Cell Phone Confusion

We (Faye and I) purchased a Lincoln  last week, as I told you last week. But, of course, that wasn't the end of the story. With a new car purchase (as with any major purchase) there are things that happen afterward. Things like learning the idiosyncrasies of the new vehicle and dealing with communication needs. The Lucerne had OnStar, which Faye used to make the occasional phone call. Fords and Lincolns do not use OnStar and, therefore, we (meaning "I") needed to come up with some kind of replacement system.

In my Focus, I simply used the Bluetooth connection my cell phone and the Focus supported. That seemed like the ideal way to deal with the communication issue I had with the Lincoln. So I ambled to the local Walmart and purchased a "GoPhone." Not a smartphone, just what they call a feature phone. They are cheap and work well for this purpose. You see, all Faye needed was a way to make hands-free phone calls. She did not need apps or anything fancy like that.

I worked for AT&T for 34 years... you would think I would know something about phones. And I do... but not what I needed to know about Bluetooth and phones that use it.

The phone I bought had Bluetooth capability but it did not have it turned on. I found that and enabled it. Then I learned that I needed to turn something called "visibility" on because that, too, was disabled by default. These two things made the phone discoverable by the vehicle. But it still didn't work right. It would find the phone but then the phone would ask if I wanted to "sync" with the system in the car. And, after answering that in the affirmative, it wanted to know if it should share the addressbook with the system. It took me a few days to figure out how to make that automatic. It turned out that I needed to look under "Devices", find "SYNC" and then configure an option that said "Always connect."

That made it work the same as my other cell phone which only needed to be told to "Auto-sync."

I hate it when phones are smarter than me. And I really hate that the terminology they use is not standardized.

And, in addition, the door from the house to the garage decided to act up, prompting me to have to call a locksmith to fix it. Of course, no locksmith could come out until Monday so it was two days of using the handheld garage door openers and the front door.

I did not have a good weekend.