face as if *I'm* being rude by listening, i'll sometimes wave and say "tell them i said 'hi'" or something equally strange.

they usually move away from me pretty quickly.

aschie30 wrote:

eatchicago wrote:

aschie30 wrote:

A CBS2 News Story from August, 2006:
[url=http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local_story_216171449.html]Cell Phones Can Now Be Used In Subway
U.S. Cellular Users Can Now Have Conversations In Subway Tunnels[/url]

This was way before any cell phone was able to be used in any subway.

They were testing it out for a few months before it was officially announced.

Maybe I'm not remembering exactly when this happened, but this was definitely well-before any time when anyone could use a cell phone underground. Did I mention the Santa hat?

Well, you did say it was last July

What model of phone was it?

Mike G wrote:What model of phone was it?

God, I don't know. It was at a time when NOBODY was using a cell phone underground including people (like myself) who generally have one ringing off the hook because there was no signal in the subway. It was that period of time when you'd take the blue line and if you were above ground, there was regularly about 15 people on your train talking and if you went underground, people had to announce to the person they were talking with that they'd lose a signal. The train would then fall silent (nice) until you were above ground again.

This woman was an old lady, who didn't appear as if she, above all the other business and professional people and/or hip suburban kids on the train, would have the latest technology. Also, now that I think about it, it had to be almost two years ago, maybe more, because that's about when I stopped taking the train and started driving to work. (Time flies.)

He was joking.

What's with the recent LTH obsession with phones? Does everyone have iPhone fever or something?

He was joking.

gleam wrote:What's with the recent LTH obsession with phones? Does everyone have iPhone fever or something?

I do! Rumor has it that Cingular might give away 18 months of free service to people who get the iPhone. That would be absolutely worth the price of the phone.

http://www.macrumors.com/2007/01/25/ata ... e-service/

leek wrote:

gleam wrote:What's with the recent LTH obsession with phones? Does everyone have iPhone fever or something?

I do! Rumor has it that Cingular might give away 18 months of free service to people who get the iPhone. That would be absolutely worth the price of the phone.

http://www.macrumors.com/2007/01/25/ata ... e-service/

I heard the same thing, but the impression I get is that it'll be a promotion to entice Verizon users to switch. Even then, it's hard to imagine, given that the average mobile phone bill is what, $50-75? 18 months free is an awful lot of lost revenue, especially when the contract is only 24 months.

Mike G wrote:If I find someone is being too obnoxious in sharing their conversation I just start really sharing it with them-- looking them right in the eye, commenting on what they say, laughing when they laugh. That reintroduces the concept of privacy real fast.

David Hammond wrote:Cell phones are banned from the locker room at the gym I go to, but guys still bring them in, and there's a guy with a locker about five feet from mine who insists upon talking to his girlfriend.

In line with MikeG's I-could-be-a-psycho-and-I'm-listening-to-you approach, I walked into the gym last night to find the knucklehead mentioned above on his cellphone talking to his girlfriend, so I moaned, in a relatively loud voice, "Lord spare me!" Interestingly, he suddenly lowered his voice, ended the conversation, and for the first time EVER (and we're talking 7 years of having lockers almost next to one another!), he started a conversation with me (oddly, on the subject of airbags), which was much more tolerable to me than listening to him talk to his girlfriend (and probably much more tolerable to him than listening to me apparently praying aloud in a room of sweaty naked men).

David "Finding Religion in the Weirdest Places" Hammond

gleam wrote:

leek wrote:

gleam wrote:What's with the recent LTH obsession with phones? Does everyone have iPhone fever or something?

I do! Rumor has it that Cingular might give away 18 months of free service to people who get the iPhone. That would be absolutely worth the price of the phone.

http://www.macrumors.com/2007/01/25/ata ... e-service/

I heard the same thing, but the impression I get is that it'll be a promotion to entice Verizon users to switch. Even then, it's hard to imagine, given that the average mobile phone bill is what, $50-75? 18 months free is an awful lot of lost revenue, especially when the contract is only 24 months.

False rumor. Already refuted by Cingular.

I've got an even more important new rule for bars:

If you're going to use your Blackberry or other type-chat device,
Don't sit at the bar!

Find yourself a nice stool along a wall or sit at a corner table and go to it with your thumbs. Don't take up valuable room at the bar, where others are trying to socialize and drink.

Would you say this to someone watching the TV, smoking a stogie, or just simply staring into his bev nap?

thelocaltourist wrote:Would you say this to someone watching the TV, smoking a stogie, or just simply staring into his bev nap?

[Slow clap] Someone needs to speak up on behalf of the cellphone/blackberry users. Thank you.

To require (or even ask) people not to use these devices in restaurants and bars is a form of discrimination. Because everybody else there is allowed to have a conversation! If you have the good fortune to be with a companion, and I have the bad fortune not to be, why should you get to chat with your companion and I be prohibited from chatting on my cellphone or blackberry with mine? If I can't, then imposing a vow of silence on every other patron in the establishment is only fair.

Mind you, I'm in total agreement that cell conversations should not be distractingly loud, which unfortunately they too often are. But as long as the tone of voice is appropriate for the setting, I'd say people should have more important concerns than "legislating" their neighbors' behavior.

my original intent was not to legislate anything, and maybe that was my fault from the original title of my posting. it was more to draw attn to the boorish behaviour i've encountered by so many users.

Would you say this to someone watching the TV, smoking a stogie, or just simply staring into his bev nap?

Okay, good points riddle and tourist, but I was just expressing myself (ranting) after counting several people thumbing away while sitting in crowded bars, for over an hour, without picking up their glasses.

While I wish for no more legislation to be passed on behavior inside bars, you'd think the management would do something about people who just fill up their seats. If I sat staring at my bar nap for an hour, I bet I'd get thrown out.

Perhaps it should be acceptable, but it just looks odd today since it's a new form of communication that requires a certain lack of self-consciousness. If an adult was sitting at a bar, playing intently on a Gameboy, what would the common reaction be?

kiplog wrote:While I wish for no more legislation to be passed on behavior inside bars, you'd think the management would do something about people who just fill up their seats. If I sat staring at my bar nap for an hour, I bet I'd get thrown out.

Well, since I was the one ranting a year ago about non-consuming, laptop-wielding squatters taking up tables at Borders, I can sympathize with your complaint.

I should mention, without going too far off topic, that what I was really talking about was the social nature of sitting at a bar being disrupted by those who wall themselves away from their surroundings with these new forms of communication. Not whether their digital conversation with someone elsewhere was disturbing me.

Just as those who see TVs in bars as detrimental when it comes to the art of 'craic', I believe compulsive or constant use of the little keypad thingies is worse.

The fact that we don't always have a companion to converse with, is probably the main reason many of us sit at a bar - for the social nature of it and for the fact that you can have a fascinating conversation with a stranger, a future life-long friend, or a drunken idiot.

Hi,

Last week I was having lunch, when a trio of elderly people took a table near me. The gentleman proceeded to make a cellphone call to his stockbroker using the speaker phone to allow all of them to hear the situation. Unfortunately their conversation carried to several tables away.

The stockbroker began by commenting she had intended to call earlier with good news. However the situation had changed since the markets opened, so she was reluctant to tell them the bad news. She provided some stats, then these people got into a lively discussion deciding at what point they would sell. All of the diners around them were giving, "Can you believe this?" looks to each other.

The restaurant management suddenly turned up the ambient music loud enough these people decided to conduct their phone call just a little later. Once they were off the phone, the volume came down to reasonable level.

It was very tempting to comment to them on their financial choices. Of course they would have likely advised this was a private, confidential matter and to mind my own business. Really? Why entertain a restaurant with your personal business???

Regards,