The Cons of Voice Texting

I keep seeing a commercial for a phone (whose carrier I can’t remember; I thin it’s T-Mobile?), and the main selling point is voice texting. I.e. you say “Text Josh. Hey Josh you are super awesome. How do you do it?” Or…something like that. I’m not entirely familiar with how it works, but the IMPORTANT part you need to remember is that you say your text messages.

Now, there’s more than one phone with this capability. And I think you can get apps for the Droid and maybe iPhone to allow this feature. So I guess it’s becoming kind of popular or whatever. And I can see the convenience: Texting while driving is a problem, so voice texting could be really good. But, that’s not even how they advertise it. It’s two brothers, on two different boats, just using voice to text to text message each other.

Outside of driving, I can’t see WHY you would use voice to text AT ALL. It seems terribly inconvenient, since one of the plus sides to texting is that the people near you don’t know every single thing you’re communicating. Here is an example of how voice texting could go horribly wrong:

You: Text Joey. Hey dude I’m with this total asshole right now. What’s up with you?
Friend: Um, I’m right here. I can hear you.
You: Oh, no no no. I’m not talking about you. I have a tapeworm. I’m talking about my tapeworm. He’s an asshole. He eats all my food.
Friend: Oh…okay…I guess.
You: Yeah. Hold on, I got a text. Text Joey. Haha I just told him I have a tapeworm. He totally fell for it. What a stupid asshole. How stupid can you get?
Friend: Okay, you’re definitely talking about me!
You: NO! I’m uh…I was talking to the leech on my chest. I was telling him I have a tapeworm, which, I…don’t…um, yeah.

Etc. SEE? Do you see how easily that could have been avoided by texting with your FINGERS? Here is another example:

You: Text Jimmy. Dude, I got the cocaine and vodka. Our faces are gonna melt off tonight! It’s gonna be AWESOME!
Mom: Did you seriously just voice text someone about cocaine and vodka right in front of me?
You: Oh. No mom. Cocaine is powdered sugar and vodka is vegetable oil. We’re donuts tonight. And, the heated oil is going to melt our faces off.
Mom: Are you kidding me?

Once again, you could have easily avoided inadvertently telling your mom that you’re doing cocaine and drinking underage if you had just texted normally.

So remember kids. Unless you are driving, DON’T USE VOICE TO TEXT. It can have devastating effects!

I was a weird kid

Exciting news! My grandparents gave my mom some stuff from when I was a kid! (They were apparently storing it for her…? I really don’t know why they had it.) It includes such things as some books I had, a baseball glove, some little shoes and some things from school. The important thing here is the things from school. You see, among these things are my first grade journals.

I don’t really remember a whole lot from when I was that young, so I decided to look through my journals a bit and see what I was like. Well, I made a few discoveries. One, I was a very bad speller. (This really gives me a new perspective on my 7 year old sister. See, I thought I was a good speller when I was her age, so I expected the same. Turns out I sucked, so now I know I shouldn’t expect so much from a little kid.)

Two, I had horrible handwriting. This hasn’t changed, really, although my handwriting has improved. A bit.

But, best of all, three, I was a really weird (awesome) kid. As in, my thoughts and thought processes must have been absolutely ridiculous. My journal is like a gold mine of lols. I don’t know if I should periodically just throw up pages from my journal (’cause there’s a lot) or if I should just put a couple up now. If you guys like this, I’ll keep showing you my awesome journal entries.

Without further ado, two of my journal entries from the first grade:

“My amazing machine is a time machine and an apple maker.” For some reason, I thought it would be a great idea to have a machine that not only transports you through time, BUT also makes apples. Although I seem to have drawn an apple tree that is dropping apples onto a conveyor belt, so I don’t see where the apple making comes in? I can only theorize that it was actually a machine that made things from apples. Like apple sauce, apple pie, apple strudel, apple laser guns to fight off danger when I travel back in time, etc.

“Inside a deep dark cave a t-rex lives with a dragon and he lives with a pterodactyl.” In this illustration, I demonstrate my knowledge of animals that live in caves. And I think I was on to something as a kid. See, dinosaurs (and dragons I guess) didn’t die out. They just moved. To caves. Deep, dark caves. And no one knows about it, because the t-rex eats everyone that comes in the cave, as you can see in the picture.

Let me know if you all want to see more of these.

Do not volunteer for Quinceaneras

For anyone who is unfamiliar with the Quinceanera (I am not doing the tilde, okay? I am too lazy to find out how to make the tilde n and then keep doing it. SO DEAL WITH IT.): it is basically a sweet 16 for girls in some Latin cultures, except it’s 15 and not 16. And the Quinceanera seems nicer than the sweet 16, in my opinion. More at Wikipedia.

ANYWAY. That is basically what it is. I have a friend, who is Mexican. And he has a little sister who turned 15 this year and is having her Quinceanera next Saturday. A couple weeks ago, she asked me if I could help out. She asked in this way: “Are you a good dancer?” Umm, not particularly. I have bad balance and I’m not very coordinated. OH well, she is kind of desperate and needs another dancer.

I volunteer to dance, unaware that this is not just some easy little dance. NO. This is THREE, full-length, choreographed dances that require practice 3-5 times a week for three weeks. (It was originally three practices, then got bumped to four, and next week we have five practices.) Each practice is approximately two hours long.

Basically I got myself into way more than I was expecting and now I am like “What have I dooooone?”

But, really, it’s not THAT bad. I am just being a bit melodramatic because I am like that. On the bright side, I’m learning a bit about how to dance for realz and not just shaking what my mama gave me. And it’s a good exercise in self-confidence. If you can dance in front of people, you can do a lot of things. Plus, it’s fun hanging out and practicing!

OH. And I get quesadillas sometimes. :D I looove homemade quesadillas with homemade salsa verde. Mmmm. Plus I get to be the one white boy in a group of Latinos and be like “Yeah, I can move my hips like that too, sabes que!”

For most people, though, I would probably recommend against volunteering to dance in a Quinceanera. It’s different for each one, but you should probably expect to do plenty of dance practice. And possibly expect yummy Mexican food. It is up to you whether the quesadillas are worth it!

I’ll write the title after I check Facebook

You guys, I think the Internet has ruined my ability to pay attention. A lot of people say that the Internet reduces your attention span, and I think I’m just a great example of that. But it’s not with just usual things like reading (which, btw, reading a book is a HASSLE for me now). Even things like getting up to eat or going to sleep are now something from which I get distracted.

Let’s say I need to eat, because I am hungry. Well, here is how that goes down:

I am hungry, I should eat -> I think I’ll check all the social networking sites one more time -> Facebook -> Refresh Twitter app -> Anything new on Snark? -> Maybe someone commented on my blog -> Maybe Clem or Aisy updated their blogs -> Why not check Dailybooth while I’m at it? -> Hey, what about Formspring! -> Hm, nothing new so far, let’s check Facebook one more time -> Well, might as well check Snark again for good measure -> What was I going to do again? -> Perhaps I will check Facebook again while I try to remember -> Etc. until I finally eat (or not)

The same thing with sleep, really. I’ll be like “Yeah, sure, bed time at 1.” Suddenly it’s 2 in the morning and guess where I am. Not sleeping. Probably on the computer.

With so many things to check online, and the possibility for them to be updated at ANY TIME it’s hard to pull myself away from the computer and actually do things. Food doesn’t give me notifications. I can’t tweet while sleeping. Why read a book when I can watch a YouTube video? Where is my instant gratification?

Even now, I’m online, blogging about how I’m online too much. And I’m asking you to be online and read my blog, even though YOU’RE probably online too much. Well, I guess the first step is admitting you have a problem.

My name is Josh Hillmann and I am addicted to the Internet. Your turn.

Malfunctioning Mug

You’re all familiar with mugs, right? The things you put hot liquids in, and they have the little handle so that you can hold it without burning your hand. That is essentially the ONLY purpose of a mug. Having a little handle with which you may pick up hot liquids and move them into your mouth, without burning your hands.

Apparently some of the mugs I own are defective, because on a couple occasions, notably the other night, I put a mug full of water in the microwave to heat up for tea. Imagine my surprise when I reach in to grab the mug by the handle and I FEEL BURNING PAIN IN MY HAND BECAUSE MY HAND IS BURNING. Oh what’s that Mr. Mug? You have somehow transferred lots of heat INTO THE HANDLE? Where it is supposed to be NOT HOT? Thanks I appreciate that. Now my hand is ON FIRE.

Here is an artist’s (read: not really an artist, just me) rendition of my reaction to the defective mug:

In case you are wondering, that is me, screaming in pain with my burnt hand in the air.

So basically, do not trust your mugs, because they are jerks and they will hurt you. Or maybe I am just a clumsy fool who shouldn’t be trusted with appliances.

P.S. A few plugs. First, go vote for my friend Kaden in The Trevor Project. You have to register but it is REALLY easy! And you can vote every day for the next 3 days! SO VOTE! Second, Aisy and I started a new YouTube channel. GO WATCH US.