Electrosuckling

“I see you have the electric teat,” said the old dude in the corner.

“Beg pardon?” I asked politely, not quite believing what I’d just heard.

“You know, one of those I-things hanging off your ear,” he gestured, “Everywhere I go you’re all chewing on those things for dear life. If you had to take it out you’d probably curl up and die.”

I refrained from pointing out that most mammals of my acquaintance rarely suckle their young from an earlobe, but I saw his point. And really, since getting Gigi, my new iPhone 3G, I’m struck with how dependent I’m becoming on her.

After less than a month of ownership, Gigi’s already in charge of my listening activities, a significant portion of my e-mail, quite a bit of my scant leisuretime (which isn’t as scant as it should be, thanks to a game called Spore), my animation collection and a few of my favorite movies, finding interesting places to visit and giving directions for getting there, checking traffic conditions on the road, text messaging, IM, ensuring molds are level in the kiln, calculating mtric conversions, taking fast pictures for documentation purposes and, of course, displaying my latest pate de verre stuff to interested viewers (below).

In fact, about the only thing my iPhone doesn’t do all that much is make phone calls. She’s too busy doing everything else and, frankly, she doesn’t phone that well anyway.

That’s partly because I still haven’t gotten used to the lousy screenboard, and because what voicedial applications I’ve so far tried are hopelessly inept for voicedialing (at some point you still have to look at the screen and make choices, which kinda defeats the whole hands-free thing). Since 90% of my calling is done in a moving vehicle, hands-free is essential.

The biggest problem right now, though, is a fundamental disagreement over WHICH headset has the call when one comes in. In the car, I’m wearing the Jawbone, a nifty little Bluetooth number with superb audio quality (you can see it in the picture above). As long as I touch the right spot for an incoming call (which I so far haven’t fully mastered), it works just fine.

In a stationary position, though, we have problems. Even if I’ve plugged in the earbuds or stereo headphones to listen to music, when the call comes in Gigi completely ignores them and gives the call to the Jawbone hiding deep in my purse, several rooms away.

When I finally stop my “hello? Hello? HELLO!” into the plugged-in mike and go find the Jawbone (where a small voice is saying “Hello? Cynthia? Are you there?”), it takes a sec to set up and actually begin talking. My callers are learning to expect 45 seconds of utter confusion at the beginning of their call.

So….I can’t make calls in the car (unless I pull over and fumble through Gigi’s contacts list), and I can’t easily accept them when I’m out of the car. If this keeps up I’ll be able to downgrade my calling plan very, very soon.

Still, as the old dude said, Gigi has definitely grown on me. If I can just get her to become a well-behaved phone I think she’d be running my life.

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