Note of the Living Deb

My first boyfriend, CS, was good at asking people questions. I especially liked when I got to see him meet someone from a foreign country. He would get so much interesting information out of them.

He also would go to the office hours of his professors every week and ask them questions. Somehow he found things to ask them that weren't already in the book and that weren't meta questions about the class.

I'm slowly getting better at thinking up and asking questions myself. Mostly I still just ask my friends questions. Sometimes I feel a little like some kind of interrogator, but I don't think they feel that way.

Sometimes I think to ask this profitable question: "Is there a cash discount?" Even when the answer is no, you can sometimes find out about other options.

Speaking of which, it's often good to ask about options at medical visits. It seems like medical professionals tend to just tell you the most popular option, but if you're not average, you may prefer a different option (such as behavior modification instead of drugs or surgery or such as a more expensive but durable cavity filling material).

Sometimes some interesting answers are right on the packaging (such as "You claim there are whole grains in there, but how true is that--what is the fiber content?"). And sometimes great answers are available via the internet (such as "Why doesn't my washing machine fill?" and "Are there sports socks made of organic cotton?" and "What's the quickest way to get to X from Y right now using [transportation mode of choice]?").

Sometimes people around you can infer questions you would like to ask if you are just talking. One time my old roommate CV and I were shopping for a refrigerator and one of us said that we had seen the same refrigerator cheaper at another place. The sales person asked if we would take this price if we also got free delivery. That question was also an answer to "Can you give us a better deal so we can be done shopping right now?"

Of course some questions are terrible. I really hate the question-and-answer sessions after presentations by an author, screenwriter, or other type of artist. Most of the questions are things that don't lead to interesting answers, like "Where did you get the ideas for this?" (Usual answer: I don't know--one day it was in my head.) And of course asking questions of politicians tends to be not very fun.

And sometimes asking a question won't do any good, such as asking a co-worker "Why don't you just do some work?" or "How can you possibly think that would be a good idea?" Or asking smart-ass rhetorical questions. Or when it's a question you might not really want the answer to, such as the infamous "Does this make me look fat?"

But in general, I recommend asking questions. Do you have any favorite questions you have asked or like to ask? (Besides "Will you marry me?".)

A few of my favorite personal finance bloggers have published their spending, by category, for 2014. As a result, the other day I found myself thinking, "Why are we spending $53/month to let telemarketers bother us?" (Also, poll takers, charities, and people who want to tell us how to vote. And clicking devices.)

I'm not sure. So now, even though I actually asked one of my friends not to do this, I'm re-thinking the landline. So why, exactly, do we have one?

* Because we've always had one (yes, I can face the truth).
* Because sometimes you want to call a household and not try to pick which person to call.
* Because, although I heard that the phone company did studies to find the worst possible reception that was good enough and offered that, the reception really is good enough. By which I mean good.
* Because landlines work when other things don't work (like when the electricity is out).

Yet most young adults don't even have landlines. Surely, they're not all crazy. After doing research, it seems like there are only three reasons that bloggers admit to keeping their landlines: 1) they are bundled with something they want, 2) they are for the kids to use (and not rack up terrible charges), and/or 3) when you call 911 they automatically know your location. Our landline is not bundled with anything, we don't have any kids, and I've already been trained that when you call 911, the first thing you tell them is your location, so it didn't even click with me that this is no longer necessary for landlines.

So, now that times have changed, how are we actually using our landline? Here's what I can recall:

* To receive unwanted phone calls.
* To have something to fill in on forms where a phone number is required without having to give out our cell phone numbers.
* To get calls from my mom, dad, and brother, and occasionally my sister (my sister prefers chatting online and has also requested that I get Skype).
* To get calls from our mutual friend D, mainly when she can't reach us on a cell.
* To get calls from Robin's friend, JA.
* To get reminders we don't need about doctor and dentist appointments and prescriptions that are ready.
* To call our internet company when the internet is down.

Basically, we get about one call a day that we don't want and just a couple of calls per month that we actually want on the landline. We are happy giving out cell phone numbers to the people from whom we like receiving calls. And those people, except for D who is generally trying to get a hold of either of us, do generally have a particular person in mind when they call, though I suspect JA doesn't mind getting the wrong person. We also don't worry about needing to slip in a 911 phone call in just a few seconds before losing consciousness.

In fact in these modern times, I prefer e-mail for long-distance communication. I still do want to be reachable by phone, though. Just maybe not enough to pay $53/month. The obvious alternative is to just use cell phones.

I've heard that most college students today do not like talking on the phone. They prefer texting. When I first heard that, I thought it was an interesting cultural phenomenon. Now I suspect that it's because cell phone reception is so terrible. This is one of those things one would hope I would be out of date on--that these days reception is much better than in ancient times. Or that the bad reception I get when certain people call me is due to them calling me while driving in and out of good zones. However, many, if not most, phone calls I got from students at my last job had very bad reception. My last job took place entirely in the year 2014, which even young people will admit was not all that different from modern times.

So, I have questions for you, dear readers.

1) If you don't have a landline, how do you deal with businesses insisting on getting a phone number? Do you just give them your cell phone number? Can you give a fake 555 number? Are there phone number sharing services out there where a bunch of people can give out the same phone number for businesses that should never need to call them? Probably it's not really a problem because they don't actually call.

2) If you use a cell phone (ha! that's all of you!) how is your cell phone reception? In really bad cases, I can understand what people are saying if they just say each word two or three times. No one ever stoops to this, though, do they? You just say "what" a lot, right?

3) Any other comments or advice on the issue of whether to have a landline?

Bumper Sticker of the Day - If the environment were a bank, it would already have been saved.

Yowsa.

Lately I've been noticing people who cannot communicate certain things to me in their own native language.

One example is someone who says she added a list when actually she added an item to a list that was already there. If I just need to know if she had to do anything, then that's good enough: yes, she did. If I have to know if there was a good list there already for her to use or whether she had to create her own, I will get the wrong impression.

Another example is someone who says you can't get credit for more than one of the following classes: A, B, and C. Now if I just need to know whether the courses are related in any way, that's good enough. But if I need to know that actually, you can get credit for both B and C but not for both A and B and not for both A and C, then there is no way I would ever guess that. Especially when they also say that A was replaced by B but in fact A was replaced by both B (the first half of A) and C (the second half of A).

I even had to tell a programmer today that updates are much easier to understand if the report generated says that a course has been changed (and then tells me it how has changed) than if it says that a course has been dropped and a new course has been added (and then it turns out the two courses are exactly the same in every way but one). A programmer. A good programmer, even, who has just been complimented on his ability to code reports with very crazy requirements. So it's someone who likes problem solving and knows that details are important.

These three people (and more) do actually know what they're trying to say well enough to make good decisions themselves based on that knowledge, but they just can't think of how to say it. I've sat next to two of the people while they tried several different ways. And then I say, "Well, if you say that, then it sounds like you mean this." And finally I just say, "I would say [whatever I would say]." Even if I say, "I would say something like [general idea of what to say]," some people refuse to try to make up their own sentence and just type in a word or two and sit there stumped until I make up the rest of a nice-sounding version myself and dictate it to them.

How do people grow to adulthood and even middle-age-hood and not know how to say things that they actually understand? I understand that some things are complicated and the first try might not be close enough, but to just not even have any idea of how to proceed? Or to write something that clearly means something else? On specific forms they know people will be using to make decisions about things?

Is there a good way to teach people how to form sentences that mean what they want them to mean? I can't even imagine.

The sad thing is I do the same thing myself (see blog entries that haven't been proofread well enough). But when I re-read it later or someone points out how it could be misleading, I can then think of another way to say it. Maybe it requires a general problem-solving mentality that some people don't like.

Whoever thought that writing and problem solving could be so connected?

Or maybe some people just aren't used to having to be precise? If you mostly communicate orally, you can be very lazy because the other person can keep asking you questions until they figure out what you mean.

How can you train yourself to notice whether the first thing you spewed actually means what you hoped it would mean? If you get too good at this do you automatically become an editor Nazi?

Getting other people to edit my work definitely helps me. It has taught me that I use too many pronouns. The pronouns make sense while I'm writing them but later I can see that I never made some of the antecedents clear.

Frustrating.

I was going to split up my body fat/dieting/fitday entry, but I blew my whole wad yesterday. Then I shot today's wad answering a comment to that entry, so you should go read that.

Ballroom dance learning quote of the day - "Stupid Irish motion." - The Irish-looking guy in class, practicing after the Cuban motion drill. Eventually, he lets it degrade into jumping and kicking his feet in front of him--Irish motion. With Cuban motion, your feet never need leave the floor, your head never need change elevation, and the bending of your knees makes your hips swivel around.