At this point undergraduates complain when you use e-mail for courses. They say "E-Mail is for old people!" According to them, you should communicate by texting and via your Facebook page.

I am hearing this from people I work with, too. They literally don't check their email!! WTF.

I text a lot - especially w/ my sister. I'm getting used to the new keyboard, but am laughing at/with the COMMs.

because now I really, really want to claw out someone's eyeballs.

wishes I could go sit with shrift & keep my eyeballs.

folks. just because my minion went on leave today, and I sent an email regarding that, does not mean it is now time for you to have urgent issues that need priority attention... you were warned. You just forgot. Now go away. Or use your brains. Or both.

Back when we had our Soviet Salvage Cell Phones of No Color, Just Functionality, people would text me. And I couldn't answer. I had no idea if my clunky Flintstone Phone had text capability or how to access it if it did.

I think my favorite instance was when Trudy tried to text me a picture. My phone just kind of beeped and farted and showed me visual vomit.

When we ('cause Aimee got the same thing) asked Trudy "WTF?" via this board she came back with "It's a picture! Isn't it awesome?"

And we had to shame-facedly remind her that our phones were made by Collective Telekommunications Factory #114 in Kamchatka and were designed to a) withstand a nuclear blast
b) be used as a blunt instrument to kill mutant zombie looters in the event of a nuclear holocaust and
c) Talk. That's it. Just talk. And not about revolution or capitalism.

Did they have a chat-nanny feature that bleeped out words like 'overcome' and 'over-spend'?

to kill mutant zombie looters in the event of a nuclear holocaust

I thought that's what chainsaws were for. You need a chainsaw that can text.

I thought that's what chainsaws were for. You need a chainsaw that can text.

But then you get messages like

"OMG I jst cut down this awesome oak tree LOL. It's totly falling down thi1irlwekjtr;ekrnqnflwef

fuxor"

do you text from your cell phone?

Good lord yes. In part because I'm up way earlier than your average person and because I know people will check their cell even if they don't or can't check a computer.

And I don't have a full keyboard, but I sometimes do it old school slow way and sometimes I do it the quicker let-the-phone figure it out way. And I text google ALL THE TIME, especially when I'm out and looking for the closest Jo-Ann Fabrics or whatever. Or if I want to know who won an NCAA basketball game. I love texting Google. It's like actual googling without the hassle of finding an internet connection.

Do you think texting is becoming increasingly popular?

Good lord yes. I watch kids text in class all. the. time.

For short stuff like "r u open??" We get IMs like that already.

I get that in emails from students. The only reason that I don't get more text messages is that I don't give out my cell phone number

I communicate with my students via Facebook. The might not check their email, but they check Facebook.

Texting's been bigger than phoning here since I was in school, so... seven years. Good Lord, I graduate SEVEN YEARS AGO. Holy carps.

to kill mutant zombie looters in the event of a nuclear holocaust

I read that as "mutant zombie lobsters" and thought that's a highly specific purpose right there. It also made me think of TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE.