Sell phone

So, curious why I had not yet received a cell phone bill, I looked up my account on the Cingular website. You will be unsurprised to hear that the one-month balance approached half a K, approximately $400 of which was in data charges associated with the Treo.

These charges are levied at 3 cents per kilobyte, or $30 per mb. Over the first 30 days of use, my data usage was about 14 mb, primarily in failed atempts to get AvantGo to sync.

Naturally, I renegotiated my service plan. I’m now on an unlimited data-usage plan.

Longtime readers will know in advance that while I’m pleased at my calm and methodical approach to getting a significant portion of the bill credited back in exchange for the upgrade, I loathe having been so smoothly pinballed into the entirely unreasonable total monthly service plan.

You heard it here first: after two years, no more cell phones for me. I’ve had and rejected them several times in the past, and see no compelling reason to expect that I will ever become reconciled to a one-hundred dollar monthly communication tax.

Headline plumbs depths

Cavers smash world depth record (BBC News): “A Ukrainian team has reached a record depth of 2,080m (6,822ft), passing the elusive 2,000m mark at Krubera, the world’s deepest known cave. The nine-strong group were part of a project that has made breaking the 2,000m depth its goal for four years. They built on records set by a previous expedition, which blasted through blocked passages in the cave.”

I am unaccountably amused by this headline.