Christmas came early for young Chuckie. My job just gave me a new cell phone, the spanky Treo 650, which is an electronic wet dream for a techno-geek like me. It’s a combination cell phone/PDA that does just about everything but laundry. Fortunately, we just got a new washer and dryer, so I’m covered there, too.

In addition to doing duty as a cell phone, the Treo also has a calculator, a calendaring function, chat via Google Talk and Jabber, contacts, tasks, memos, email, web surfing, plays mp3s, and it has a camera. And that’s just what’s installed on it now; there are dozens of other utilities I can download to it. I’m playing with it already. Here’s a picture I took with it of Zoe torturing her cat Nina:

And best of all, the company’s paying for it. So now, for free (for me), I can play with a gadget and be reachable by phone and email anywhere and everywhere at any time.

Uh, wait a second. Maybe that’s not so great after all.