Phone-y Baloney Part II

December 7, 2014

(I’ve got science that jingle-jangle-jingles. Secondhand SCIENCE, that is. This week, we’re talkin’ ’bout splice junctions. Turns out your DNA is like cable TV. Hopefully, yours are in HD.)

(ETA: When I wrote the post below, I hadn’t realized I’d used the “Phone-y Baloney” title before for a post. But I did — just over two years ago, when I wrote about the ordeal of buying the phone that below I describe dying.

Mediocre minds think the exact same thing every two years, evidently. Freakay.)

My phone died last week.

Actually, it didn’t die so much as it developed some sort of selective amnesia. Before last week, it remembered that it had a SIM card nestled snugly in its internal socket. And then it forgot. The SIM card didn’t go anywhere. The phone didn’t get dropped on its head or anything. It just lost track, and wandered around the house asking, “Where’s my SIM card? Anyone seen my SIM card?”

It was kind of sad, actually. Like old aunt Rita searching high and low for her eyeglasses, when they’re pushed up on her forehead the whole time. Unfortunately, you can’t reboot Rita and make sure her firmware is up to date. (Hint: It isn’t.) But you can try that with a phone, and if it doesn’t work — as it didn’t for me — then it’s time to buy a new phone.

Also, you might try supergluing Aunt Rita’s glasses onto her nose. I’m just trying to help.

Of course, my phone had just gone off contract. Which is nice, I guess, that I didn’t have anything left to pay on it. But I only had a month or two to get used to not paying for it, before it went kaput. I’m a little surprised it didn’t self-destruct the day immediately after it was paid. I guess they figure that would be too obvious.

Anyway, the phone went south. I decided I’d be smart about finding a replacement. I’d study reviews and specs and special features. I’d wait for a sale, or take advantage of some holiday-season deal. My research would be thorough, rational and comprehensive.

Then I spent a day without a working phone.

And then I bolted to a store and bought the first phone I saw that looked pretty and recognized a SIM card. Because what’s the point of living if you can’t tweet from the bathroom or play Two Dots while you’re stuck in traffic?

So I’ve got a new phone, and I’ve spent several days setting it up. Downloading all the apps I had. Copying over my old files. Setting “Bang the Drum All Day” as the ringtone when my boss calls. The usual.

The worst part of setting up a new phone is remembering all the passwords for apps and sites that were set on the old phone, and which you therefore haven’t thought about for two years (and a month). I’m not especially bright, so I forgot all of these passwords. Which was mostly just aggravating, but I almost locked myself in an endless loop of incompetence. To wit:

My new phone runs Android, and I forgot my Google password. So I reset it.

When you reset your Google password, Big G sends a text to your phone to confirm.

My phone wasn’t set up yet and the old phone was off wandering the streets in its pajamas or something, so I couldn’t get a text.

Google said fine, I’ll send an email to your backup account, and we’ll go from there.

Only my backup email account is with Yahoo, which is an enormous pain in the ass, so I have all that mail forward to my Gmail account…

…which requires a Google login, and I forgot my Google password.

Like I said, I’m not especially bright. But at least I know my SIM card is plugged in.

Eventually, I got it all sorted out and now I’ve got a new phone. So it’s all good.

For another two years and four weeks, which this phone will inevitably break in half, explode or break into its component molecules and float off into the ether. And then we’ll go through the process all over again. Death, taxes and broken paid-off phones. Them’s the breaks.