Skip to main content

The uber-touchy smartphone may be a recipe for disaster

Is it just me or are smartphones too touchy? What I mean by that is, how often do you not remember pressing any button on the phone, yet find a way to have clicked on an application, gone online, or made a phone call without your knowledge?

With my old phone (when I say old, I mean almost ancient), I could have left it in my pocket, dropped it several times, pressed a number of buttons, yet nothing would have happened. With my new smartphone, I'll check it every few days and see that I accidentally called someone I hadn't spoken to for many years while my phone rested in my pocket. Well, I thought it was resting. Apparently, it had other ideas. One of these days, my uber-touchy smartphone will likely get me into trouble. While watching a movie with my girlfriend at her place, I'll receive a strange call from an ex I hadn't spoken to for a couple years. She'll then leave a message which says, "So, I saw that you called yesterday and..." Yeah, that's going to end well...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Boycotting jukeboxes because of TouchTunes

I love music and enjoy hitting the bar(s) over the weekend, so naturally, when the mood strikes me, I've never been coy about playing some songs on the jukebox. This past Thursday, a friend of mine turned 50, so several friends of her's, including myself, all met up to celebrate the occasion. At around 9:30, a friend of mine and I both chipped in $5 to play some songs on the jukebox. Four hours and 231 skips later, we gave up on hearing the songs we had selected, and went home knowing we had just wasted $5. This wasn't the first time such a thing had happened to me (and many others), and due to that, I'll be boycotting jukeboxes. Why? The scam known as TouchTunes. You see, here's how the plot typically breaks down. A person (or group of people) downloads the TouchTunes app on his/her phone, consumes one too many adult beverages, and due to this, has less care for spending extra money to hear the songs of their choosing right NOW. That's the thing with TouchTun...

Face guarding is legal in college football and the NFL

I just wanted to remind fans and announcers especially, that face guarding is legal in both college football and the NFL. It all comes down to contact. So long as a defender doesn't make contact with an intended receiver, he doesn't have to turn around to play the ball. I can't tell you how many times every week I hear announcers talk about face guarding being a penalty. It's not. I even heard one announcer yesterday state, "If the defender doesn't turn around and play the ball, the ref will call pass interference every time." That's simply not true. Courtesy of referee Bill LeMonnier, he says this with regard to the rule at the college level (answered on 8/12/13): "NCAA rules on pass interference require the face guarding to have contact to be a foul. No contact, no foul by NCAA rules." In the NFL rule book, this is written:  "Actions that constitute defensive pass interference include but are not limited to: (a) Contact by a ...