{"id":10213,"date":"2024-05-27T14:37:19","date_gmt":"2024-05-27T14:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=10213"},"modified":"2024-05-27T14:37:20","modified_gmt":"2024-05-27T14:37:20","slug":"howls-of-a-technophobe-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=10213","title":{"rendered":"Howls of a Technophobe 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I hardly noticed it to begin with \u2013 a couple of phone calls I didn\u2019t for whatever reason manage to pick up. With the first I just thought, well, if it\u2019s that important they\u2019ll call back. I returned the second call, all fine, until I noticed a while later \u2013 three hours and forty-seven minutes later, to be precise \u2013 that I still appeared to be on the call. What\u2019s more, apart from the banner across the top informing me of this outrage, the screen was resolutely blank, so I had no way of cancelling the call, other than by turning the phone off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never mind: luckily there is a handily placed O2 shop in Briston, with friendly \u2018gurus\u2019 in it. I trotted down there next morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine my disappointment when I found the shop closed for refurbishment. Who cares about interior decor in a mobe crisis? I\u2019d be perfectly happy with mobe surgery in a portaloo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I decided to console myself with a trip across the road to M & S for some of their finest cashews robed in Belgian chocolate. You\u2019ve guessed it: closed for refurbishment. &*%!?^%<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next I tried a phone shop in Brixton market. The popular press would have you believe anything is possible in one of these establishments: they\u2019ll sell you a burner phone, fix up the whizzy device you acquired down the pub, fence your stolen laptop and deliver it to an address in Kazakhstan. Sadly, the very nice man there tried his best but couldn\u2019t conjure any life into my phone screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I headed up west to a big O2 shop, where I was told in no uncertain terms that there was nothing that could be done with an ancient Huawei. I duly bought a bottom-of-the-range Samsung. The salesman assured me the transfer to this device could be done seamlessly, took my money, did the \u2018paperwork\u2019, and handed me my new phone in a sealed box\u2026 unbelievable!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He looked surprised when I asked if I could open it and check that everything was on it. Oh \u2013  I wanted everything transferred, did I? Fortunately for him, he couldn\u2019t find a cable capable of connecting old to new, so sent me across the road to make an appointment at Samsung.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Samsung man said he could transfer my data there and then, I could have kissed him \u2013 but that would not have added to the gaiety of nations so I refrained. I watched the familiar icons appear on the screen, was assured that all my emails had come across (there were about 45,750 of them I could have done without, frankly), and breathed a sigh of relief. He handed the phone back to me, saying, \u2018now all you need to do is transfer the SIM from the old phone to the new one.\u2019 And there was I thinking I was home and hosed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully High-tech Hector (a.k.a. Mr Verity) did this for me, and now all I needed to do was charge my new phone. Silly me! Of course, the fun had only just started\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got the lead out of the box, plugged it in to my phone \u2013 then realised the other end of it wasn\u2019t a USB plug. That\u2019s the moment when the photo above was taken. I turned to Google to demand an explanation from Samsung, and received this prim little reprimand: \u2018Samsung believes that the gradual removal of charger plugs and earphones from our in-box device packaging can help address the growing e-waste problem and remove any pressure that consumers may feel towards continually purchasing new chargers with new phones.\u2019 WE WOULDN\u2019T HAVE TO BUY ONE AT ALL IF YOU JUST HAD THE SAME PLUG AS EVERYBODY ELSE!!! The next day the phone shop down the road flogged me a special plug with a Samsung socket for \u00a320.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As any service and website I\u2019ve ever used got wind of the fact that I had a (scary voice) new device, the requests from my laptop for long-forgotten passwords began to multiply. Normal service has not been resumed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out in real life, I\u2019ve struggled to get into the gym, because even the turnstile knows I have a new device. The ripples continue to radiate outwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday\u2019s fresh outrage was that when I went to look up a train the National Rail Enquiries screen kept dancing about, which meant I couldn\u2019t fill anything in. It was Hi-tech Hector to the rescue again,  who resolved this by accepting an update \u2013 something I\u2019d been resisting because in my experience updates are hugely disruptive, and I\u2019ve had quite enough of that already, thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The irony is that the problem that started all this is still not resolved: I still can\u2019t answer the phone because I can\u2019t seem to exert the correct number of pascals on the green button\u2026 Those tins on strings were so much easier to work!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hardly noticed it to begin with \u2013 a couple of phone calls I didn\u2019t for whatever reason manage to pick up. With the first I just thought, well, if it\u2019s that important they\u2019ll call back. I returned the second call, all fine, until I noticed a while later \u2013 three hours and forty-seven minutes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,63,67,55,56,334],"tags":[558],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10213"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10213"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10242,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10213\/revisions\/10242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}