Killing Mind

The following story will be relevant to anyone who relates to the majority of the following statements:

1. Waking up to an alarming noise, designed to be disturbing and annoying, is a terrible start to the day. Switching to the radio sooths the process.
2. MSN Messenger's default pop-up behaviour whenever someone signs in is horridly distracting, ugly and useless. Indeed, it and many similiar behaviours are quite unnecessary despite being quite common.
3. Horn honking outside of unusual or emergency situations contributes unnecessarily to the warming of the world by raising tempers, aggravating drivers and creating noise pollution. Most horn honkers belong in the city, in yoga classes, or out on the footpath.
4. Mobile phone ring tones are the spawn of Satan. The cacophony of mobile phone noises in the office is annoying, distracting and tasteless.

Day to day, I'm a peaceful creature. I wake up to the sound of my favourite radio station; have disabled all pop-ups in my typical computing experience; and refrain from using the horn and hold contempt for those that overuse it. I am ashamed to admit however, that up until a week ago, my mobile phone contributed to the great flood of distate that is message and phone call tones. In particular, while being a trivial lark, the piercing morse-coded tone representing "SMS" was a shocking event each time it was emitted from my phone.

I have now discovered a convenient solution, and I hereby offer it to the world, free of charge and with only a wish that this revelation will bring about a more peaceful world.

Switch your phone to the "Meeting" profile

This is likely to be found near the "Silent" setting. Why it was ever named "Meeting" is a mystery. Perhaps "A shitload less annoying" was too wordy, but I'd suggest that "Sane" would have been a nice fit. Maybe "You're not thinking of answering your phone in a Meeting, are you?" had to be abbreviated somehow.

My life has been transformed. I can have hours of productive, deep thought, yet only need to glance at the phone screen to check on msgs. No longer do phone calls alert everyone in my vicinity of their occurance. The subtle "yelp" the phone now makes is distinctive enough that like my personal name, hearing it becomes an instictive recognition task.

Now I just have to remember to turn it back to "Be Annoying" when in situations of high ambient noise. The subtle "yelp" doesn't quite cut it when I get that oh-so important call in a crowded bar.