Mark Knoller is now OFF

So my AT&T bill made it through our snowstorm to tell me that I’ve used 770 messages, but my plan only allows me 200.

Mind you, I’d probably only sent 5 text messages in my life, all most likely consisting of “okay,”when I signed up for my iPhone. So if I got up to 200, I figured, I’d be in the with-it crowd big time.

But who knew? My good friend Mark Knoller, the CBS White House correspondent who’s been sending me 30 – 40 tweets a day, has cost me $57! A while ago, on January 7 to be exact, I resolved to get rid of him; but instead I just turned off the annoying little beep that came with his messages all those times a day. And sometimes he was so interesting, sending pictures of the dead White House rose garden and telling us when Obama’s helicopter had taken off. Or, as I learned this morning before I opened the bill, as Obama left the White House (to speak to the DNC, where he congratulated them on making it through the “snow-magedden”) one of the vehicles in his motorcade slid into one of the press vans, and a tree branch fell on another press van. How can I resist that?

But now my with-it son says (in an email, not a text): “why are you getting twitter messages as texts?  you should get an application like tweetie for twitter.”

Done. And also the very helpful AT&T guy in India has taken all the charges for Mark off my bill.

It’s quite complicated, being au courant.

Staying alive

“Her personality is hardening; her world is becoming smaller.”

That’s how Chip once described an older friend of mine, after I complained about her fixed opinions and her unwillingness to change.

It was sad, and it was true.

In hospice work, you see people in the stages of getting ready to die. At first, they tell you about their families and ask questions about you; you watch TV with them and talk about what’s happening in the world. Then, quite quickly, their attention becomes circumscribed by the room they’re in. At the end, if they’re conscious, they barely know you’re there.

But this friend of mine wasn’t dying. She was just getting older.

I don’t want to be that way. It’s why I got an iPhone and why I listen to rock music and why I want to see Avatar in 3D, even though I hate science fiction movies.

I want to be au courant, right up until I’m ready to die.

But I guess this means I have to write about politics again.

Twitter

Okay, so since I’m now feeling on the cutting edge of technology (albeit two years late) with my new iPhone, I’m trying out Twitter. The first thing that happens when you register is that they tell you who else in your address book is on Twitter. Already this feels like some sort of Big Brother intrusion: how do they know who’s in my address book? Oh yes, it’s because I had to create a contacts list in Yahoo, because I’d still be on the “Bs” if I tried to type them directly into the phone, with my enormous thumb hitting all the wrong keys (the phone would have imported my Microsoft Outlook contacts – wait, I thought Microsoft and Apple didn’t get along! – but I refuse to use Microsoft Outlook for the same reason I refuse to use Explorer, and dislike Bing: because they’re Microsoft).

So then Twitter asked me if I wanted to follow those people. Well, I really didn’t want to know who they were having lunch with or what they were buying, but I said okay, just to see what would happen, and then I got a bunch of emails from my friends saying they were on Twitter but didn’t really use it but thanks for asking to follow them, which made me feel quite pleased with my selection of friends.

My son somehow got a picture of that airplane in the Hudson seconds after it happened, and I wanted to be like that too, shooting pictures of breaking news to all my non-Twitter-using friends, so when I saw an article in the Times about good Twitterers to follow, I signed up with a few. Susan Orlean, the New Yorker writer, was the first. I thought it might be fun to see what a writer’s life was like. My phone has a very annoying beep beep when a message comes through (I know I could change this, but with all these Twitter updates coming in I don’t have time), and as soon as I signed up with her I started finding out about her trip to LA and how she was looking forward to a milkshake or something stupid like that and then I realized I was the stupid one, because even a really good writer can’t write good writing in 140 characters. So it was END Susan Orlean, and those beeps stopped.

But now my problem is Mark Knoller, the CBS White House correspondent, whose tweets the Times described as “living with the Obamas 24/7,” and since I’m a sucker for the Obamas, watching all the slide shows of official White House pictures and even Oprah’s Christmas tour, I thought this might be a fun insider account. But just this morning I’ve gotten six annoying beeps in a row with 140 character summaries of the USA Today interview with James Jones, which I really could just go read myself, plus the inexplicable “In response to your many inquiries, I am not the celebrity stylist who gave Kate Gosselin her makeover.”

END Mark Knoller.

But how do I get instant pictures of miraculous plane landings, I’d like to know?

Sorry, have to go, iPhone calling

Please excuse me for the next two weeks if you never see me; if I don’t answer your emails or text messages or phone calls; if I don’t read the books or see the movies or TV shows we’ve talked about; and if do I happen to visit you to take your picture, forgive me if I leave rather suddenly, because I’ll be working on linking it to your name. Don’t worry, though, I can find my way home with my compass, figuring out on the way how to get the little weather icon to stop telling me the temperature in Cupertino, which is 73 and sunny in case you were wondering. Or maybe it’s just a permanent icon, in which case it’s pretty depressing when it’s 45 here.

So do forgive me. I’m now one of those people who seem to find their laps so fascinating, who are recognizable only if you’re quite familiar with the top of their heads.

Black Friday: Yes, I’m writing about shopping

I hate shopping. I hate stores and shopping carts and coupons. I hate Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving (and after Thanksgiving) and canned Christmas music and fake Santa Clauses. I hate talking about shopping and bargains and what other people bought.

So I’ve been putting off doing something about my three-year-old cell phone with a battery life of just one, very short, conversation, because I was dreading going to the AT&T store. (Yes, I’ve made the big jump 1) to a smart phone; and 2) away from Verizon, because my very hip son tells me I’m an iPhone person not a Blackberry person, and since I’m so proud of this I now have to prove him right.)

But I learned yesterday (from this same hip son) that you don’t have to go to the AT&T store. I buy books and curtains and frying pans and even shoes online, but somehow it didn’t occur to me that you can not only buy an iPhone, but keep your number and get the Apple store to break the news to Verizon that you’re breaking up with them, all while happily sitting here.

I’m now on the cutting edge of communicative technology (albeit about two years too late), and you can expect all kinds of texts and tweets to follow. Maybe there’s even an app that will do all my Christmas shopping.