It's been a period of technology change over the last day or so, both in the office and at home. The office change wound up being pretty minor - my computer crapped out, our IT folks replaced the power supply and motherboard, and we're back in business - but the home one is more significant.

When I acquiesced on the issue of having a cell phone, I joined in under the wife's plan, and got a simple Motorola phone that did exactly what I needed it to do - send and receive calls while providing some resources for spot entertainment (most notably video poker and blackjack), all in a low-res package.

We were AT&T customers, but became Cingulair customers when they bought out AT&T. This led to a period where we were expected to pay a migration fee and buy new phones, an expectation that we gladly ignored. When the wife's phone died I got a used one off eBay, in the hopes of getting her through until June, when our contract expired.

Sadly, the second phone was looking to expire first (one column of keys lost all function), and Cingulair decided that they'd rather keep us as customers than have us bolt due to that expectation of paying for a merger we didn't necessarily want.

Long story short, that's how I wound up with this Nokia phone that has things like polyphonic ringtones, backgrounds, screen savers, and a variety of other functions that I can use. For an added fee, of course.

You can guess how many of these functions I'll be using.

That being said, I do need to go out and see what sort of free stuff there is, as none of what the phone came with really does anything for me. Suggestions are welcome, of course.