All windows mobile and no usability make Mike a psychotic boy.

The only thing that kept me from actually throwing it out my car window was the five bills I paid for it on ebay. That may not hold me off for long though, the way things have been going. I better get into a Cingular/ATT/WTF store as soon as I can and buy the cheapest replacement I can before I destroy the retail value of this thing. I might still do it on principle. If I had a wee bit more cash on hand, there’d be some smashing. You’d better believe it.

You may be wondering what it did to nearly send me over the edge.

Let me elaborate.

I was driving down a wide slow street. Windows down. Sunny and warm out. I made a call but got some voicemail and immediately hung up. Or attempted to. Instead, it prompted “press center button to unlock”. So I pressed the “center button to unlock” with every expectation of imminent call termination success. I grumbled, sure, but so far just a couple of extra key presses. Really a bit more of an existential bother than an actual one. So, then, the phone unlocked, I pressed the hang up button. Again. And got prompted with “press center button to unlock”. Again. I think people on the sidewalk ducked, put their arms over their heads, and looked around for a foxhole to dive into.

Unlock, hang up, curse, unlock, hang up, curse, unlock, hang up, curse. An infinite loop of insanity. Meanwhile virtually every curse combination I could invent, screaming pedestrians, dogs yelping, car alarms blaring, low flying aircraft, eighteen wheelers forced off the road into watermelon stands - all recording live to voicemail.

Looks like I picked the wrong day to call the Vatican.

In the end, I rather energetically tossed the phone on the floor of the car.

At a stop light I reset the phone after recording a few more choice morsels to voicemail.

But I thought about it. I truly did. The window I mean. I thought long and hard about the window. Open. Right next to me.

May god have mercy on your soul, phone.