Products and Pointers
PARENTHOOD AND THE PALM PILOT
By David Menconi
During our pre-parenthood years, my wife and I swore we'd never drive a
minivan, own a cell phone, or use a Palm Pilot. Obviously, we were
naive about the demands of three children, including twins.
The
first hurdle that fell was the minivan because it was the only vehicle
big enough to accommodate everybody. The twins' arrival required
knowing everybody's whereabouts, and so we got a second phone
number-the cell phone. And finally, as we felt the last vestiges of our
sleep-deprived minds slipping away, my wife surrendered and got a Palm
Pilot, too.
But as we say in our household, parenthood means
never having to apologize for your memory death. Besides, technology is
supposed to be your friend, and the Palm Pilot is probably the most
practical 250 bucks we ever spent.
Before the Palm Pilot, my
wife lugged a bulky Franklin planner from her pre-parenthood days and
tried to keep up with a half-dozen paper lists: shopping lists, to-do
lists, gift lists, questions-to-ask-various-doctors lists. The Palm
Pilot compressed all that information into a lightweight,
three-by-five-inch note card size device that easily fits into a purse
or pocket.
A Palm Pilot is the perfect parental accessory. It
relieves you of the tedious responsibility to track the never-ending
details that you're too frazzled to remember anyway. It's a calendar,
address book, to-do list and reminder service rolled into one. Record a
regular appointment once and it will repeat as often as you want. And
with the aural alarm feature, you can use it as an alarm clock (as if
any parent of a newborn
needs an alarm clock).
On the
downside, about once a month our Palm Pilot acts up and as my wife
says, "has a nervous breakdown." But you can prevent this tantrum by
rebooting it on the computer. Back up and save the Palm Pilot's data
frequently. Daily is best, if you can remember to do it that often.
Fortunately, you can program your Palm Pilot to remind you of this
task, too.
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About The Author
David Menconi is a regular contributor to Your Baby Today.
