The irony of this next article is that I actually read a snippet of this from a Facebook post and had to share this with you all. Especially because in every disaster scenario we have ever seen in any movie, the cell phones are the first things to stop working. Now, in my opinion those people probably just had AT&T but you never know. So check out this true account from a man who used technology to stay connected during Hurricane Earl.
"At the time of the storm, both my wife and I were separated (She was at home while I was at the golf course). We talked up until the storm hit, but right after our phones were dead because the network was flooded with calls. We both even tried text messaging to no avail. My wife, being the clever woman that she is, tried sending me a BBM. Wait, what’s BBM? We both have BlackBerry’s and a BBM is a BlackBerry Message. It’s similar to a text message but can only be sent to other BlackBerry users. Until I was able to arrive home, that was how we communicated
Speaking of communications, having cell phones is great, but all cell phones run off batteries. When there is no power to be able to charge them, it would be smart to have a car charger on hand. We were able to to keep our cell phones charged this way and made communicating with family a friends a “breeze” (Pun intended).
Even after the storm, all phone lines continued to be down and there was only two ways to get information 1: Radio 2. Twitter. More and more, Twitter impresses me how you are able to gather and disseminate information. Through Twitter, I was able to keep track of friends and bulletins put out by the local media outlets. For almost all of Friday evening, I couldn’t call anybody, but I could send them a “Tweet”. Isn’t technology amazing?"
Now, I don't know if I am willing to give up my iPhone just to have the option to "BBM" and seeing that this is California and we don't even know the meaning of Hurricanes, I'll take my chances. But I will take our friend's advice and buy an extra car charger, and maybe finally use my Twitter. What's a "tweet" again?
