Nothing says “loser” quite like having a piece of telephone gear hanging from your ear when you’re not on the phone! I see these people everywhere with their Bluetooth headsets and/or wired earphones (“tanglephones” as my son calls them) stuck in their ears for no reason whatsoever! The only thing worse than finding one of these poor souls seemingly talking to themselves is seeing them all Borg-like and not talking to anyone! I just want to tell them, “Uh, excuse me. You’ve got something hanging from your ear.”
Here’s a tip for all of you losers: when you’re done with your call, hang up the phone! That means remove the earpiece from your ear and put it away. It just makes you look like a dork. Honestly, its the techie equivalent of walking around with your fly open.
In defense of the dorks (I don’t have a BlueTooth headset myself), it is kind of a pain to insert the headsets into your ear. So in lieu of taking it in-and-out, they leave it in for convenience. Perceived dorkiness be damned.
Mark,
You’re absolutely correct!
Sincerely,
NC License Plate “Port 80”
I never want to spent so much time on my cell phone that I would need one of those “Star Trek” type communications devices.
I was at an all-day training session (strangely enough, called “Effective Communicating”) the other month and a woman on my row had one in her ear the entire time … I felt like screming at her … “You’re not making or taking a call so take that damned thing out of your ear!!!” … but, I didn’t.
Matt
This has been a pet peeve of mine for quite a while. Actually, you copied my Margarita Lounge post from December 4th…I want royalties!!
Definitely spoken like someone who doesn’t have and use a bluetooth headset.
For myself, I turn my phone on vibrate and since the vibrate doesn’t work so well, even when it’s in my pocket, I can rely on the headset buzzing in my ear. I believe this is actually helpful, because it doesn’t bombard the people around me with my phone ringing and bothering them. And, like another poster intimated, they don’t exactly go on right away. By the time you actually put it on the phone has likely gone to voice mail, especially if you don’t catch it on the first ring.
Here’s a question for you Mark. Why do you have so many rants in your blog lately? I know it’s yours and you can definitely post on whatever you want, but the way it looks is that you just seem to pick something random to be down on and the only reason I can see for it is perhaps you’re trying to get people to come visit your site since controversy seems to do that more than anything else. There are innumerable subjects I could do the same with on my blog, but I’ve made the conscious choice that I don’t want to come across as a complainer, since, to me, that is much more the mark of a “loser” than walking around with a bluetooth headset on.
Headsets have their place. If you’re in the office and you spend a lot of time on the phone, go ahead and wear it. If you’re out somewhere like in the grocery store and you’re not actively talking, take it off. Otherwise I think you look silly.
As for the rants, they’re mostly tongue in cheek. Life is good for me and will continue to be for the forseeable future. Mostly though, I’ve been busy with other things and don’t have a lot of time to come up with something interesting to read. Its easy to post rants since they mostly write themselves (or touch on others posts, like Todd’s – which I don’t think I plagarized, since my friend Ruth also posted on a similar topic recently).
In this case I wonder if I might have touched a nerve, though! Feeling a little self-conscious, Tanner? 🙂
If you’re out somewhere like in the grocery store and you’re not actively talking, take it off. Otherwise I think you look silly.
Luckily I don’t really care what you or anyone else (except Janell) think I look like. 🙂
As for the rants, they’re mostly tongue in cheek.
I think you need to work more on conveying your tongue in your cheek then. It doesn’t come through at all in your writing.
In this case I wonder if I might have touched a nerve, though! Feeling a little self-conscious, Tanner? 🙂
Not at all, I just have disagreed with enough of your rants lately that I finally decided to say something. I was already considering not reading your blog as much, since because you don’t have the full post in your rss feed I have to take an extra step to actually go to your website to read the full thing. (You know, you really should fix that. Anyone who doesn’t have their full posts in their rss feeds just looks like a “loser” on the net these days. 😉 The (what appear to me as) pointless rants are another data point in that decisions. As I said before, though, it is your blog, and it’s not my place at all to tell you what you should post.
Thanks for pointing out the lack of a full feed. It must be a Drupal thing. I’ve been considering switching to WordPress for that and other reasons. I’ll see if I can fix it first in Drupal and then weigh my options.
I hope you will keep visiting as I do value your opinion, as well as everyone else who chooses to comment. I post about things on my mind. I try to say what needs to be said. I would hope that not everyone agrees with my point of view or it would be a very boring world, indeed.
Aside from all that, I promise not to make fun of you when you wear your Bluetooth headset. 🙂
Thanks for pointing out the lack of a full feed. It must be a Drupal thing.
I don’t know if this is the same in Drupal 5, as I’m looking at 4.something, but under “Administer” -> “Settings” and selecting “RSS Feed Settings” under “Display of XML feed items:” I see the following options: “Titles Only”, “Titles plus teaser”, and “Full text”. You might try that before completely switching.
I would hope that not everyone agrees with my point of view or it would be a very boring world, indeed.
True.
Aside from all that, I promise not to make fun of you when you wear your Bluetooth headset. 🙂
And I won’t make fun of your website… much. 😛 🙂
Oh, save it for someone who cares! 😛
Yep. that was it. Thanks. Now you’ll get the full feed and will have no reason to visit my ugly website in person anymore. 🙂
The serious nerd can’t really walk around with the old Kueffel and Esser any more. (Some might remember that the length of your slide rule was really important…size matters!) They must wear the headset so that they can pretend another human would want to talk to them!