Shutting down was easier than I imagined

I was computerless for 26 hours over the weekend, as I participated in Saturday's International Shutdown Day, which I mentioned in an earlier post. I didn't check e-mail, check this site (or any other), work on any offline projects or do anything involving a computer of any type.

Well, perhaps I did, as my son pointed out that our vehicles are equipped with several computers, but I had no control over that during my weekend driving. Keeping away from the keyboards and mouses (mice?) was easy, as there was plenty to keep me occupied. I spent time with some magazines that had been piling up, went to the movies and ran some errands.

To make it easier, I didn't even carry my Palm Treo with me, as I instead used my reliable backup mobile phone -- a GO Phone from AT&T. I simply slipped my SIM card out of the Treo and into the "toy" phone and I was set for voice calls and text messages. To be in further compliance, the only text messages I looked at and replied to were those from my son, who was out late on prom night Saturday. A dad has to keep track of some things, and driving across the valley way after-hours is one of those things.

I'll share more about my experiences on Shutdown Day in my column next Tuesday. Interestingly, my attempts to log-on to the Shutdown Day site have resulted in my browser timing out, which leaves me wondering if the folks there took things a little TOO seriously and decided to shut down forever?