Back it up

I realize that with this entry, if anyone out there questioned my age, the question will be answered. I'm old enough to be very technically challenged. There was a time that I can remember that to make a phone call you first had to make sure no one else in the neighborhood was using it. If it was available you only had to dial 4 numbers. Then a few years later you had to dial seven, now everyone has become used to dialing ten, most of the time, eleven if its long distance from a land line.
Remember the days when if you were not home, and some one called, they had to call back, there were no answering machines or voice mails. Remember a thing called an address book, where you wrote down on paper using a pencil the address and phone numbers of friends, family, pharmacy and Doctor's. Some of them could be written in ink, pencil was safer if they moved around a lot. That little book stuffed with all of the papers, receipts and business cards was one of the most important books in the house! In my house there was a special place for it, and Lord help the culprit that did not put it back after it was used. Remember when you memorized all the important numbers you called so you would not have to look them up.
Today we carry our "address books" around with us, we do not have to memorize anything because it is all at the touch of a button on our cell phones. Heck half the time I have to stop and think about every call I make if I try to use my memory for the number.(especially if I call home) I have emails, phone numbers, important dates with automatic reminders, I can even search the Internet if I have to right from the palm of my hand using a cell phone. Wow, how great is that!
However, and there is always a however in life, what happens when the cell phone gets really hot in your hand, the display screen slips sideways and then goes dark? I'll tell you what happens your ability to communicate with the world goes up in electronic smoke and everything you had stored on this little battery operated nemesis is gone! All those numbers that you do not have to remember is poof! If your like some, even the silly passwords that you have to remember is kaput. In other words you have to start all over and try to remember everything you had in there including Aunt Molly's neighbors number so you can call her if Aunt Molly does not answer because she went on a cruise and did not tell anyone.
I know all of this because last week my phone, with out warning died. I buried it by putting it in a box and sending it back to whence it came with a prepaid mailing label. Now I have the task of replacing all that was in it. So far it has taken me two days and I may be one half done.
Now let me give some advise, most carriers have what is called secure backup services, which if you can subscribe that will automatically backup your devise so that should it fry to a plastic blob, your world does not have to be rebuilt. ALSO, and this is the most important part, you can get these little cards that plug into the side of your camera phone then they plug into another card that will plug into your computer so you can transfer all of those pictures you take of the fish you catch, sunsets, and grand kids. Of course most people may have already know this, I did not. I always wondered if there was a faster way of getting pictures out. I just did not want to ask. I did not want the person I asked to say, "Wow what a technically challenged" old man.