We are Borg now

I joined the ranks of the cell-phone enabled over the weekend. Sort of.

I purchased a cheap phone on a prepaid plan with no contract. For under $50, I got the phone plus three months of service and about 4 hours of airtime. I'm not sure I'll even use the four hours, but it's there for all the traveling that I'm doing over the next few months. Next weekend I'm off to help a colleague shepherd students to a conference in Ohio. After that, it's off to Kentucky to see my partner. A few weeks later and I'm off to Dallas to see my folks. Then in early January I'm off to California for the Joint Meetings of the AMS and MAA, plus some general happy sightseeing. There may be extra trips in there somewhere, but I hope not.

So I'll be glad to have the phone as an option when I'm traveling, and I'm sure there will be other occasionally uses for it. I'll probably keep it active. If I really like it, I may think about upgrading to something fancier. But for the moment basic functionality seems like plenty. After all, I got along this long without having one at all, and generally only had any possible use for one a few times a year. It's always seemed mostly unneeded to me, like just one more thing to have to keep track of and pay for. But I figured there was some point to having it while traveling, so it seemed like a time to give it a try.

Resistance is futile.