That's what I feel like I am doing with technology all the time.

Take my Treo755p, for instance.  I love the darn phone.  Blackberry appears to have kicked dust in the face of Treo, but I still love my Treo.  I think it probably has to do with the fact that the Treo can do pretty much the same things, but I didn't have to learn how to use it.

You see, back in the days, pre-smartphone, I used a Palm Pilot.  I loved my Palm Pilot.  I even learned the little code-language that allowed us to add data to it.  What was that thing called?  You had to use your stylus and some special squiggles.  I felt like Inspector Gadget.

Anyway, right about the time my cell phone gave out on me, my Palm Pilot did too.  By then the Treo had been introduced and it made sense to get one item that replaced both of my broken ones.  It made even more sense to me because I didn't have to learn a whole new database or method of maneuvering around.  The Treo was Palm based and essentially, to me anyway, exactly like my Pilot except I could make calls and go on the internet with it.

But I've had a little beef with my Treo for a while.  It doesn't communicate with my laptop.  Defeats the whole purpose, dontcha think?  You see, my laptop runs on Windows XP Tablet Edition and Treo doesn't support the Tablet Edition.  Well, heck, I bought my laptop without checking out that bit of vital information.  Who would have thought I needed to?

So I have made do without synching my laptop data to my phone data for a very long time.  Not smart.

To make matters worse, some time back, the touchscreen on my Treo was becoming less touchable.  I clicked on the 6 and it dialed a 9.  Multiplied by 2 and got the product of 5 instead.  Uh oh.  I went over to Sprint and they told me to try a hard reset before having their guys look at it.

A hard reset?  PANIC set in.  That means all my data gets erased.  In a normal world, where all the gadgets are speaking to each other, this isn't a big deal.  But in my world this is a very big deal.  OK, so I put off the hard reset and learned to touch the Treo the way it needed to, to get the results I was looking for.  Relationships are about compromises, no?

Well, that worked fine until the Treo let me know it didn't want to be touched anymore.  The touchscreen no longer responds to any touch.  Wow.  I have had to relearn how to send text messages, add new contacts, I can't log in to MLX Wireless anymore ::sigh::, and a whole bunch of other things that I should not have to deal with.

Enough already.  The other day I decided to just synch the darn thing to my PC instead, do the hard reset, take it to Sprint so they can have their guys look at it and then call the insurance company to send me a new phone because I know the Sprint guys won't be able to fix it.  =) I got the hotsynch cord, plugged it in and it did not connect.  How many insults must a hard-working Realtor endure?

I've had it.  I'm heading over to Staples to buy one of those 49 cent spiral notebooks and a pencil.