Chapter 9

Returning from the living room, Alex said, “I’m at a loss, here.”

“About?” Sherry asked looking up from her e-book reader.

“I just got off the web. I went to a dozen websites with suggestions for interesting dates,” Alex said.

“What did you find?”

“Nothing.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Sherry asked, “Do you want me to look?”

“Please do.”

Sherry went into the living room and started browsing the web. After half an hour, she returned to the dining room looking unhappy. Alex was reading an article on his ebook reader. He looked up at her, and guessed what she was going to say.

Sherry said, “I don’t think we’re the kind of people who should date.”

“I think you’re right,” Alex said.

“I mean, they talk about going outside and watching the stars as something romantic. We did that just the other night.”

“I know,” Alex said.

“Does stargazing feel romantic to you?” Sherry asked.

“Not really. It’s fun to name the constellations and to talk about how the universe was created,” Alex said.

Sherry said, “I’m going to do some more research on this subject. We’ve got to be missing something.”

“Okay,” Alex said. “Tell me when you find something interesting.”

Sherry stood there for a moment and then said, “You know ... I’d rather work on that cell phone idea. What do you say to going to the electronics store, and buying a couple of phones?”

Excited, Alex jumped up and said, “Let’s go. I’ve always wanted to tear one of those apart and see how it works.”

“Me too,” Sherry said while grabbing her purse.

The pair rushed out of the house, and headed to the nearest electronics store. They went through three clerks before finding a kid who knew more about the phones than the people who worked at the store. The kid approached them when he heard them talking about developing software for it. He figured they were saying all the right things, but were missing some of the key points.

He looked at the phone Alex was holding and said, “You don’t want that.”

“Why not?” Alex asked.

The kid answered, “The company that makes it doesn’t really want you to do anything with it. They want to approve any program that you create for use by other people. You can’t sell a program without their approval.”

“Really?” Sherry asked.

Surprised, Alex said, “I didn’t even think to look at their EULA.”

“It sounds like theirs is pretty restrictive,” Sherry said with a frown.

“Yeah and they’re real assholes about it,” the kid said. “They even updated the OS to prevent people from getting around their limitations. It didn’t take long to work around that.”

“Those companies never learn. They have ten people work on something and they think they’re going to be so smart that nobody can figure out what they’re doing. They don’t realize that there are a thousand very clever people who are working even harder on getting around what they’ve done,” Alex said.

Sherry said, “Technically, it is a good phone with quality parts. They also tend to produce reliable operating systems.”

“That’s because they limit the hardware and control what you can do with it,” the kid said.

“I didn’t think about that.”

Alex scratched his chin while thinking about it. He said, “It’s been a while since I’ve written any code in the supported programming language.”

“That’s not a big deal. You or I could pick it up in a day or two,” Sherry said.

“You’re right. There’s always gotchas in the libraries though and it takes time to find them,” Alex said.

Sherry said, “That’s true. I doubt there are many third party libraries out there for this phone.”

The kid picked up a phone and said, “This is what you want.”

“Why?”

“You can root it with a simple download off the web. That will let you do some wild things with the device that the phone companies don’t want you to do. You can overclock it for some applications. You can even put in your own ROM to run a customized OS,” the kid said.

Alex looked at the diverse array of phones on display. He said, “Let’s pick five different ones to buy. That will give us a chance to check them out, and see what each offers.”

“Sounds good to me. We ought to get two of each,” Sherry said.

“Five? Two of each? You’re spending some serious money,” the kid said open mouthed.

“Yes, let’s get both platforms,” Alex said.

“That’s okay with me,” Sherry said.

“You’re going to have to get cell phone plans for all of those phones,” the kid said.

“Only half of them. We plan to take apart the other half,” Sherry said.

Alex said, “Hardware like this is disposable.”

“You use it, abuse it, then throw it away,” Sherry said.

“I love it when you say things like that,” Alex said.

The kid said, “You’re my kind of people.”

The clerk who rang up their sale had a very good day that day. The kid who had talked with them walked off with his new cell phone thinking it was pretty nice of that couple to buy it for him.

Sherry and Alex were walking through the mall talking about the phones. Sherry noticed that Alex’s attention wandered at one point. She stopped and looked around to see what had attracted his attention. All she could see was a high end lingerie store.

“Do you like that stuff?” Sherry asked somewhat surprised.

Looking a little embarrassed, Alex said, “Yes.”

“Really?”

“I think you’d look great in some of those outfits.”

“You’re kidding?” Sherry asked looking at the store.

Alex answered, “No.”

“You don’t think I’d look silly wearing that kind of stuff?”

“Silly? No. You’d be drop dead sexy,” Alex said.

Sherry looked at him, at the store, and then at the floor while thinking about what he said. She wasn’t quite sure what she thought of that idea.

“I don’t really like shopping for clothes, but I guess I could try one or two outfits on,” Sherry said thinking that her mother would be shocked to learn that she was spending time in a clothing store without knowing exactly what she wanted to get.

“Really?”

Feeling a little nervous, Sherry said, “I guess so.”

“Let’s go,” Alex said.

Sherry couldn’t believe that he was as excited about looking at the lingerie, as he was at looking at the electronics. When they went into the store he was trying to look at everything at once. She stood there open mouthed looking at him. Finally, she turned to one of the displays and grabbed an item off the rack. She looked at it, confused for a moment.

She said, “Hey! I found something for you.”

“What?” he asked,

She stuck her hand inside the g-string and wiggled the pouch with a finger. She said, “This is for men.”

“You’re kidding,” he said leaning closer to look at it.

It didn’t take him long to conclude that she was right. There was only one gender that would have the right equipment to fill that little pouch.

“I’d like to see you in this,” Sherry said.

Alex frowned. He looked around the store, stared at the g-string, looked at Sherry, and then down at the floor. He looked at the g-string and then shook his head. He’d be practically naked wearing something like that.

“You’d really like to see me in that?” he asked.

“Sure,” Sherry said thinking that what was good for the goose was good for the gander.