Day 1723

Today didn't go well. I took my phone to the Apple store to get the battery replaced. The person I talked to at the Genius Bar was nice enough and told me that they'd have my phone fixed in a hour. That seemed fair enough, so I used the hour to drive up to my watchmaker and pick up my watch. Neither of us could remember how to set the old Tissot T-Touch, so I took the watch and told the watchmaker that I'd look up the instructions on Google. Unfortunately, I left some of the packaging for the watch up at the watchmaker's studio, so I'll have to make a second trip up there to retrieve it, assuming that it hasn't been thrown away already.

When I returned to the Apple store, they powered up my phone and showed me that it still worked. I was good to go. Unfortunately, I should have tried the Home Button on the bottom of the phone before I left the store. When I got home, I discovered that this all important button doesn't work anymore. Without the Home Button, the phone is fairly worthless. I looked up "non-functional iPhone Home Button" on Google and discovered that this button is frequently rendered inoperable when technicians try to pry out the battery. Located near the battery are several very small chips and jumpers that control the operation of the home button and power switch. If these components are broken or sheared off while changing the battery, you will need an entirely new logic board. Now I've got to go back to the Apple store and convince them to give me a new phone. Given the miniscule size of the components that are probably broken, it is doubtful that something like this can be fixed. I should have just kept the old battery. The phone was working fine, but lure of a free new battery was just too strong.

Dot's incontinence seems worse on odd numbered days. There is no rhyme or reason to this, but she seems to alternate between good and bad days. This makes no sense to me. Dot eats and drinks the same things every day. She should be getting progressively better in some sort of measurable way, but so far, the progress she's making seems pretty random. At some point we're going to have to decide whether to put Dot on medication. She doesn't even realize she is peeing in her sleep, but we certainly do.

I dread going back to the Apple store tomorrow. I had to wait a long time today, and it will probably be the same tomorrow. Why didn't they notice this problem before they handed the phone back to me? It's always something, isn't it. On my way out of the shopping mall I stopped at the new Tesla store that just opened. You can't buy a car there, but you can look at one. It was the first time I'd actually seen a Tesla in person. What a cool car. There's one small problem though. The thing runs on 8000 small Lithium Ion batteries. Just imagine when those things start going bad. A Tesla with faulty batteries will make my iPhone problems seem like nothing.

Domino is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1577

We still don't know whether Dash will be getting radiation therapy tomorrow. The cancer center said they're still working on the machine this evening and will call us between 6AM and 7AM tomorrow morning to let us know whether to bring Dash in for treatment. There must be a serious problem with the machine, since they've been working on it for almost three days now. Hopefully, everything will be fixed tomorrow. I worry that a big gap in treatments might compromise the effectiveness of the therapy.

Machines always seem to be the problem. On a much smaller scale, I've been having weird problems with my iPhone lately. I'll start to take a picture and the phone will abruptly shut down like the battery was dead. When I go to recharge the battery, I  typically discover that it still has a 50% charge. I went on a couple of Apple forums and discovered that this was actually a common problem for people who have upgraded to IOS 7. Apparently it is some sort of firmware problem where the battery controller gets scrambled ant doesn't know whether the battery is charged or not. I wish Apple would concentrate on developing a better battery, rather than making an even thinner case or a larger screen. I don't particularly care about the size of the phone. I just want it to work reliably.

One of my clients has been having problems with their online forms ever since the hosting company made a server change. The hosting company called me today and told me they had resolved the problem. I tried out one of the forms and quickly discovered that it still didn't work. This is the problem in dealing with technical support. Just saying that a problem is fixed, doesn't necessarily mean that it is actually fixed. It doesn't matter if the problem is a software glitch, a billing discrepancy, or a password that doesn't work, it usually takes at least five tries before you eventually get it right.

Despite all the problems, I managed to get quite a bit of work done today. I efficiently wrote and submitted three new articles. Then I wasted a ton of time inefficiently struggling to resolve a variety of technical issues over the phone with technical support people in India. I have a hard enough time understanding these people and and even harder time finding a satisfactory solution to my problems.

I was kind of disappointed to learn that Stephen Colbert will replace David Letterman. I was hoping that Craig Ferguson would get the job. Ferguson's lazy, largly unscripted brand of humor doesn't appeal to everyone, but he's become my go-to guy when I can't get to sleep at night. The guy does the same thing over and over again with minor variations, but it still seems funny to me. Maybe I'm just jealous that Ferguson gets paid for not really giving a shit about what he does. I wish I could get paid for not giving a shit.

Who knows what will happen tomorrow.  Either Dash will return to his radiation treatments, or the entire treatment schedule will slip even further behind. I sympathize with the folks at the cancer center. Their fancy radiation machine is much, much more expensive than my balky large format printer, but I'm sure their frustration is the same when the machine refuses to work for some inexplicable reason.

Apollo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 831

Our weekly trip to the dog park was the high point of the day. After we returned and had a little lunch, it was non-stop chores. I went to Home Depot first, to try to get a battery for my lawn mower before the grass in the front yard gets two feet tall. Although the store was still selling my model of mower, they had no replacement batteries. "We used to have batteries for these." was the best response I could get out of anyone. The salespeople couldn't even point me to a service center. Everyone seemed totally dependent on the Home Depot website. I already knew what the website said however. It said that this battery was out of stock online. Oh, well. Too much grass up front. Not enough grass out back. What are you going to do? Maybe I can get the battery rebuilt where I buy my watch batteries.

Later in the afternoon, I kept the promise I made yesterday and went down to clean my rental property. I'm happy to say that the Goo-be-Gone stuff actually worked and most of the candle wax and sticky stuff on the stone floors is gone. Now I've got to figure out how to get the Goo-be-Gone off the floors. It's some kind of petroleum based product and it doesn't seem to evaborate.

The big Molly Bolt wall anchors in the living room were a lot harder to remove than the sticky stuff on the floors. I managed to get most of them out, but I've got to go back and plaster over the holes. Now, the living room looks like someone used the walls for target practice. Renters are a complete mystery to me. I just don't understand why they do some of the things they do. In one of the bedrooms, someone took off the four sliding closet doors and put them on again backwards. Why? I just don't know what this proves. I've still got a lot of work to do, but I ought to have the place presentable enough to show a real estate agent in a week or two.

I think I'm getting too old to be cleaning sticky stuff off floors on my hands and knees. All I know it that every bone in my body was sore when I arrived home for dinner. I hate to pay someone to do this stuff however. It's simple mindless work. I used to be able to do this type of cleaning all day long. Unfortunately, the operating word in this case is "used to." If my hands rebel at scrubbing a floor, Lord help me when I pick up a guitar again.

Petey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day