For the past week or so, I’ve been running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to catch up from the three weeks’ worth of being sick…the good news is, I think I’m down to only have three or four people/companies ticked off at me for not having things done as promised.

Problem is, I’m rapidly climbing on top of my annual one-day vacation. I will leave the reasons for this firmly in the mists of time where they belong, but on the Ides of March each year, I spend twenty-four hours away from computers. For that brief amount of time each year, I do not touch keyboards, monitors, or CPUs.

And let me tell you, this is getting harder and harder every year. Is my PDA, which I use to carry books around with me to read, allowed because it’s an electronic book? Or disallowed because it has a microprocessor? My new cell phone…can I use it? Or because it can send email and receive instant messages, is it forbidden for the day? The DVD player has a more powerful microprocessor than those which got Apollo 11 to the moon and back…can I still watch old episodes of The Veil? Is it ok to change channels on the XM Satellite Radio, what with it being digital and connected to other computerized hardware? Even the coffee pot has sensors, timers, and processors…good lord, can I even get out of bed?

Ok, so I’m mostly joking; I don’t really agonize over these things (except maybe a little on the Ides of March, since then I have the time), and have a sensible way of looking at the day. I’ll listen to The Bob Edwards Show first thing in the morning, since it’s the only way I know to start my mornings. I’ll buy real honest-to-paper books and read them, pick up a copy of The New York Times instead of reading it on the Internet, and I’ll burn a bunch of current events and Old-Time Radio programming onto a couple of CD-RWs (since I won’t be able to operate Audio, the computer hooked up to the FM transmitter I use to time-shift radio and Internet programming)…and there’s always the traditional two-or-three episodes of Star Trek watched from laserdisc (haven’t yet decided which this year, although I am leaning toward “Conscience of the King,” which guest-stars my old friend from The March of Time, Arnold Moss; and I’m betting that “Spock’s Brain” won’t make the cut yet again this year). And I have to be honest enough to tell you there’s usually an afternoon nap involved (the older I get, the sleepier I get when I read for prolonged periods), so it’s usually a pretty full day.

And then there’s the beard…it gets shaved off on the Ides of March, not to begin to reappear until next November first (again, the reasons are ancient and personal)…last year, my daughter spent most of the evening staring at me, trying to reconcile the clean-shaven guy with the “Grizzly Adams” of the oh-so-recent past.

Yeah, yeah, I know, the Ides of March are supposed to be a solumn day, what with that whole Caesar thing in 44 BC. But the Ides of March is also significant as a day of monumental change; that’s clear from Cicero’s letters from the months after the Ides of March - he even says, “The Ides changed everything.” Every year, I take one day off to remember exactly why it is I do what I do the other 364 days…I stay away from the things I love and hate, and by 11:30 pm of the evening, I’m longing for the comfort of a mouse in my right hand. Hardly a “rebirth,” but it’s a surprisingly refreshing way to spend an all-too-short, or far-too-long, twenty-four hours.

Those of you who read this blog routinely know that I’ve been determined to move my cell service from Verizon ever since the sales drones at my local Verizon Wireless store became too lazy to take my payments, instead requiring me to do the clerical work (entering the payment into their computer system at a terminal kiosk) for them. Well, I finally got the service transfered, and now have a tiny yet inexpensive new telephone, the Sony Ericsson T237.

Only problem is, gathering information on the phone outside of the sales stuff on the Sony Ericsson website is neigh-on impossible. The phone does cool stuff (multiple format ringtones, games, WAP browsing, etc., etc.), but figuring out how to get it to do that cool stuff ain’t easy.

Ok, ok, I understand that they want to sell ringtones and games, so saying that the polyphonic ringtones are standard MIDI files might cut into their sales, or that the phone accepts standard morphin games might again screw things up for the sales end…but gees, guys, let’s be honest here. Even when we buy a cheap phone, we still want to ring the bells and blow the whistles, you know?

I am slowly gathering information (most of it by raw trial and error, frankly); once I get enough of it together, I’ll post a detailed document here that hopefully future folks buying this telephone can use to make their lives a little easier.