* and are "permanent mail addresses", i.e. they are forwarded to the mail server I am using at the time. All my mail, the above plus , , ) , ... are forwarded to the mail app on my Mac now. You should use one of the permanent addresses in your address book, so you don't have to change it, however you can reply directly to whatever shows up as my "From:" address to bypass an extra forwarding step.

† Texting - Short Message Service (SMS) sends short text messages to my cell phone from another phone or email system. It's limited to 160 characters including the header. In tests I got about 145 characters for the subject and message.
One full sized line in your email of a variable width font is about 90-100 characters. The email link above will truncate the message. Sending from one phone to another will sometimes break the message into two if it exceeds the limit. See messaging.

‡ Chat - When I am away from my computer or working on a project, where I become anti-social and don't want to be interrupted, I have chat turned off, which is most of the time.

See: Voice and Text apps for your laptop, tablet

See my email address history.

A bit of trivia - Can you identify my ringtone:

Tests
sms:617-549-1064 (Tom)

imessage://dtmcbride@appleid.com
sms://dtmcbride@appleid.com