[bighotrod (Unverified) Posted Dec 19th 2005 1:01AM]

in 1986, houston, tx, 16th b'day got a barely used bmw325, in the dash/console was a phone! i was lettin' everyone have it, i was so cool. i actually got the car a couple wks before my birthday and my parents were cool enough to let me drive to school and of course the day before my actual b'day i was on the phone on my way home from school and ran into the back of these two dumb football players in a hatchback mustang...you know the bad mustang years, like 70-81 or something. i barely bumped them but it set their hatch out of alignment from the car. i had that for another year or so, then i didn't have a cel again until i moved to LA in 92. one of my relatives or some guy i was dating gave me one of the phones in the leather bag with a shoulder strap, i would imagine that it would probably be comparable in size today to a camera that a tv cameraman would use on a live remote for the news. at the time, i worked at a real estate office and somehow i got a plan through them, not sure how or what it involved, maybe i lacked credit and got the service because i worked there. at any rate, dig this...LA Cellular came out to my office in the Pacific Palisades and hooked my phone up for me in the parking lot. That's right, they had mobile van units that went around hooking up service to phones. it was a good thing too because i'm not sure i could have lifted the phone to take it in a store to activate it. i also had a pager at that time...remember those? the only folks whohave them now are the hosts at chili's or tgif's. since then i've had too many phones. the "world's slimmest phone" from sprint, like a skor candy bar. it could fry an egg if my call went on longer than 5 minutes. i had to make sprint release me from my contract since i was getting client vm mssgs 24 hrs after they were left. phone couldn't go to another carrier. my favorite was a tri-mode 3 band (?) star-tac...loved that phone. it was left by fedex at my front door one day and i called maybe 5 x to tell them it wasn't mine and pick it up, but they never came, so i eventually activated it. loved it but i had a car with black leather interior and my god i was always searching between the seats, under them, in the console and floorboards for taht phone. got a t-mobile next, 1 of the first camera phones. the camera attached and stuck out just waiting to be broken. that phone was stolen and i had been told on several occassions by tmobile that i had insurance. when it came down to it, they didn't even offer insurance at the time. in the case it was stolen or lost, they offered you a couple of choices of phones (overstock?) and then gave you a discount based on your tenure with them. naturally- mine was stolen in my second month, so they wanted to give me $10 off of a phone that was substandard to the one stolen, and then not insure the new one either. well- a filed complaint with th fcc(?) and they quickly released me from my contract. then onto verizon (shadey shadey company but good service in LA) first 2 years with a hideous LG phone with a button on the side that mutes all sound without any indication that you just did it, where your hand always is if you're holding it. so hours would go by while i waited and waited for clients or friends to call, even though they had left a mssg two hours before. hated that phone, still do, if it came in here right now, i would swat at it and make it leave. now in my 2nd 2yr contract, i have motorola v710. f'ing verizon has disabled all of the bluetooth features that motorola advertised it to have, in an attempt to make you buy back the services the phone was designed to do on it's own. i have had 6 of these phones since november of 2004...can you believe it? 6...i'm beginning to think that someopeople and certain electronics aren't compatable. i wonder what's next for me...i should probably go back to the over the shoulder bag phone, it looked like a medics in ww2