Friday, October 14, 2005

Security Retrieval Function (or "I'm A Brick!")


A few years back I was walking to my bartending gig when I spied a sweet cell phone... on the ground! So I pocketed it. When I got to work I broke it out and had a scroll through the numbers. The owner had failed to make the first number on the phone his home phone number (which I recommend) so I eventually settled on "Mom and Dad." Talked to his dad, who called his son and just like that the owner was on his way.

I Had also noticed while scrolling that he had the digits of some celebrity heavy hitters in there. I of course jotted down 2 or 3 for emergency purposes.

Well, he showed up with friends, asked for his phone, asked suspiciously more than once where I had found it, opened a tab drank for an hour, stiffed me and left. He never even thanked me.

So I called Jim Jarmush (one of his high brow phone numbers.) Put on my best "3 sheets to the wind" voice and left a message saying that (insert name on credit card from tab) was through with him and had no interest in working him in the future.

Why am I telling you this? I think there should be a new cell phone feature called "Remote Locking" or "Secure Retrieval." It would work like this... You realize you've lost your phone. You may also realize whoever finds it can call their relatives in Pakistan for the rest of the night (right Ricky?) or they might find your dirty pics and put em on-line (right Paris?) So you borrow your friends phone and call yours and enter the "Security Retrieval" code. The phone disables all functions excluding the ability for the person who found it to leave a message on it's voice mail. A big 'ol message would notify the Good Sam of his one option and he would of course do the right thing.

Easy, peasy, japaneasy.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that you would also want the ability to be the only one who can call the phone once it is disabled. So when you call your own phone you get the message "please enter Security Retrieval code." Ok I think that covers it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

that's douchey!
BG