Asymptomatic

I had a strange confluence of events over the past couple days. In the mail, I have received a few notices about services that I can attach to my Fios connection at home. I don't have interest in Fios TV now that Verizon dropped the ball and we went ahead with satellite instead, but the new 15/15 service is very attractive. I would love to be able to push as much data out as I pull down.

The same day that notice arrived in the mail, I got email on the Verizon billing account. Apparently, the credit card attached to that account is about to expire, and if I want the autopay to continue then I need to update the number via the site they provide. So I decided to update my billing info and see if there was a way to update my service to 15/15 at the same time.

I logged into the site, and to make a hideous story short: I couldn't do it. I'd get as far as entering some information, and it would tell me that the tool (for payment, mind you) was unavailable. Also unavailable was my ability to read email through their web interface. What kind of ISP is so broken that they don't let you pay or read email? Verizon, apparently....

My subscription period for my Verizon phone has come to an end. I've had my Treo for 2 years and it has served me well, but I'm wondering what I'm going to do next.

I've been paying Verizon the extra money for unlimited broadband access. The sad part is that my Treo is only a 650, and can't take advantage of the high speed access that I'm paying way too much for. It's gotten me thinking about what I'm really getting out of my cell phone and phone service.

What do I really use my phone for besides making calls? Well, I do use it as a contact database. I have all of my phone numbers and addresses in the Palm's address book. (Actually, I use Agendus, but same difference.) I use it as a calculator. I play games on it when I've got time to kill and nothing else to do. I watch movies on it using TCPMP, since Treos can't do VCast or any of that fancy network-provided stuff. I use the phone to get movie times via the built-in web browser, and send SMS to Google to get local addresses....