From a Busy Week to an Easy Weekend

After a busy day Thursday and especially Friday I hit the skids pretty hard once I wrapped up my short business trip last night. Even before I left LA I was flagging pretty badly. Sitting at the airport awaiting my delayed flight I felt like I was ready to fall asleep at 5:30. And I worried that my delayed flight wouldn't get me home until well after 9.

A broken toilet was what delayed the aircraft by over 45 minutes. Ultimately they flew with it not working. But on the flight up from LAX to SJC we made it in record time. It seemed like the captain put the pedal to the metal the whole way. Maybe he had to take a piss real bad. 🤣 The benefit to me is that I got home-home before 9.

I unpacked my suitcase quickly— not hard because it was just an overnight trip— and settled down on the living room sofa to watch some TV with Hawk. With all the streaming services we have now we have a lot of shows to catch up on. 😅

This morning I woke up early, around 6. I was hoping to sleep in. Oh,well. I vegged with my computer for a while. Then, when the sun was fully up and shining, I headed out to the hot tub for a soak.



I suppose I could have visited the hot tub earlier in the morning. While It's so beautiful when the sun is up and lighting the stucco walls and all the greenery that's still leafy here in mid-October, it's also nice to sit in the hot tub, enjoying the warm water, when the sky is gray and ugly and casting a pall over everything.

What's on tap for the rest of today? Not a heck of a lot. I've got a load of laundry in the washer. In an hour or so I'll go out for lunch. At some point today I'll finish updating my new phone. Oh, man, that is a story— and I don't mean that in a good way! Then Hawk and I will head to the Verizon store to turn in our old phones to complete the steal of a deal we got.

New Phone Ready. FINALLY!

Our new iPhone 16 Pro phones were delivered Wednesday afternoon. They told us it'd take a few weeks, but then the phones shipped in 3 days. Woohoo, fast delivery, amiright? Ah, but then came the fun part. We'd physically gotten the phones but we still had to get them to work.

Years ago when we bought new phones we'd go to the Verizon store (or AT&T store), get phones there, and they'd get them all set up for us in a matter of, like, 10 minutes. Now it's self service. And it doesn't work.

Hawk started her phone migration Wednesday night. I held off, figuring I'd watch her go through the process and learn if there were avoidable gotchas. (Narrator's voice: There were gotchas, but they were not avoidable.)

First, copying the data from old phone to new via Bluetooth/wifi was slow. Then, it failed. The phones flashed up a toll-free number and said you'd need to call for help.

Then, here's the funny thing. You can't call in for help on your phone. On either of your phones. You have to use a third phone, borrowed from someone else, to call. Because the transfer process borks your old phone before thew new phone is usable.

Hawk spent at least an hour on the phone— on my phone—working through the problems with her phones. In the end they got it work. But wow, what a shit show compared to the old way of employees in the store being to set this up in 10 minutes while you wait.

Oh, but it gets worse. I started my upgrade on Thursday morning. The "automated", "self serve" upgrade process predictably failed. I wrestled with multiple calls to customer support for three fucking hours trying to get it resolved. After 3 hours I had the data transferred to the new phone but not the service transferred. I paused the process at that point because I couldn't keep fucking with my phone all day; I had a job I needed to do. At least at that point my old phone was still working, so I figured I'd cut my losses and leave it at that for a while.

I came back to the transfer process this morning, almost 48 hours later. It took another 4 calls and a few more hours. Plus a span of about 2 hours in the middle when both phones were borked. I decided, Fuck it, I want lunch and I can do it without a phone.

What a fucking mess.

This is far and away the worst experience I've ever had updating an iPhone to a newer iPhone. ...And yes, I've done it before. Several times. This was literally 10x the time, effort, and frustration of any other upgrade experience I've had.