Hey, you didn't have to agree quite so quickly.

Here's the genesis of today's self-flagellation: An hour or two ago my desktop computer began emitting an unfamiliar audible alert.

At first I did what I always do when my computer does something unusual: I ignored it.

But the alert continued at what seemed to be regular intervals; so regular as to shake me from inaction.

My initial thought was that it must be an Outlook appointment alert -- a feature I use so infrequently as to be uncertain about its auditory characteristics. However, there didn't appear to be any visual confirmation of that suspicion, either from the Outlook UI or settings.

TweetDeck? No, I am very familiar with the sounds of TweetDeck and long ago (long ago being relative in Twitterese) disabled its alert both to quiet the cacophony and convince my wife to stop packing that suitcase.

Perhaps, I posit next, it is some rude Web site on one of the dozens of windows I have open at any given moment, so I closed both browsers.

To no avail. Every ... five ... minutes.

Yes, I understand that muting the volume most likely would have provided at least temporary relief, but by this point I wanted more than that, I wanted an answer.

So I close every application, shut down the machine, remove it from its docking station, reinsert and reboot.

I'm telling you The Terminator has nothing on this thing. Every ... five ... minutes.

By now I've spent a good 20 minutes trying and at least five times that long enduring. It's time to seek assistance, but rather than trouble the help desk I decide to first send a plaintive e-mail to my Network World colleagues. Here is that e-mail, which you will see next was never actually sent:

"Please spare me a help desk encounter and looming insanity ...... every 5 minutes I am getting an audible alert from my computer and I haven't the foggiest notion what application is doing it or why. This started this morning. It sounds like something Outlook might use to remind one of an appointment or a boring cell phone ringtone ..."

Flash! The light comes on at the exact moment I finish typing the word ringtone: It's my bleeping cell phone -- in my bleeping pants pocket -- that is doing all this bleeping bleating.

The device is telling me that its battery is low.

And that I am an idiot.

How could someone not recognize their own phone's low-battery warning, you ask?

You must be new here, I answer, for it's well established in the minds of regular readers that I have little use for my mobile phone. In fact, the one in my pocket is relatively new, I almost never have it turned on, and, truth be told, this was the very first time it had made any noise of any kind. So that's my excuse.

That and I'm such an idiot.