new technology for an old bloke

[bloke]

This technology has existed for several years, but - using email to agree to a time - Christian Niedermayer (of Miraphone) and I scheduled a Facebook Messenger phone call for this morning. I just called him with the voice feature, but he actually answered with his video feature, which was good, because it helped to see the things about which we were discussing.
I had a pending order of some vintage parts which were collecting dust on a shelf at the factory, these are parts which some of you may wish to purchase for your instruments, and I just wanted to make certain that they were actually old enough to be the ones that fit the older instruments (as he himself isn't sure, but - together - we devised a way for him to test them. I went over with him how I thought he could test to make sure they were old design - rather than new - and asked him another question or two about the specifics.

These are things that would be more difficult to discuss back-and-forth using email and pictures, as he actually went and got one of the parts. Held it up in the air and turned it around this way and that. I needed a few other parts and, told him about those, we actually probably need to barely discuss things a little bit more by email, but we all we both understood everything

After that I told him about the project (86B valveset rebuild already discussed here) that I was going to have him help with, but that I got really lucky with old parts that were here and was able to finish it without having to pull his craftsman off of their new instrument building, and we were done chatting quickly.

Of course that call cost was nothing in international charges, though I understand it many phone plans offer free international calling and even video chatting, but I'm thinking that I have the cheapest of the cheap plans, and I might have had to have paid for that, otherwise.

Getting back to vaguely referring to some of the parts which I will be purchasing, some of you may well be interested in them. I am buying them to sell, and it's a group of parts that sometimes doesn't last forever on brass instruments. Once they're here, I will probably be posting all about them and - per usual - this group always gets first shot at everything.

Anyway, I am completely aware that International video chatting is something that many of you do all the time, but it was a new experience for me, and I like new technology that doesn't require any learning curve and offers me tremendous convenience without having to sacrifice anything... I also like "no cost". If Facebook has saved a copy of that particular call, I could not possibly care less.

[bloke]

yeah, I have a good friend in Austria that I chat with all the time these days.

It wasn't that long ago that someone living in fort worth had to upgrade to a more expensive "metro calling plan" so they could call into Dallas without it being long distance, so this kind of Communication really is a blessing

[Heavy_Metal]

The Lovely Naoko and I have used Skype and Zoom to video-call each other when she is in Japan (and elsewhere). It really is "the next best thing to being there" (@bloke and I are old enough to remember this ad slogan).