Thursday, April 14, 2011

Technology

Again with the hating on me.

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I wish I knew what ever it was I did to technology…probably back in the 70s sometime.

I suppose I did reject the 8 track cassette player in favor of albums.

But I was 9!

That was 34 years ago!

And 8 tracks totally did not last!

I’ve owned every other musical format since! I have a smart phone! I have a Kindle! I had an iPod when they came out! I’m typing this on a laptop, with a second flat screen monitor! I used to work in IT! I love databases & spreadsheets & computer games! I own a Nintendo DS! And a Wii!

I really wish technology would forgive me my lapse in judgment & like me again.

The latest hating is from the aforementioned smart phone.

It decided it’s internal memory was full & no matter how much stuff I deleted off of it (3GBs!) it continued to claim the memory was full.

Sometimes it would play Everything I Do (I do it for you) by Brian Adams on an endless loop in the music player even that song was not included in the chosen playlist.

Sometimes it queued up random YouTube videos and would start playing them while I was checking out my grocery list.

So I took it to the shop. The *real* shop, not the one in Wal Mart. Nothing against the fine folks in the Wal Mart shop but they sell phones for 5 different carriers & I wanted someone my carrier specific to look at the phone. I figured they’d look at it & be all “oh just press this and delete that and there you go”. Whereas WMs method is always “We’ll just factory reset the phone” with no attempt to look at the actual source of the problem.

*sigh*

Oh, they looked for an actual source to the problem at the real shop. I’ll give them that much. But there was no joy and the factory reset was finally suggested as my only hope.

I *hate* factory resets.

All my effort in getting everything just so is lost, all the good stuff is gone, photos! contacts! apps! Even the apps I know I put on the SD card are gone! And why doesn’t the music player see my music on the card?

What do you mean re-download everything???

Do you know where I live? I have half a bar at my house!

(and times like these I need a full bar, well stocked, with top shelf liquor)

I have to sign back into everything! I’ve lost my Color Notes data, my wine notes data, MY ANGRY BIRDS SCORES!!!!! I have to start everything over again!

And no, I don’t remember my password.

I was able to reassemble nearly all of my old stuff but it wasn’t easy

First I accessed my AppBrain account. It’s an app manager app I started using when I bought my phone. It’s web based & I was able to log in and see what apps I’d had before the reset. The problem was that AppBrain refused to believe they were not already installed & would not re-install them (and wanted me to pay again for apps I paid for months ago).

I couldn’t tell if syncing the web & the phone would result in the phone downloading things it didn’t have or in the web removing all my apps from it’s list because they were not on the phone.

The first result would be awesome, the second not so much.

So I went through and started ‘uninstalling’ each app on the web & then installing it again on the web app by app.

Then, after manually dealing with about 10 priority apps (OurGroceries, Color Note, Shazam, Angry Birds, Audible, Double Twist, Crush the Castle, PicPlz, FxCamera & WineFree) I decided I’d make a list of the rest & download them at my leisure some other time. I didn’t care if they were lost so I synced the web & phone lists.

Damned if it didn’t install every last one of those apps on my web list!

Except the paid ones. It wanted me to pay for those.

I’ve only paid for apps through Amazon, not through any other service & redownloading from there was a no brainer. It was so easy I was seriously considering finding all my other apps on Amazon as well so they’d all be in one easy to find place.

And eventually I will probably do that.

But I’ll have to uninstall them each from the phone & then redownload them from Amazon & I just can’t face that right now.

8 comments:

Lizziemade said...

I Hear You!!! Me Too!! I also worked in IT (I have qualifications in IT, I did 2 years at college, one day a week to get those qualifications, plus other short courses.... ). Yet, Me Too... The family PC - hates me, goes wrong, plays up... My Laptop - hates me, goes slow, won't load, eats my data, plays up... My cellphone - hates me, goes wrong, plays up.... DH's IPod Touch - hates me, refuses to co-operate, plays up... My IPod Shuffle - hates me, refuses to download, gets stuck on a loop, won't play my songs, re-starts the loop when it wants to, plays up... My Camera - hates me, won't switch on, won't switch off, won't save my videos, won't display the last photo, won't let me zoom, zooms up someone's nose when I didn't ask it to, plays up... The House Telephones, The TV, The VCR (we have a vcr/dvd combi), The DVD, the Freeview TV box.... Whatever.... Yet I can work the mechanical stuff okay... it's just anything with a micro-chip (or three) inside them - I have a Chip Phobia or something...

So, Dear Blog Friend Stacey... You are NOT ALONE!

But please don't ask me for advice about that cellphone... I might cry!

Michelle Saunderson said...

My technology gets along well, of course I don't have an IT background or anything so maybe my technology really hates me, but I just don't know enough to notice.

SciFi Dad said...

Maybe it's past this point now, but doesn't Android have a desktop sync function? And if it has that, doesn't it have a backup feature tied to it? (My iPhone takes a backup every time I sync, and I can even take a backup manually - on any computer with iTunes - just in case.)

I hear you about the factory restore, but maybe you've got a sync backup somewhere you could apply?

Beverly said...

ohmygosh I would have been crying out of frustration and pulling my hair out :O

Andrea @ The Creative Junkie said...

Oh God, I should not have read this. I emit some sort of weird frequency that makes all technology go ape shit whenever I get near it. I have yet to get a smart phone, even though I really really really want one, because I fear the absolute chaos that will ensure once I hold it in my infected hands.

Carrie-Anne said...

Just stopping in from LBS Tea Party! I read several of your posts and really enjoyed them! So glad I stopped by!
~Carrie-Anne
http://twoweekworship.org/

Classic NYer said...

This post just made my head spin... and also kind of makes me glad I never jumped on the iphone bandwagon, haha.

Classic NYer said...

Oh... stopping in from the LBS tea party!