Gadgets & geekery | Hip to be Mom

A phone plan with savings for the whole family

Aug 292011

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Straight Talk for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

My kids were late bloomers in terms of cell phones. They all had to wait for hand-me-downs for their first phones. But like it or not, the cell phone is a necessity these days and I, for one, feel much better that my kids are a call away and they too can get a hold of me when they’re at school or college.

Trust that�mom knows best and have found an affordable phone plan that we can use without worrying about the big bills. Straight Talk has�everything you need and can easily save you 50% off your phone bills. The best part is there are no contracts, no credit checks, and no activation or termination fees.

They also have reconditioned phones with the whole works for as low as $10. These are great if your kids are in the habit of breaking phones and you don’t want to fork out money for new phones each time. Give them a recon till they learn not to treat their phones right, that’s what I say .

Parents of heavy-duty phone user kids have fallen�Hook, line and sinker for their All You Need plan. Now when your kids decide to�call a friend, you don’t have to worry about getting a big surprise in the bill afterwards!

Trail of breadcrumbs

Posted by Clairity 6 Responses »

Aug 212011

For the past week, I’ve been stressing about a trip I had to make that would take me out of the civilized world, as I know it. You would be stressing too if you were anywhere as directionally challenged as I am. I blame it entirely on my bad genes, of course… and the fact that I refuse to get myself a GPS.

Okay, fine, maybe I’m just being silly, or illogical, or stubborn. But I’m not sure I want an electronic control freak telling me where to go! That and the fact that year after year, I’ve had to answer frantic calls from my cousin saying her husband’s been driving around in circles and they’re completely lost getting to my place.

It seems we’re not just a family of directionally-challenged, we’re also in the habit of marrying the directionally-challenged. But in her case, it’s not that they refused to get a GPS, it’s that they were lost in spite of one!

As for my trip to nowhere yesterday, I had Raine with me, my trusty navigator who helped me get out of that SF fix. But no GPS. Armed simply with paper and pen, she was busy leaving a trail of breadcrumbs so Hansel and Gretel could find their way home later.

Am I the only person in the modern world who does not own a GPS? Just sayin’.

We’re so uncool!

Posted by Clairity 15 Responses »

Jun 182011

Raine and Skye both deleted their Facebook accounts last Monday. Of their own accord. I had nothing to do with it. Maybe it’s just as well because I’ve never encouraged any of my kids to be on Facebook in the first place.

I’ve maintained my stand from the beginning about what they should and shouldn’t do online. Mother knows best, as Mother Gothel would say. I’ve drummed into them the security and privacy issues and the dangers of electronic pickpocketing and pedophiles, stalkers and future employers finding out too much, et cetera.

My kids know the drill – no real names, no photos of themselves, no private info. They’ve been very good about it even though I’m sure the peer pressure must be enormous seeing as how people consider it ‘cool’ to shout out every last detail of what they, and the garden grasshopper, do every minute of the day on the internet.

The good thing about my kids is that they don’t care about trying to live up to everyone else’s definintion of “cool”. Like I always say to them, just do your own thang, think for yourself and set your own standards. It doesn’t matter how “cool” everyone else is. Just be yourself and you’re cool .

So then, is it any surprise then that we have no iPads in the house, never tasted a macaron and the only GPS I own is the often unreliable one in my head. That’s exactly how uncool we are!

Talker or texter – which one are you?

Posted by Clairity 16 Responses »

Mar 252011

Me? Let’s put it this way, if there were such a thing as a phone with only a texting function, I would so get it.

I’m not a big cell phone user. Most times, I use it to set up coffee dates with my friends or to coordinate schedules with my kids.

I’ve got a list of standard pre-written texts on my PDA phone that lets me send out replies with just my tap of my finger nail, just to let them know that I’m “on my way” or “stuck in traffic”. So it all works out.

Another reason I might be more of a texter is that I’m a lover of words and somehow seeing the written word is infinitely more appealing.

Having said that, the amount of spam I get inviting me to check out special offers and enzyte reviews is enough to make me breakfast to last a year! Spam, breakfast, get it?

How about you – talker or texter, and why?

Lost but all is not lost

Posted by clairity 9 Responses »

Feb 082011

I heard that someone at the gym lost her cell phone the other day. She’d left it in one of the pigeon holes and gone home, only to realize oops! She called the gym immediately and was told it wasn’t there any more. Gone. for. good!

Steev lost his iPhone while he, me and the girls were peddling a rickshaw (like crazy, I might add, it was such great fun!) along this busy beach front in Monterey.

Have you ever lost your cell phone? Can you imagine losing all your contacts and personal settings? OMG, such a big headache!

We split up and backtracked, tracing our steps back along the entire length of the beach front but we might as well be looking for a needle in a haystack.

Finally, Steev decided to call his own number hoping its ringing would lead us to it. Instead a guy answered and said he had the phone and that he would wait for Steev to meet him along that same stretch of beach. What a dear soul!

So Steev got his phone back. Quite effortlessly, I might add, though we were really doubtful at first. It was a happy ending, one that we didn’t even dare to hope for.

In most cases, chances are if you lose your cell phone, you will never see it again. And you can only hope and pray that whoever’s got it isn’t using it to call the rest of this planet and beyond before you can make a report and get your number deactivated. Peace!

Inseparable!

Posted by Clairity 7 Responses »

Jul 232010

So we were at the wedding of a cousin recently and this is what my teens were doing. Cell phones and PDAs in hand, they were having a roaring time challenging each other to games, much to the disapproval of an elderly gentleman sitting nearby!

If there’s a way to tear a teen away from their cellphone, I’d like to hear about it. Honestly! Lately we’ve even had laptops on the breakfast table. I had to put an end to that, pronto!