Cellular Pings

I think we use cell phones in excess. (understatement) I'm definitely guilty of it, sometimes it seems like my car won't crank unless I'm on the phone. In my defense though, I'm usually in lock-down during the day and often spend my evenings studying.. so the car is a time-efficient place to keep in touch. I also try to avoid using the mail as much as possible, so being able to pay bills by phone is a convenience.

Anyway, this post was inspired by one of my main cell phone annoyances. An annoyance so vulgar that I'm delaying my Bojangles fix in order to write about it. Oh, and this annoyance happened twice this weekend involving two different people. So what could this trivial, minor setback that raises my systolic be? It's the habit of cellular pings. (Pings are a form of active sonar used in boats but also occur in nature as echolocation.) Basically, I really dislike it when there has to be multiple phone conversations in order for someone to meet up with you. That doesn't seem like a big deal, but consider this example:

Phone call #1:
'Hey, where are you?'
'I'm at X.'
'Ok, I'll be there in a second.'

Phone call #2 (10 minutes later):
'Hey, are you still at X?'
'Yep.'
'Ok, I'm parking.. I'll be right there.'

Phone call #3:
'Hey, where in X are you?'

Phone calls 1 and 2 are relatively understandable from a safety perspective. But phone call #3..that's the one that really gets me. How do I answer this? Do I need to pull a Jack Bauer? 'Uh, I'm at a table that's 9 feet away from the restrooms in the Northeast section of the bar. Hold on, let me upload realtime satellite thermal scans to your PDA so you can exactly pinpoint where I am in order to save you the trouble of just casually scanning the room.'

I guess I could just send one of my associates as a guide.


Anyway, maybe I'm just making much ado about a common tendency. But the next time you're in this situation and don't feel like dealing with it, just hang up during phone call #3 and text your caller 'Sorry, please refer to the Summer of Dev post #94. See you shortly.' I think I'll go get some supremes and head to my sanctuary to cool down from thinking about this.