Conventional Wisdom

(Historical Notes: Okay, I’m obviously exaggerating here for comedic effect, but not by as much as you might assume.  I’d already been having trouble with my phone for a while leading up to this, so I really shouldn’t have been surprised when the battery went bad, but I was definitely surprised by HOW bad it went.  I don’t just mean that the phone wasn’t holding a charge for long, I mean the battery had physically swollen to the point that the screen was warped and the side was popping up out of the case.  It was scary… and of course I  noticed this was happening within half an hour of leaving the house.  Let me tell you, I was SO freaked out all weekend that the thing would just die completely or catch fire or something.  Thankfully, nothing that bad happened, though I DID have to stop and plug the phone in ever hour or so.  Of course, the Washington Convention Center is a small, cramped, not-at-all-spread-out facility, so that wasn’t a problem AT ALL.)