Maybe I’m a prissy old man, but I am amazed every day at the huge number of rude and/or clueless people who use these things. Like Pavlov’s dog, these cell phone users drop everything when their phones ring. They interrupt whatever social interaction, task, or meeting they are involved in (or witnessing) to respond to the ring of the bell, in hopes of getting the telecommunications equivalent of a morsel to eat.

Yet there are people who, like me, tend to find a quiet, removed corner to conduct their communications. There are people, like the general contractor who met with us this morning to discuss a remodeling job, who apologize when the phone goes off, and who ignore calls that don’t matter. Thank you all for showing some basic level of good manners.

For the rest of you clueless louts, here is my own little list of cell phone rudenesses. Please be aware that to some people, you come across as a jerk when you violate these little social taboos.

1. If you cannot take a call, don’t answer the phone. If you are in the middle of sawing wood for your new garage, or re-wiring your house for the Internet, or changing your baby’s diaper, DO NOT ANSWER THE PHONE if I call you. To answer the phone and then tell me that you cannot talk because your are sawing/re-wiring/changing the diaper is just rude. Let the voicemail do its thing and then call me back. I am happy to leave a message. Voicemail technology is the great social lubricant of the 21st century. Use it.
2. If you are standing in line to purchase something, that thing standing at the cash register is a HUMAN BEING. Do not carry on a conversation with somebody else on your cell phone while the grocery cashier is trying to ask you whether you want paper or plastic, whether you want your change in fives or twenties, whether you would like to get a less leaky gallon of milk. Your ongoing phone conversation is a signal to the cashier that he/she does not count in your world of humanity. Give your cell phone a rest. In the meantime, practice saying this phrase, over and over, until you are comfortable with it: “I have to go, I’ll call you back later.”
3. If your call is a fight or a breakup with a significant other, or any other emotionally-laden discourse, do it in private. You do not have sex, or even foreplay, in the middle of a crowded mall. Don’t do your breakups there either. I just don’t want to see or hear every ugly aspect of your personal life. Go out into the parking lot, sit in your car with the windows rolled up, and let ‘er rip. But don’t share it with me.
4. You do not have to shout to be heard by your interlocutor. I often witness perfectly quiet cell phone conversations on the Washington Metro, in which the Metro rider is speaking to the person on the other end in a quiet voice, and I can’t hear a word. Thank you, quiet cell-phone talkers. On the other hand, some people seem to think that the cell phone is designed just to give the voice a little boost between here and home, 10 miles away. These people shout so they can be heard. Don’t. The microphone on a cell phone works wonders. It converts your voice into a digital signal that is miraculously amplified so it can be heard on the other end.
5. If you are driving a car on the same streets or in the same parking lots as I, hang up your phone and drive. At least get a real hands-free kit. Put the phone down and put both hands on the wheel. Turn your head around and look for my car coming up the street. Tell your conversational partner that you have to pay attention for a second and then come back to the conversation. Don’t kill me, or destroy my car, because you’re talking to your cousin about last night’s American Idol. Hang up and drive.

I’m not saying don’t talk on the cell phone. I couldn’t live without my cell phone. I’m saying please, please try to recall that other people share the space in which you walk and talk. Don’t pretend your cell phone comes equipped with an isolation capsule. Be aware that whenever I see you violating any of these taboos, I assume that you are a rude jerk–even if you aren’t really.

End of curmudgeonly rant.

A Google search or two for “iPod” kept kicking up links to something called “podcasting.” I explored further, and my life was changed. I became a member of the second wave of podcasting, and I podcast to this day.

Last night, my iPod slipped off a table and hit the floor. This had happened a couple times before, but last night did it in. The impact must have been hard enough to really knock something loose inside, because it is truly dead. Docking it to my computer does nothing. Sliding the “hold” switch does nothing. Pressing the buttons does nothing. There are ways to fix these things, but I’m not quite enough of a gadget geek to do it.

So today I am listening to my morning drive-time podcasts on a Creative MuVo MP3 player. It works fine, but it’s not the same. I went to the iTunes Music Store and downloaded a few tracks of the Bach piece my church choir is singing in a couple weeks. But almost the instant I paid for them, I realized I have no portable player on which to play them. (Thanks, Apple, for such a robust DRM scheme…grrrrr!)

So my wonderful wife (to whom I gave a video iPod for her birthday last year) promised to take me to the local Apple store this weekend for an early Father’s Day present. I’ll finally move into the video iPod world.

Too bad, in a way, because that 20 Gb drive was just about right for me. It forced me to dump old podcasts once I had heard them, and it made me think about what music was really important enough to carry around with me. And I’m not sure when I’m going to look at a little video screen to watch a movie–although I’ll probably figure that out.

I’m trying to move three domains (thewordnerds.org, davesmidlife.com, and daveshepmagic.com) to one account at BlueHost. The BlueHost folks are very helpful, their servers are apparently robust, the company is the beneficiary of many good online reviews, the service is cheap.

As you can see if you are one of the six people worldwide reading this post (ever), davesmidlife.com came over without a problem. It’s a little old WordPress blog and nothing more.

The big, important one is for The Word Nerds. The blog seems to have moved okay, and the forum has also successfully moved (although I still have to install anti-spambot modifications).

I am quite concerned that my iTunes does not see the Word Nerds podcast feed, but it may be too soon after the repointing of my domain name. Maybe the Internet is still looking in two places for my site. (Man, I hope so. This looks unsettlingly like a problem I was having with GoDaddy before I dumped them.)

Also, my K2 WordPress theme for The Word Nerds doesn’t work, so I’m using plain vanilla, with no graphic header and no sidebar links, for the time being.

Several domains that I own, that I intend to forward to the ones above, are not forwarding properly.

I am learning a lot about MySQL, WordPress, domain name assignments, and the Internet in general. However, I would have been happy with somewhat less education and somewhat more transparent functionality.

Steve Jobs may be a genius presenter, but even so, it looks like a really neat product. Yes, I know it’s not open to the installation of other applications, but I don’t run any downloaded applications on the Sony-Ericcson W600i I use right now. The apps on the iPhone (Safari, in particular) are all I’m ever going to use on a phone/PDA.

I won’t buy one as soon as it comes out. I’ll give myself some months to cool off about it, and to let Apple get the bugs get worked out. But I probably will get one. I’m already a Cingular customer, so I wouldn’t have to switch. And I don’t have a video iPod, so that might be a marginal justification for that aspect of it.

Okay, y’all tell me now how stupid and starstruck I am. I don’t care. If it does the things Jobs showed off in the demo, and if it’ll connect up to my Prius’s Bluetooth connection, then I’m sold.