I got a call from my father-in-law about 8 o'clock tonight. He said that he was stuck on the roadside about 3 miles from my house because, believe it or not, his new windshield wipers flew off during a driving rainstorm. The technicians at the quick lube place that he had just visited need to go back to training, I guess.

The reason I'm telling this story is because he really needed his mobile phone to keep working while he stayed with his car until I could get there with replacement wipers. I suggested that he maintain radio-silence as much as possible because I knew that he didn't have a car charger.

When I got home from getting him back on the road, I looked at Amazon.com and discovered that the car charger for his phone is less than $10.00.

How many of us have had our gadgets fail us when we really needed them, because we left the house with the batteries half-charged and something unexpected happened? It only had to happen one time before I learned my lesson. It might be a long walk to the next payphone, in this era of replacing them with WiFi access points. Be prepared. [ More mobile phone charger choices at Amazon.com. ]