Walkie-talkie-drivie

My second lifeline as a courier is my radio/phone, which I use to talk to Dispatch, and to get details and update status on jobs.

The one we use is a Motorola Nextel radio, which is large and heavy, looks like it may cost a good bit, and has lots of buttons (a couple of which I'm afraid to press because it's not clear what they do).

Nextel is the technology Motorola bought for cellular push-to-talk technology. Push-to-talk (PTT) is what most people think of as a traditional walkie-talkie—when you want to talk, you push the button, and you let go when you're done so you can listen. It's a very simple and very effective way to handle one-way (a.k.a. half-duplex, if you're a nerd) communication.

The Nextel version is cellular, meaning the range limit is "you must have cell reception" instead of "you must be within 5 miles of the other walkie-talkie or repeater". It's also directed; you get a phone number just for PTT, which has stars instead of dashes in the number. To use it, you choose a contact in your phonebook, then, y'know… push to talk.

My one complaint is that while it's great 90% of the time to not have to listen to everyone else's conversations with the dispatchers, sometimes it would be useful, like if someone is reporting a traffic jam we should all avoid. I suppose it's a fair trade, though: I get to drive in relative peace and quiet.

The other part of the phone we use a lot is called "Net Alerts". I'm honestly not sure what technology it is behind the scenes, although I'm pretty sure it's HTTP or something similar. (Oops, my computer science background is showing.) With this I can use a menu system to update jobs; I can accept (or reject) a job, let my dispatcher know when I've completed pick-up or delivery, and enter the name of the person who signed for receipt of the item.

The job comes to me with all the information I need: job number and type; pick-up name/address; delivery name/address; contacts and phone numbers for both; notes on paperwork that the job requires, if any; etc. I copy most of the info on to my paper clipboard, which is much easier to look at while I'm driving, but I do occasionally come back to it for reference.

When I enter the name of the signee, I use multi-tap… the old system where you press 2 once for 'A', twice for 'B', thrice for 'C'. I haven't used multi-tap in about 10 years—come to think of it, did I ever own a phone that didn't support T9?—but I picked it up like I had never stopped.

Motorola's implementation of multi-tap confuses me a bit. Backspace is on * instead of a dedicated "backspace" or "clear" key. I can't figure out how to capitalize letters. Fortunately I don't really care, but it bothers me that I can't figure it out; I don't think I'm strange for wanting to spell people's names using both uppercase and lowercase letters.