Don't Let Me Touch That, Part II

This is the second post cataloging my recent adventures with gadgets. Although the chronological order of these mishaps is not important, if you would like to go in order and experience these events in the same order I did, you should check out this entry first.

The chapter involves the gadget in my life that has become my second brain: my Palm PDA. My interaction with these hunks of silicone has developed over 10 years and 4 different models. My relationship with each unit has been symbiotic rather than parasitic or negatively addicitve. These gadgets are useful and practical, allowing me to have information literally at my fingertips—or stylus-tip, as the case may be. The fact that I can play games while a meeting morphs into a coma by committee is just an added bonus.

Here's my Palm Archive, in order of their appearance in my back pocket:



L-R: Palm Pro, Vx, Tungsten, and Tungsten E

Now, contrary to the story those images seem to tell, my pocket did not have to increase 200% in order for my latest unit to fit. But that is not the point to this story.

As I said, my relationship with my UotM (Unit of the Moment) is symbiotic. For the unit, I clean it's screen, charge its battery and keep it out of the mouths of dogs. For me, the unit retains a seemingly limitless pile of minutiae such as the phone number for the Thai restaurant, the price and aisle number of my favorite tomato sauce and the overall mileage on my last tank of gas. We've always gotten along swimmingly!

Until the third-party case (not shown) on the Tungsten cracked a bit. Oh, that little flaw did not matter for months. If the unit was inadvertantly turned on when I sat down because of this cracked case, I was never really that far from home or office and could recharge the battery and lose no data. However, during a somewhat longer trip, the edge of the cracked case pressed down on one of the buttons on the front of the unit and this led to the unit remaining on until it's battery was drained down which led to it being totally dead dead dead dead dead dead and braindead. Of course, as Murphy's Law would have it, I was far from my Mac and could not rebuild the unit's memory and get the information I needed at that very moment.

This is when my relationship with the Tungsten soured beyond repair. The fact that the friend I was visiting was giving me her mint condition Tungsten E unit (far right) just as I realized my unit was dead has nothing whatsoever to do with the speed with which I tossed it aside. I am now quite happy with my new Palm Tungsten E that has no cracked case.

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For those of you scoring at home, I have now completely eradicated the memory of a Mac and a Palm (and rebuilt both) in the span of 7 days. The root device, on whom the most terrifying of all error messages I have ever seen on a screen occurred, is doing just fine, thank you very much.