I have recently become aware of a disturbing medical phenomenon. Occasionally the nerves in my right thigh vibrate slightly for no reason. My friend Jason S calls it "The Phantom Vibration"... it's the feeling that you have an incomming phone call when the phone is not actually ringing. Sometimes the damn thing isn't even in my pocket, but my leg actually twitches.

The Phantom Vibration seems to be triggered just by *thinking* about getting a phone call. Or maybe it's triggered by a slight movement in the pocket which makes you jump to the conclusion that "Oh my God! Someone's Calling Me!" which causes the sudden need to reach for the phone. Could it be a physical manifestation of unhealthy obsession with connectedness? I have deliberatedly switched the pocket in which my phone sits in order to try to mitigate this somewhat.

Has anyone EVER sent a "numeric page"? Since 1985? There is nothing that makes me quake with fury more than having someone's cell phone chatter on for an eternity beyond that person's indended outgoing message. I cannot think of one time, nor can anyone I know, where the computer voiced "post message" has had any utility whatsoever other than to chew up your time and sanity. "For! more! options! press 5!" ... what options? I just want to leave a message! like the good old days, when the thing just beeped and you started talking!

Now I need to listed to the computer tell me about all the idiotic things I can do other than just start talking. It's madness. A classic example of information overkill, the scourge of our times.

Some cellphone companies let you skip the whole thing by pressing "1", which, if standard, would be a godsend, but you never know what company you're dealing with and sometimes pressing "1" forces you to listen to the whole thing over again, or even hangs up with an insipid dismissal: "One! Is not a recognized option! Good Bye!" I quiver with helplessness knowing there is nothing whatsoever I can do but wait...wait....wait....

The only thing I can think of - this is all a conspiracy to burn more minutes. Who wants to start a class action lawsuit for the benefit of us all? At the very least, there ought to be a way to force your message to spare people the agony of listening to the robot... but alas, we must suffer.

(I wrote about this before, but having stumbled upon the Everyday Hogwash website, I decided to revisit this horrible issue in hopes of having it printed there)

Public service message... I rarely get text messages. My phone stinks. One day I'll get a new one, but for now PLEASE don't send me text messages. When I do get them, I have to guess who they're from because the phone only gives me your number, not a name. Just now I happend to manually look at my messages and there were 5 from last week...lost in time. Thank you for your support.

Allow me to publicly vent, hopefully to the benefit of everyone. Voicemail should work like this: You call someone, the voicemail gives a brief message - "Hi, this is so-and-so, please leave a message", BEEP. That's it. Why in hell do cell phones insist on adding "To leave a voice message, press 1. To leave your callback number, press 5, for more options press buttons untill you go insane". Does anyone EVER actually do anything other than just leave a message??? There must at least be a way to spare those who call me this annoyance... anyone know?

Power cords and chargers are one of the biggest scams out there. I recently reactivated an old US phone, and later realized I had lost the charger for it. The charger is a cord with a small transformer attached to it. Like Dell, who insidiously change the shape of their cord each year, Sprint askes an outrageous price for the cord ($40!!!). Pure scam, pure and simple.

That's where the glorious solution known as Ebay comes in to play: Just bought the charger for $0.99 and it works great. na na na! So, if you're missing a power cord or charger for any device, I suggest you look there first!

I cannot understand why mobile phone calls are so expensive in Europe. The 3 Euros I have left on my phone card are good for over an hour of phone calls to the United States, but only 4 minutes of calls to Spanish mobile numbers. Wierd, and incredibly annoying!

Darn. My plans to take advantage of Wi-Fi in the park appear to be flawed. Even without sunglasses, it's impossible to see my laptop screen outdoors, regardless of the degree of sunshine, or if I abscond to the shade.

One of the drawbacks to having an easy-to-use number list built into my phone, is that I have no idea what most of my friends' phone numbers are. The only numbers I still have memorized are really old ones that I've known for years, like my parents'. If I lose my phone, or if Microsoft Outlook crashes, it would be a catastrophe.

It is said that 7 digits is the practical limit for human number memorization. I wonder if our ability to memorize numbers will de-volve over time as we become more and more intertwined with technology.

I'm going to print out my address book now.