Here’s my gadget story for the week, maybe the year…

The setting- a wintry day at the end of December 2008 in northern New Jersey. It is snowing quite a bit and the snow plow ridge had grown high.
The backdrop – I had just undergone serious surgery to fuse my wrist after arthritis had all but destroyed every bit of cartilage. Drugged out of my mind on anesthesia, I still remembered to ask my wife Elana to stop at the bottom of the driveway and get the mail. Who knows, maybe I figured something good to review had come… there are priorities! Elana was driving my car, so instead of having her Palm Centro between the seats where she usually keeps it, she had it on her lap. Of course you can guess what happened — she got out of the car to check the mail, helped me wobble into the house to the couch and a short time later, discovered she could not find her Palm Centro. She looked everywhere for it and eventually came to the sad realization that it had been on her lap and was now buried in a snow bank in front of the house. She went outside to look but to no avail — it was gone.

To humor me she tried an iPhone for a few weeks. She hated it. And before too long she replaced her Palm Centro with — a Palm Centro. (Why she wanted to use old technology I can’t understand, but it’s her phone, not mine.)

Fast forward to this morning.

I’m back in the office for the first day after vacation when Elana calls me — “You’ll never guess what just happened.”

“We won the lottery?”

“Nope, but I was out walking Maisy and I found it.”

“Found what?”

“My Centro”

“You must be kidding. Is it in 1000 pieces?”

“Nope”

“Is the screen shattered?”

“Nope. It is a bit dirty though.”

I couldn’t imagine what it would look like after more than half a year out in the elements I assume it was a train wreck. Not so.

In fact it doesn’t look that bad at all. And while I can’t imagine that it’s possibly going to work, I’ll let it slowly dry out and in a week or so, I’ll try to turn it on.

If it does, which I highly doubt, I will take back every bad word about the Palm Centro and apologize to Elana for making fun of her continuing to use ancient technology when there are so many better options today. I have to say though, it is pretty darn impressive that after all this time the phone is in one piece!