The planets align and we push the sun up one more time!

So when you have seen as many summer solstices as I have you realize there are some good days and some not so good days and if you are fortunate the number of good days outweigh the bad. But every once in a while you have a day where the planets align – when you least expect it. Today was one of those days. 
The day started off looking to be a not so good day – my beloved BlackBerry screen went Black – there have been some warning signs over the past month but I was in denial. It has “blacked” out on me a bit over the month but after 30 seconds of profuse sweating (me – not the phone) it would jump back to life. The phone was still alive but I couldn’t see anything on it – it would ring and I couldn’t answer it, it would buzz and I couldn’t check messages – I was headed towards a breakdown. 

I have replaced quite a few parts over the years on this phone but it has never acted like this. As I searched for solutions (and spare parts – which are getting harder to come by) I was slowly accepting that I might have to succumb to pressure and use my daughter’s old iPhone. Out of desperation I called Joe – the guy in the basement of the admin building at work – I had heard that over the years he used to tinker with BlackBerries and might have a part or two laying around. Joe was happy to actually have a visitor in the basement and was quite chatty but he had not seen symptoms like my phone was exhibiting before. But he did offer up a box of spare parts he was getting ready to bring to the electronic recycling place – nothing too exciting – some old BlackBerry connectors and cables and a few other miscellaneous parts. This was better than I had hoped for but then it happened – there was the gravitational shift and this is where the planets actually aligned. There was one more thing he was bringing to the recycle plant – a brand new, still in box, untouched by human hands, BlackBerry Q10 – for a BlackBerry fan in 2017 this is like the Holy Grail! Oh – you want this – we were getting rid of it – go ahead and take it.  
I was trying hard not to tremble. I was so excited and yet I didn’t want to take it out of the box and tarnish the glowing aura surrounding the boxed beauty. So I rush home after work and figured let me wheel the suffering patient into the operating room one more time. Eleven tiny, tiny, tiny, screws later and some careful prying apart and I have the internals once again exposed – and what do I find – a damaged connector – did I mention I had a box of connectors! 
So my BlackBerry gets to push the sun high one more time. Now I have to get ready for bed – and tuck in my boxed beauty 🙂  Happy First Day of Summer!!!

Steve Jobs is my Khan Noonien Singh – Khannnnnn!!!!

“To the last I grapple with thee. From hell’s heart I stab at thee. For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.”

Yes – it was time to replace my daughter’s phone – her badly fractured iPhone screen was becoming unusable.  The first stop was the Apple Store to see if it was repairable, and if so, how much would it cost. I was greeted at the door and told I needed to speak with the guy in the green shirt with glasses – hello – all of the employees there were in green shirts and wore glasses.  I finally found the right green shirt and he told me it would cost $129 to replace the screen. Great – can I drop it off?  Oh no sir, you will need to make an appointment to drop it off.  Why – I just want to leave the phone and pick it up when it is ready. That isn’t how we do things here sir, you need an appointment to drop it off! What do they think they are – a plastic surgeons office!  First open appointment to drop your phone off is in four days – are they really that busy!

So the next option is the Verizon Store to see about a new phone.  They had plenty in stock and the monthly payment was tolerable so we decided this was the quicker route. We got the phone along with a new case and tempered glass screen protector and they activated the phone while we were there – so far so good.  I asked the salesperson if they would move my daughter’s  contacts over and he said that with Apple products you are better off going through iTunes – I should have known then I was in for a long night – last time I did battle with that poor excuse of software my daughter and I were not on speaking terms for days. Note that I do need to say that we don’t use iCloud – especially since Kim Kardashian’s iCloud photos got hacked. 

So off to home with a new phone to perform the “simple” task of syncing contacts. The initial backup of the old phone went pretty quickly – less than thirty minutes – then the fun began. I connect the new phone and proceed to setup the new phone and restore everything from the backup (per Apple instructions). It turns out the backup is incompatible with the new phone and I was directed to update the operating system of the old phone and then make a new backup. OK – ninety minutes later and we are updated and have a new backup. I go back to setting up the new phone and when I get to the restore from backup point I now am informed that the old phone had a newer operating system so I would have to update the new phone. Another ninety minutes later and we are ready to try again. Now I am told the backup is corrupt – ugh – I could have typed all the contact information in from scratch faster than this. So I wipe out all backups and create a brand new one – I wasn’t sure if it would restore but surprisingly it did! 

Everything came over – except pictures – but that part wasn’t a surprise – we learned the last time that the photos we take aren’t really ours – Mr. Jobs owns them and he decides how you can use your photos – but that is the subject of another rant.

And people wonder why I still use a BlackBerry!