Much like me, my iPhone was eternally searching yesterday. Unlike me, it was searching for the ATT cellular network (I, sadly, have no idea what I’m searching for, though I’ve been searching for it for most of my life).

When I got to work yesterday, I stopped down to see the person who does the phone stuff, but, alas, she was out sick (a lot of that going on around here). As this was not only my work phone, but also a substitute for the non-existent land line at my house this presented a bit of a dilemma.

For one thing, I feel oddly insecure when I leave the house without a working phone (odd because I managed to survive the first two-thirds of my life without one – or even knowing that I desperately needed one). I also need to “authenticate” myself via a phone when I work from home (and I sure as hell don’t wanna have to come to work needlessly) and when I’m on-call for the week I need to be able to get my voice mail, since my work voice mail calls my cellphone every 15 minutes until I pick up the message.

And then of course you never know when the house might burn down, or you might suffer some horrible chainsaw-related accident, or a serial killer breaks in and you want your final terrified death screams recorded for posterity on a 911 call and broadcast on the lo-cal news.

So, being the eternal optimist that I am, I saw this not as a tragic dilemma, but as an opportunity. In other words, I used this as an excuse to do what I’ve wanted to do for a very long time – get an Android phone. So that’s what I did. I set it all up online and then went over to the phone store by where I work, and I was in business.

No need for the phone geek to set anything (much) up – I just logged into Google, and, whoosh – all my contacts, appointments, and settings and everything else were all magically there, and now I’m trying to remember all the apps that I actually use (far fewer than the number of apps I have installed) so I can download them to the phone.

So that’s cool. Plus “OK Google” is way, way smarter than Siri (Siri’s kind of a moron, truth be told).

Then I came into work today and the phone person was there, so she hooked me up with a loaner phone while a new iPhone 5s is on order. I don’t really want it (fairly content to stick with the 4s – especially now that I won’t actually ever have to use the iPhone outside of work crap), but, hey, it’s not like I’m getting a raise anytime soon (in actuality, on July 1st we get a 2% bump – first increase in something like six years. Fortunately, the cost of living hasn’t gone up at all in that time).

So now I’m back to two phones when I barely needed even one, but I’m paying what, in retrospect, seems like an awful lot of money a month for unlimited calls (I think I make an average of zero non-work-related call a month, and get maybe half a dozen incoming non-work and non-spam calls a year) and unlimited texts (even less useful to me than “voice” – my fingertip covers an area roughly the size of eight “keys.” How the hell these kids text so fast is beyond me, though I think not caring how atrociously terrible your spelling is, is the first step).

Anyhow, I do have a tidbit to pass along to you Apple folks out there (those that didn’t already know about it, at least – perhaps it’s common knowledge).

While at the phone store, I noticed they had an otoscope behind the desk (in case you don’t know, that’s the thingie with the light and the pointy end that’s a lot smaller than your elbow – but it’s OK ‘cuz they’re medical professionals – that they stick in your ear when you go to the doctor and they want to pretend whatever it is they’re looking at is worth the $250 they’re charging you).

So I asked, “hey, is this in case somebody gets an ear bud stuck in their ear, so you can find it and get it out?”

Turns out, no. It’s because Apple puts their “moisture” detectors in the bottom of the headphone jack, and they use the otoscope to check ’em out.

“Water – you lose, sucker!”

Did I mention I also went with the extra accidental damage (including water) coverage?

So I’m thinking you should cut the tip off some crappy old ear buds (say, the ones that Apple ships with their products) and keep your hole plugged (so to speak) when you’re not in need of sound.

Then maybe when your phone falls into the skimmer basket, there won’t be any evidence.