“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 760 (Friday) – BTK queen

The activation of the new phone took place today. There was professional help and thank goodness for the knight in armor who rode in for the rescue on the sleek horse. Otherwise, the new phone may have met an untimely demise after a dramatic encounter with the new cast iron fry pan.

Official headwear of
the BTK Queen

The protective screen cover was applied despite the comical and poorly translated picture instructions and now I understand the need for the video on the website for the phone case. 

Photos transferred over safely. Yay! Apps came over, including all those deliberately deleted from the old phone for space and lack of interest. Yay?! Contacts came over. All of them, including those deliberately deleted earlier this week specifically to clean up the list. Errrr, but certainly not the worst-case scenario, and maybe I will suddenly want to talk to an insurance agent or banker from when I lived in Tennessee 10 or 15 years ago. Authenticator apps for work were set up and verified. Online banking was installed and verified. It felt like success.

After the miracle of the data transfer, the phone was set aside and it was back to the glamorous and exciting desk jockey grind. Ads were reviewed, copy written, projects sent for review, blah, blah, blah. It was the end of the work day before I realized there had not been a single email received on the phone for four solid hours. No text messages, including the usual flurry of routine stupid texts for Michael's, Joann, and Kohl’s discounts.

Once at home, the Edge and its silence was investigated. Nothing was logging in. Not email. Not Facebook. Not text messages. A text was sent. It failed. Attempts to make calls resulted in "call cannot be completed as dialed" recorded messages. The old phone, however, was still able to receive texts, emails, and make and receive calls. Thank goodness, or I would have missed a call from Mom about a thing tomorrow.

Clearly, my long, rich, and colorful history of bad technology karma (BTK) continues.

It was back to the laptop and Verizon.com for a tech chat, where I was informed the SIM card was not activated. That wasn’t even a specific step in the multistep phone activation process instructions on the phone itself. 

Before the SIM was activated by the tech, there was an attempt to upsell me, as, and I quote, “a **premier** customer,” some whole home device protection program for “just 83 cents a day, $25 a month.” This bold-faced BS made the entire SIM situation seem like a ruse devised to force an opportunity for people to be subjected to yet another sales pitch. My response was along the lines of “I can’t even get this stupid brand-new phone to work, so no, I’m not spending another dime, thanks.” 

It took an hour for the SIM to be activated, the highlight of which was, and I am not even kidding, a “technical issue” during the tech chat to fix a technical issue with a new phone. After the phone adventure, logins on the laptop were screwed up. As in, some were gone, including the one for blog posting. Blogger on the phone? A-OK! Blogger on the laptop? Needed a password I couldn’t remember in order to transfer the words from a word document to the blog platform, which about gave me a heart attack. What in the actual hell? 

I swear nothing is ever, ever easy. Often comical, but rarely easy. And I shall enjoy my continued reign as the Queen of BTK.