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I knew that mechanical gadgets wear out with time invariably. Apparently they also have fatigue like my students at the end of 10 minutes of listening to me. There is a journal of ME (Elsevier) called, "Wear", in which one of my ME friends at KGP used to publish so regularly that I used to joke that he will never wear out. And his specialization was, "journal bearings", which I said was a pun on the Wear Journal bearing with him.
The epitome of a vehicle wearing smoothly over a century and blowing up all of a sudden is the Autocrat's "Deacon's Masterpiece":
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/09/autocrats-masterpiece.html
But I didn't know that purely electronic gadgets like cell phones too can wear out. They of course die a sudden death if the battery conks off, or SIM card collapses, or the chips within burn out. But my ancient Nokia of 6 years vintage refused to die. All its functions were intact; but got slower and slower like its owner with age.
For instance the ring tone got feebler and feebler, the speech got slurred in transmission, the battery held on like a leech but got sluggish. Very few call me or get calls from me nowadays...partly because it is such a heck of punishment for them to talk to me:
"Hulloh, is it gps? What did you say? Say yes or no man, why are you shying away, damn it!..."
When I want to talk to anyone I feel it easier and more comfortable to text a message to him or her. Not that texting is any the less frustrating...the screen slowly gets darker and darker...but where there is a will and no hurry there is a way. I use her mostly to check my mails while lying down on my bed (22 hours a day). First she says "Loading..." and after a few seconds the screen goes dark, as if she is ashamed, and after a good while she brightens up and I feel the latest e-mail is here for me to read...but no!...she gets suspicious and asks me to log in with a password. And you know how tedious it is to type without a Qwerty keyboard. And then she goes blank again and wakes up to say, "Processing data.."...you get the hang of it, no? By then I am asleep...
Several times my son asked me throw her out and buy a new model. And I resisted. Yesterday he got wild when he called me from his Office and couldn't make out what I was saying. He dragged me to the Big C outlet nearby and asked me to sit down in the sofa minding Ishani. After a good half hour he pushed a swanky phone into my pocket...a Nokia alright...I am brand-faithful, but it was daunting, almost as if he got a girl of 20 as my mistress.
And the damn thing had so many features that I collapsed... Qwerty keyboard, 3.5 G compatibility, wi-fi, Mobile Office, Facebook, and a dozen icons peering and jeering at me. I told him the new one looks sleek enough but asked him to delete everything from the screen and instal a cute picture of Ishani, which he did in a second. He says he inserted an expansion memory card so I can store a thousand pictures and half as many videos. And I smiled like a lateral entry student to whom I was explaining how a double-beam oscilloscope works in his first lab class.
And I had a terrible sense of disorientation that is no good for my BP, cholesterol and triglycerides. Still, we KGPians don't give up so easily. I asked him to teach me how to call, receive, text, check mails, reply if possible, go to Google and to my blogspot...that is all that I needed to learn, like Keat's lines:
And he did in two minutes flat pressing this, that and anon buttons and dumped the phone on my lap and went away.
That is the geeks' way of explaining things...frighten you into submission.
And I was left gawking at the damn thing.
But it is better than if I had gone to a good teacher...rather then a great teacher ;-)
He would be so happy to tell me all that he would start from what is cell about cell phones and end up with embedded system technology, by when I would be dozing.
But all it took me was 2 hours of self-help to get what I wanted, and believe me the new Nokia Asha 302 is a joy and worth every rupee of the 7500...inclusive of add-on memory and stuff.
I love her already. And checked my mails just now on her and found as expected a crazy mail from Saswat (transferred epithet)...
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I knew that mechanical gadgets wear out with time invariably. Apparently they also have fatigue like my students at the end of 10 minutes of listening to me. There is a journal of ME (Elsevier) called, "Wear", in which one of my ME friends at KGP used to publish so regularly that I used to joke that he will never wear out. And his specialization was, "journal bearings", which I said was a pun on the Wear Journal bearing with him.
The epitome of a vehicle wearing smoothly over a century and blowing up all of a sudden is the Autocrat's "Deacon's Masterpiece":
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/09/autocrats-masterpiece.html
But I didn't know that purely electronic gadgets like cell phones too can wear out. They of course die a sudden death if the battery conks off, or SIM card collapses, or the chips within burn out. But my ancient Nokia of 6 years vintage refused to die. All its functions were intact; but got slower and slower like its owner with age.
For instance the ring tone got feebler and feebler, the speech got slurred in transmission, the battery held on like a leech but got sluggish. Very few call me or get calls from me nowadays...partly because it is such a heck of punishment for them to talk to me:
"Hulloh, is it gps? What did you say? Say yes or no man, why are you shying away, damn it!..."
When I want to talk to anyone I feel it easier and more comfortable to text a message to him or her. Not that texting is any the less frustrating...the screen slowly gets darker and darker...but where there is a will and no hurry there is a way. I use her mostly to check my mails while lying down on my bed (22 hours a day). First she says "Loading..." and after a few seconds the screen goes dark, as if she is ashamed, and after a good while she brightens up and I feel the latest e-mail is here for me to read...but no!...she gets suspicious and asks me to log in with a password. And you know how tedious it is to type without a Qwerty keyboard. And then she goes blank again and wakes up to say, "Processing data.."...you get the hang of it, no? By then I am asleep...
Several times my son asked me throw her out and buy a new model. And I resisted. Yesterday he got wild when he called me from his Office and couldn't make out what I was saying. He dragged me to the Big C outlet nearby and asked me to sit down in the sofa minding Ishani. After a good half hour he pushed a swanky phone into my pocket...a Nokia alright...I am brand-faithful, but it was daunting, almost as if he got a girl of 20 as my mistress.
And the damn thing had so many features that I collapsed... Qwerty keyboard, 3.5 G compatibility, wi-fi, Mobile Office, Facebook, and a dozen icons peering and jeering at me. I told him the new one looks sleek enough but asked him to delete everything from the screen and instal a cute picture of Ishani, which he did in a second. He says he inserted an expansion memory card so I can store a thousand pictures and half as many videos. And I smiled like a lateral entry student to whom I was explaining how a double-beam oscilloscope works in his first lab class.
And I had a terrible sense of disorientation that is no good for my BP, cholesterol and triglycerides. Still, we KGPians don't give up so easily. I asked him to teach me how to call, receive, text, check mails, reply if possible, go to Google and to my blogspot...that is all that I needed to learn, like Keat's lines:
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty" - that is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.
And he did in two minutes flat pressing this, that and anon buttons and dumped the phone on my lap and went away.
That is the geeks' way of explaining things...frighten you into submission.
And I was left gawking at the damn thing.
But it is better than if I had gone to a good teacher...rather then a great teacher ;-)
He would be so happy to tell me all that he would start from what is cell about cell phones and end up with embedded system technology, by when I would be dozing.
But all it took me was 2 hours of self-help to get what I wanted, and believe me the new Nokia Asha 302 is a joy and worth every rupee of the 7500...inclusive of add-on memory and stuff.
I love her already. And checked my mails just now on her and found as expected a crazy mail from Saswat (transferred epithet)...
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