I did find a very cool thing on this vast wasteland we call the internet. Pagoo is a handy-dandy service for people such as myself who only have one phone line for both talking to real people (the phone) and talking to virtual people (the internet). What happens is you get an account with Pagoo, download their player, call the phone company and have them add "call forward on busy" to your line for $1 a month, and then if you're online and someone calls you, it gets bumped to a voicemail system and THEN, lo and behold, you hear a little ring, the player pops up in the middle of your screen, you click on a button, and you hear the message someone just left for you.

Maybe you're all acclimated to the wonders of technology, but this just astounds me. There's also a 1-800 number that you can give out to people if you don't want to get the call-forward-on-busy thing, so I tried it last night from my cell phone. I actually timed it, and twenty-two seconds after I hung up from leaving a message for myself, the thing popped up on the screen, and my voice came back at me out of my computer.

I find this incredibly cool. And useful, since I'm always afraid that people will wonder why I'm online so damn much. I always have the excuse that I'm doing research or looking for a job, which is what I should be doing when I'm actually on here talking to you people and writing about The Practice. The first month is free, and after that it's only $3.95 a month, which with the $1 for call forwarding is really $4.95 a month, but it's still cheaper than a second phone line and the same as the local phone company's voicemail system which doesn't actually alert you to a message while you're online.

I spent $9.99 on a CD of voice recognition software. This is my problem. I see these things and I just have to try them. I got a microphone with my computer (way back in April of 1997) but I never had any reason to use it, so for ten bucks, I thought, what the hell.

Well, it is kind of cool, but only in the sense that I get a kick out of telling a machine what to do and watching it do it. The technology itself (and I know you get what you pay for; believe me, I wasn't expecting much) leaves much to be desired. Mine isn't like the one on TV where the girl slips on the headset and says "Now when I talk it types." Mine is "Now...initial-cap-that.... when...... I.... talk.... it..... times.... delete-that..... types...."

Hardly worth it. If it can't type faster than I can, I don't want it.

In an effort to make this a purely technology-related entry, I have a problem that I am soliciting solutions for.

A while back I got this dumb game sent through an e-mail called "Fathom It!" It's like Battleship, only not really. I opened it and played it and then decided I didn't really want it anymore, so I uninstalled it and went about my business.

Except that the next time I had occasion to fully restart my computer rather than just suspend it (my computer's a laptop, in case that makes a difference), I got a screen asking if I wanted to install it. I of course have to say "No" three different times before it will return me to my desktop.

This is one of those things that's really just a minor annoyance, but it's the principal of the thing. I don't like the idea that someone wrote this game so that I have to keep it on my computer permanently. I tried to go ahead and re-install it, but when I uninstalled it the first time I apparently got rid of something I needed, so now it asks me for a disk that I obviously don't have. I had some correspondence with the distributor of the game and he sent me a DOS program that as far as I can tell didn't really do anything.

The only thing I have done so far is searched for every file with "fathom" in the name and deleted it. There's also nothing in my Start menu about it.

I brought my computer in to the MIS guy at school, who fooled around with a couple of things that didn't work either. He said to bring it back some weekend when I didn't need it, because he'd probably need an hour or so to figure out what was wrong. I'm not really comfortable leaving my computer with anyone for an hour, and I'm particularly not comfortable leaving my computer with this guy for an hour for reasons unrelated to the problem at hand.

So I'm wondering. I saw some clean-up software at Staples the other day. I don't even know what that is, but do I need something like that? Is there something I might be able to download (i.e., for free) that will clear it out for me? And if I do need to buy software, which kind should I get?

I have to admit, this was inspired by a lovely woman named Ana, who wrote me to offer reassurance that my flour bug problem was not a testament to the cleanliness of my kitchen. She said that those suckers start out as microorganisms that are already in the flour when you buy it, and that all you have to do is stick the flour in the freezer for 48 hours. That will kill the little suckers before they have a chance to become big suckers and ruin your dinner.

So now I'm just going to ask readers for solutions to all my problems. (Kidding! Only the non-psychological ones, I promise.) Anyway, if you have any good ideas about ridding my computer of Fathom It!, Please please please tell me and I promise I'll talk about you just like I did Ana.

One more thing. Did anyone else ever play a game in junior high where you made a circle with your thumb and forefinger (like an okay sign) and held it nonchalantly down at your hip, and if someone looked at it you got to thwack them? Did that happen in anyone else's junior high hell? I'm just curious.

(Oh, no. See, this is a forum-type question ("Talk about stupid games you played in junior high") and I'm resisting that trend with all that I am. It's not that I don't like them, but it's one more thing that I would have to maintain, and I just can't allow myself any more distractions if I want to pass Corporations.)