“I’m an eejit, Ted.”<\/p>\n
How many times did Father Dougal McGuire exclaim that in Father Ted<\/i>?<\/p>\n
No, don’t tell me. It may be something like, “Quick, Watson, the needle!” A line that Sherlock Holmes never ever<\/i> said, yet everyone thinks he did.<\/p>\n
Still, I felt a bit like Dougal today. Not without reason, mind you. But still entirely Dougal-like.<\/p>\n
As I mentioned on Tuesday<\/a>, I was giving some thought toward acquiring a mobile phone. And even as late as this morning, I still wasn’t entirely<\/i> sure, but then something pushed me over the hump, but that’s not relevant to my tale.<\/p>\n I went out on my lunch break, purchased a phone, took it back to the office, and there it sat for about two hours. Soon, I had all of the things I needed to do for the day done, and I unpacked the phone and started to set it up.<\/p>\n And when I powered on the phone, I was utterly stymied.<\/p>\n I saw the time and the date. I saw two icons on the screen. And I had absolutely no<\/i> idea what to do.<\/p>\n The instruction manual, which I had started to read before doing anything, was of absolutely no help. The instructions were, basically, “Power up the phone, follow the prompts to activate.”<\/p>\n Perhaps I had to activate the phone online? I logged into the website in the manual, I followed the instructions until I had to enter the serial number, and then it told me the serial number was incorrect. But, that’s what the sticker said! I disassembled the phone. That’s what was inside the phone, too!<\/p>\n The website gave me a phone number to call. I called it.<\/p>\n First, I tried the voice-response system. Then it disconnected me.<\/p>\n I called back. I got a woman on the phone.<\/p>\n And we talked for half an hour. No matter what I did, the phone would not do anything but stare at me. Blank screen, save for two icons. One was a locking icon, the other a volume icon. I touched either, and the phone would vibrate slightly.<\/p>\n “Touch the phone icon,” she said.<\/p>\n “There is no phone icon on the screen,” I said. “There are no icons at all that do anything. Just the time. And a lock icon. And, I guess, a volume icon.”<\/p>\n The woman suggested that I power down the phone and turn it back on. I did this. Nothing.<\/p>\n The woman suggested that I charge the battery more. I plugged in the battery charger.<\/p>\n For what it’s worth, she had no idea what the problem was.<\/p>\n She transferred me to Technical Support.<\/p>\n The phone disconnected.<\/p>\n Suffering from intense frustration, I decided to put my Google-fu powers to good use.<\/p>\n And I discovered what I was supposed<\/i> to do.<\/p>\n I had to put my finger on the lock icon and drag it to the right, across the screen.<\/p>\n Voila!<\/i><\/p>\n This was only an hour<\/i> after I’d turned on the phone for the first time. Of course<\/i> dragging the lock icon across the screen makes sense. Why wouldn’t<\/i> I think of that?<\/p>\n Naturally, I felt like Dougal — a total eejit.<\/p>\n Two minutes later, though, I had a mobile phone that worked.<\/p>\n I’ve spent my evening doing things with the phone. It’s an Android phone, so I’ve added some apps — Opera Mini and WordPress for Android. I’ve configured the e-mail client in the phone so it can work with my e-mail account. I’ve logged into Twitter and Facebook with it. I’ve tried a couple of different wallpapers; currently, I have the Grey Havens from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings<\/i> trilogy as my wallpaper. And I’ve also tried the camera, though that was mainly so I could figure out where images should go on the memory card.<\/p>\n The next thing, I think, is to try out the music player. But that can wait for the weekend. And I need to find out if I can use a stylus with the touchscreen; my fingertips are a little bit for such iddy-biddy on-screen buttons. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Otherwise, it really is quite cool.<\/p>\n I have a smartphone! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “I’m an eejit, Ted.” How many times did Father Dougal McGuire exclaim that in Father Ted? No, don’t tell me. It may be something like, “Quick, Watson, the needle!” A line that Sherlock Holmes never ever said, yet everyone thinks he did. Still, I felt a bit like Dougal today. Not without reason, mind you.Continue reading “On Purchasing a Smartphone”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[786],"class_list":["post-5622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-smartphone","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}