Sunday, November 13, 2011

First World Problems (or, "The One With the Broken iPhone")

About a month ago I got a new iPhone.  Less than a week later it crashed ~ screen was black, phone was totally unresponsive.  When I got home (happened when I was out at the park with the kids) I looked up what to do, tried a "hard reset" (hold the home and power buttons at the same time for at least 10 seconds) and it worked.  NBD.  About 2 hours later it happened again.  Hmmm.  But then it was fine.  For about a week.  When it happened again.  Then again about a week later.  All told I think it crashed like this 5 times.  Each time I was able to reset the phone, so it was slightly annoying but not a big deal.  I kept reminding Michael that this was happening randomly, and he kept reminding me to at least attempt to look up the problem myself, and I kept reminding him that as the computer engineer in the house that is his job, and he kept reminding me that he was the one with the not-broken phone.  Anyway, I looked up the problem, seemed like probably a hardware issue that was affecting a very small portion of users and that I should take it back to the store to get it replaced.  Looked up the Apple Store on my phone, scheduled an appointment with the genius bar, and we stopped there on our way back into town today.

After getting a very unsatisfactory answer from the first genius I talked to (and I'm not trying to be rude or sarcastic...they're actually called geniuses :)), Michael convinced me to try again.  And by "convinced me to try again" I mean he went back in for me because I don't like talking to people.  And by "I don't like talking to people" I mean I have irrational anxiety about talking to strangers...I don't even like ordering pizza.  Anyway, he talked to a couple more geniuses and they decided to replace my phone because it shouldn't just randomly crash.  Setting up the new phone took longer than expected because my old phone was apparently possessed.  You can't activate a new phone when an existing phone is already on the plan.  The easy solution to this is to wipe all the data from the old phone and turn it off.  But my phone wouldn't turn off.  The genius tried all the tricks she could, tried to force it to shut down, and when she finally got it off, it turned itself back on.  She had to go in the back and remove the battery with a screwdriver (she compared removing the battery to "The Sword in the Stone") and then got the new one all set up and we were on our way.  Thanks to "the cloud" my phone is exactly like the old one.  Same desktop background, same apps, I didn't even have to re-login to facebook.  Craziness.

So as I'm writing this post I am realizing that this is ridiculous.  The fact that 1. facebook exists and 2. I can check it from my phone astounds me.  There are so many more important things to write about and talk about and believe me when I say that an intermittently broken phone is so far down the "things I worry about" list.  But for now, after a super fun but also exhausting weekend, I'm enjoying cuddling with my snuggly boy and not thinking about anything important.

Night!

Next time I will (probably) blog about Halloween...here's a little teaser for ya!




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