Author: Sharon

The Chaos conditions here at the Confusion Factory remain unfortunately high.  On the more-or-less positive side of the scale, the replacement for the ded phone arrived yesterday, has survived the night, and successfully found its sim card this morning.

So, fingers crossed.

Also on the plus side?  Alliance of Equals has, as of This Moment, a cool 180 reader reviews on Amazon.  That’s only 20 reviews short of the 200-review goal!  Thank you, thank you!

Today, because mindless tasks are soothing in their way, I’m going to be getting all the ebook tasks that are on my plate Off of my plate and onto someone else’s.

I’m also going to continue trying to bring the new phone nearer to the Look and Feel of the old phone.  One of the things that’s giving me the hardest time is that my old phone — as does the replacement phone, of course — takes voice commands.  All you have to do is name the voice and give it a wake-up phrase.  The former phone’s resident spirit was named Hasan, who is now, of course, ded.  So I’m having to cast about for a new name and phrase.  This shouldn’t be difficult, but I have Grave Reservations about the probable lifetime of the replacement phone, and I don’t want to be responsible for the death of another genuis loci.

Well.  It doesn’t have to be decided today.  Today is ebooks, and I’d better get to it.

Y’all have a good day, wherever you are.

Today’s blog title brought to you by Janis Joplin, “Mercedes Benz.”  Here’s your link.

Here, have a picture of the coon cats, making the bed.

So, the phone, she is ded.  A new phone is promised, though what kind and exactly when it will arrive have sorta been left up in the air.  I have made a note on the Calendar that Rules All to Call the Verizon store on Tuesday (sigh), if they don’t call me on Monday to provide Solid Information, and, ideally, a pick-up time.

On the Silver Lining front — had things fallen otherwise, this would have happened just as we were getting ready to leap onto a train to Kansas City.

So, that.

I dropped my broken necklace off at the jewelry store, and talked briefly with the jeweler, who says that, instead of soldering the break, and since there’s such a tiny segment of chain involved, she would remove the broken bit and feed the new end into the clamp end of the clasp.  It will either be ready on Monday, or in two weeks, because she was going on vacation, and couldn’t be sure she’d get to it before she left.

Dollar Store only had short spike solar lights in stock.  On the plus side, they cost just $1 apiece.

Kmart stocked solar lights which were more like what I’d had in mind — but they want $25 for one, single light, so that’s a non-starter.  Research continues.

We lost power last night, in solidarity with downtown (so to speak) Winslow, Benton, and a couple other towns I don’t recall right now — at about 9:00 pm.  The generator performed its function, and we here at the Cat Farm continued about our business, basically unimpeded.  Thanks to everyone who helped us make the generator a reality!

As of this morning, Alliance of Equals has received 169 reader reviews at Amazon!  Only 31 more until we reach our 200-reviews goal!  You guys rock!

Also, by way of a Watch the Skies:  Yesterday, we signed a contract with an ebook distributor, in order to widen the reach of Pinbeam Books.  We’ll let you know when the books are available from the new distributor.

And that? Is all I’ve got.  Today has got to be a work day, given the hours lost to the Dying of the Phone, so I’ll be shutting the internet down, directly I publish this blog entry.

Everybody stay cool.

So!  Today was a Wasted Day.

Oh, it fired a warning shot over the bows first, but there was really nothing I could’ve done to alter course.

The warning shot:  I opened Firebird this morning, to find letters in-queue, but! they were all empty.  Further investigation revealed an Urgent! message from Eset Security, counseling me to upgrade (for free) Right Now.  So I did that.

Or, at least, I tried to do that.

Eset reported that the install had failed. Panicked, I rebooted the machine.  The installation completed on reboot, and my mail automagically appeared in fullness.

Phew.

Went out to the kitchen to get my coffee and to unplug my cellphone, which had been charging on the overnight.  Turned it on and — No Sim Card — read the message running along the top of the screen.  Turned the phone off.  Turned it back on.  Same result.  Took it back to my office, jacked it into the computer, turned it on. . .

No Sim Card.

Now, before anybody tells that All I Have To Have Done was open up the phone and reseat the SIM card — I have a Droid Turbo.  If there’s any way to open the case, it requires a specialized tool unavailable to the residents of the confusion factory.

Which is why I want into town, seeking the Verizon store and that specialized tool.

I had to wait about fifteen minutes for a tech, so I went to the back of the store and opened the book I had grabbed off the table on my way out the door — Carousel Tides, by Sharon Lee.  Never heard of her, but it’s a pretty good book. Which turned out to be a blessing.  While I was reading, a woman wandered by, looking at phones, as one does. She had a small, intelligent dog on a leash.  Dog saw me and thrust forward, tail wagging.  I said, “Hi, Dog,” extended a hand. . .

“Don’t touch him!” the woman snapped.  “He’s a service dog!”

I blinked.  “He’s not wearing his vest,” I said, mildly.

“It’s too hot for his vest,” she said.  “He’s all business when he has it on, and he just wants to talk to everybody when he doesn’t — but don’t touch him.  He’s working.”

So, then.  Dog, who looked, as I say, like a fine, intelligent fellow, knows the Rules. Too bad his Boss doesn’t.

Back to the book, ignoring Dog and owner.  Eventually, my name is called.  The tech — Josh — allows as how the phone is still under warranty, and it ought to be an easy fix, if I’d just sit back down, he’d be back in five minutes.

He was back sooner than that, saying that whatever had done the SIM card had wiped the phone’s serial number on the way out, and he couldn’t do the fix.  He was therefore going to have to get me a replacement phone.

Except — you see where this is going, right?  Right.  My phone is Too Old to be stocked in the store.  Josh goes online to the Verizon Warehouse, finds one, orders it, comes back to tell me that it’ll be seven days before it arrives.  I allow as how that’s not exactly convenient, but a phone on the way is better than no phone at all.  He goes back to confirm the order —

And finds a message from the warehouse inventory system that — the phone is out of stock.

He then calls Motorola.  I overheard the part of the conversation that went, “No, I am not going to tell my customer that I’ll give her fifty bucks on her phone toward a new one.  Her phone is under warranty.  If you can’t send her a replacement phone, I’ll just give her one of the new Droids we have in stock — I’m sorry?  OK, let’s try that.”

Apparently, Motorola did a remote reset, which reawakened the SIM card and re-established the serial number.  No, I don’t know how that worked.  All I know is that my phone was back on-line, and All We Had To Do — cough — was for me to sign into Google and re-acquire my Stuff.

Except. . .Google wouldn’t let me in — I was stuck in an endless loop of “enter email/enter password” — my email and password worked on Josh’s phone, but not on mine.

Long story short, Josh called Google, which isn’t as easy as you might think, and finally got through to a tech named Cora, who explained that because the phone had been reset, there was a 24-hour lockdown period before I could sign into my Google account.  Josh asked if there was any way around that, and she gave him Motorola’s number.

He called Motorola, and talked to. . .somebody.  Again cutting corners — Motorola assumes that any device that has been wiped and re-animated has been stolen — yes, even if they have just done that Their Very Own Selves — and no — there is no way around the 24-hour lockdown.

So, what I have sitting on the kitchen table is currently a brick, and I won’t know until tomorrow at about 1:30 in the afternoon, if it really does function now.

Hotcha.

This whole operation consumed FIVE HOURS of my day.  I’m glad I had a good book with me, as I said.  As it was, I blew off the rest of my errands, save a quick stop at the grocery store in the same shopping center as the phone store, to pick up a quiche for lunch, and came home, where Steve said, “I wondered where you were all this time, so I sent you a text. . .”

Here’s hoping that your day was considerably better than mine.

Also!  As of this writing, one month after its release date, Alliance of Equals has 163! reader reviews on Amazon.com, only 37 shy of our goal of 200 reviews!  That’s. . .awesome.  Thank you.

Today’s blog title is brought to you by the Waybacks, “Mind Your Own Business.”  Here’s your link.