These fancy-dancy IP phones never cease to make me wonder what our world has come to. I remember when a telephone was a bucket of carbon granules and a momentary switch, and the rotary dial was just a mechanism for going on and off hook at a precise frequency. (Indeed, sometimes for fun, I’ll pulse-dial a phone by tapping on the hook.)

The other day, somebody sent out an email message:

I’m amusing myself watching the “CPU Load” graph on the phone. Then again, I’m easily amused.

Naturally, the CPU meter is useless, because you can only switch to it when you’re not using the phone. Once you pick up the handset, the CPU meter dismisses itself so you can see information about the call you’re on.

Oh wait, you can go through the menus to switch back to the CPU meter after it auto-dismisses itself. Woo-hoo, now I can tell people, “Sorry, can you talk slower? My phone’s CPU is maxing out.”

This what-barely-qualifies-as-amusement didn’t last long. A year later, the units were replaced with a different model phone that didn’t have a CPU meter. Progress.