Headline

In context of the news this week where some of our elected officials give their only answer as "thoughts and prayers," perhaps the headline should read "where is the Calvary?"

That would be apt.

My recent (CR)APple experience

I do love my apple products. But sometimes it's absolutely painful to work with them.

Take my recent experience. We changed mobile carriers. Two of us were getting new iPhones, while the kids were keeping theirs. 

Of the 4 phones, how many do you think could be called an easy change?  None!  That's right, 100% of the devices had some sort of issue. 

We made sure to unlock both the phones we were moving. First off, what a stupid thing that is. Why are they locked?!   One of them didn't actually get unlocked, though we were told it did, and there's no way to actually for the consumer to tell...until you put the new SIM card in. We got a message that it couldn't be used on the new network. It actually said to contact apple for assistance. So I did. Except that Apple couldn't help me; it's the carriers issue. After much explanation, they finally figured it out and unlocked it.

But along the way, I had to back up the phone (a step the carrier recommended).  To restore the phone from iTunes, we were required to use the oh-so-stupid two-factor authentication. And the iPad attached to the account was locked and I didn't know the password (but my son did). So it took longer than it should have to restore. 

The second device we moved worked perfectly for about 12 hours, then it changed to "no service" and when I took the sim out and replaced it,  it changed to "invalid sim."  I realize this isn't technically an apple issue, but it was frustrating nevertheless. [edit: turns out it was an Apple issue not a SIM card issue. I had to plug the phone into my computer and let iTunes figure out that the phone needed an update. Once it ran, it worked on the new carrier again. Why didn’t anyone mention that?!]

Phone #3 was a new one.  First order of business, back the old one up.  For whatever reason, the machine I was using had many issues and it took several hours to create a backup.  I learned later it was a bug in iTunes.  So there's that.  But wouldn't you know, our internet went out, and so the restoration process was harder than it should have been...especially when I came to realize the new phones REQUIRED the latest version of iTunes ... Which I couldn't download because, no internet. 

Phone #4 was the real challenge. Another new phone. Now I had backed up the one it was replacing onto a computer a week or so before, because it wasn't working right and I didn't want to lose anything on it.  I had thought about backing it up to iCloud as well, but I'll be honest and say that I could figure out how, precisely, the iCloud backup works.  I find the documentation lacking. I also thought I backed up the photos to iCloud, but I missed a setting apparently, and didn't. So just as well.

I got the phone setup....and...where's the backup? It's not on the list to restore. So I selected one prior to that and restored. But where were my pictures, contacts, and other assorted items? Were they gone?

I poked around the Internet and learned some things. First, I learned that sometimes the backups via iTunes to a computer fail. More often than you might think.  Most people don't notice because they don't try and restore. But when it happens to you and you've already reset the device? Oops.  So the "pro tip" is to do the backup, and then to click the restore button to see if the backup is there. 

I also learned that when the backup fails, the data still exists in a backups folder on your computer, and it's not hard to find; It's just missing the plist and manifest files that act as the index. What I did was to copy the missing files from another backup into this folder and I ran one of (actually several) of the iTunes backup explorer tools that are available. It allowed me to see that everything was, in fact, there. 

But I didn't want to pay to recover everything. So instead I copied all the files >1MB to another folder and changed the extension to .jpg. Voila. There were my pictures. Yes the names are weird. And also yes, the exif data is missing. But I have pictures of the kids. 

I looked for any gaps in my contact list and half finished text messages and picked them up and re-added them to the device manually. 

It was work. Many hours of work. But it sure beat losing them. 

Along the way, by the way, I turned off two-factor authentication to make things easier. It was NOT easier, and proved even harder. Frustrated, I turned it back on.

In all, the simple migration to a new carrier and upgrade to two new phones took somewhere between 20-24 hours. And a lot of grit and frustration. 

And I ask again: why is this so freaking hard?!

Here’s an old article about Joe Robbie’s stadium

And this is why there are grass strips along the parking lot.

Lest you think I'm a tin foil hat person

Consider this...

South Carolina had its voting system hacked 150,000 times ON Election Day 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-carolina-may-prove-a-microcosm-of-u-s-election-hacking-efforts-1500202806

Sent from my iPad

Kneeling athletes

Tell me again how this is *not* about racism?

It seems odd to me that fans turn a blind eye when a player assaults another person, whether it's beating up someone at a club, obstructing justice in someone's death, or dragging a woman out of an elevator by her hair.

But they suddenly draw the line when players don't stand for anthem. Where was the outrage before?

And now we hear from faux patriots saying the anthem and the flag are so important. And they now despise the nfl and football because they aren't doing something about it.

But where we these same people when the nfl and it's owners pretended to be patriotic, inviting vets to games at a cost to the military? When the nfl wanted us to believe they were patriotic but were really just in it for the bottom line?

IMHO that's 100x worse than a player who exercises their constitutional rights to a silent protest.

And please don't give me the crap about them being on the job. Their employers are allowing it and it's not while they are actually working.

The cowboys kneeling

Before last nights game, I heard reports that jerry jones had instructed players that they should not be disrespectful and kneel during the anthem, and there would be consequences if they did.

And then, in a surprise move that delighted many, the whole team locked arms and kneeled - with him - in a show of solidarity before the anthem started. The fans booed, and the commentators appreciated it. Afterward, it was the talk of the town.

But it bothered me. Because while it showed solidarity, it undercut the nature of the kneeling movement in large part. The owner had them kneel, but made it awkward because he was directing his players to do so. And then they stood with arms locked during the anthem so no one could deviate.

In the back of mind I thought, hey look the old white guy is controlling the message in a way that looks like he's taking on the issue, but really is him telling everyone what to do.

Trump, russia, and collusion

A while ago, I suggested that perhaps the dotard (amusing nickname) wasn't complicit in the russia hack and he was a patsy / easy target.

But in reading more and listening to things that come out, I'm rethinking that. I now believe he was more than the recipient of Russia's efforts and sort of lucked into it. Rather, I am now thinking he was complicit.

Maybe I underestimated him and he's smarter than I thought (and he looks!) and realized what was going on and accepted it.

My rationale has to do with how he engaged with Russia along the way, and now he stirs the pot every time there's some connection made to Russia - in order to distract. The timing is too perfect and the distractions are exactly what you might expect from someone who comes across as clueless but is really conniving.

There are some folks that are following what russia is tracking on social media. And it's always related to things trump says. Coincidence? Doubtful.

I have no specific evidence at this point. But man russia is manipulating things so wildly and we just stand idly by and fight about race, the flag, and other issues that shouldn't be this divisive. Talk about them winning the Cold War...

Caption the photo as "Donald trump takes a knee"