What a great day for mail! First, I received my check from OldCellPhone.com, the great business that buys used cell phones. (Another great one is CellForCash.com.) It's so easy: you go to the Web site, look up your phone model and price, and then register. In a few days, you get a cardboard box with padding. You spend two minutes putting your phone in the box and putting the postage-paid label over the original shipping label, and drop it in any mailbox. I sent in my old v600 when I switched to Verizon Wireless in early December. So it was a bit of delay, but with no aggravation.

I also received my replacement driver's license, which arrived just over one week after renewing it at the New York DMV. Very impressive. This process must have been so much more cumbersome before information technology. I would hope that recycling an image and text on a piece of plastic can now happen in less than a day, and indeed, it looks like it did.