Restoring my phone thanks to crappy app updates

Yesterday, my phone was acting up. After a number of automatic app updates, a number of apps weren't working properly afterwards

When I launched any e-mail app, it would flash and close up. I also had issues opening my Amazon, Sephora, and Rogers apps.

Normally, I can uninstall and reinstall a problematic app and I'm good. It didn't work for any of them. You also can't uninstall the Gmail app on a Google Pixel phone.

I ended up erasing everything on my phone and installing my data from a backup that had occurred three hours earlier.

Other than signing into every app that I use, my phone works well again. Man, I'm tired!

The weekend and a cell phone plan change

The weekend is here. I am relieved and happy!

A few days ago, I decided to change my cell phone plan. I am essentially getting an extra 3 GB of data each month for a lower price. Before taxes and a corporate discount, I am saving $40 a month. 

I also don't get charged for going over 10 GB a month. I have yet to hit my former 7 GB limit each month.

As far as phones go, I'd like to get the Google Pixel 4a 5G. It comes out next month. Instead of getting it financed with my cell phone provider, I am opting to buy it from Google directly. Apparently, it's cheaper if you go this route. I am excited!

Enjoy your weekend!

Transparency on shipping and the toll on the Internet when many are working from home

It appears that my modem will be delivered later on today. I just got a bill for the courier service. Interesting.

I'm not upset about paying $11.30 for shipping. It would have been nice if someone at my ISP had said, "Since you have been with us for eight years, we're giving you a new modem. However, we will be billing you for shipping." Transparency would have been nice.

Again, it's not a huge deal. The modem-router is probably worth $150 and I am hopeful that it will improve the quality of my Internet connection.

Yesterday, my colleague and friend had a chat with me about work. My connection had cut out briefly. She had the same issue with hers earlier in the day when she was in a meeting.

I have a feeling that since a lot of us are online, data connections will go through some hiccups these days.

Wifi extender

For a few months now, I have noticed that whenever I am in the basement of my home and I am using my phone that is connected to my wifi, the signal drops. I decided to get a wifi extender. It arrived a day early.

I just finished installing and configuring the wifi extender. It was straightforward. The signal seems better so far, but I haven't been down in the basement to fully try it. However, data in apps and videos seem to load faster so far.

I am optimistic!

Noticing details about data plans, travel, and jet lag

I feel like I have been living in some secluded area for ages. I have noticed details that I have never really paid close attention to.

Let's take my Internet plan at home. For years, I was on a monthly plan that gave me 300 GB of data. The nice, crazy part of this story is that my Internet service provider dropped the price that I was paying each month. I recently noticed on my bill that it also gave me unlimited data and I have been paying the same price. Where have I been?

It comes in handy. I stream a lot of programs these days. I cut my cable cord well over a year ago. Netflix and a bunch of programming on my Roku have filled in the void nicely. 

These days, I am in travel-planning mode. I am bringing two suitcases with me to Shanghai, simply because I can without paying extra. I have three sets of travel adapters. I actually appreciate the fact that I am that prepared.

Naturally, my guy is so used to travel that it's second nature to him. The only exception is jet lag. He is horrible at flipping over.

The last and only time that I was in Asia was Hong Kong. It took me a couple of days to flip over. We'll see how I do this time around. Here's to melatonin to help make the transition easier!

Fixing more issues with my cell phone plan and having my photos credited on Facebook by one of my favourite music bands

A follow-up post about ironing out my cell phone plan issues. My sales rep wrote an e-mail on Thursday night, claiming that she had fixed everything. It appeared that way until I analyzed my plan's details carefully.

I was supposed to get a $10 per month discount on my plan. She managed to reimburse me for the last two months and add it to my plan going forward. However, to get this discount required moving my account from a business one to a residential one. Okay, no big deal.

What she did instead was create two accounts for me. One was a temporary one (why, I haven't got a clue) and the other was my new one. I get a corporate discount. Apparently, she applied this discount to the temporary one and not my actual account. I didn't figure this detail out until I spoke with a representative over the phone.

She also failed to give me Canada-wide long-distance calls on my plan yet again. So, this issue alone prompted me to call to have it slapped on. 

The service representative did a fantastic job fixing everything. I was impressed. I am a happy camper. My cell phone provider also increased my data limit each month. I have a ridiculous 7 GB each month. I don't know what I am going to stream away from home now!

On a wonderful note, one of my favourite music duos included two of my photos taken at their show in Toronto on the band's Facebook page. I am over the moon and about to faint!

T is for things are looking brighter, telephone, and texting

At work, my manager sits next to me. It is a different type of working relationship that has blossomed into a friendship. It's a first for me.

Back in December of last year, a writer, who was highly defensive, quit. I was reviewing the entire team's work for quality. Instead, what I wanted to do career-wise was sidetracked. I had to not only take over her responsibilities, but needed to preserve most of mine.

I was miserable. I told my boss that it was time for me to look for a new job. I revamped my resume and sent it out for various positions.

Lately, I have resorted to eating at my desk like I used to when I was the lone writer. I don't like doing it, but it is better than my putting even more overtime on weeknights. The last thing that I want to do is work on the weekends.

My manager has slowly tried to keep me from leaving. He has finally succeeded.

My boss and I had a talk last week. Early next month, two interns join our team, so I will be training them as I have done in the past with the previous two interns. A writer from a different group in South America will be joining our team, too.

The plan? I go back to reviewing the team's written work on top of working with the interns. The interns take over my work on two development teams. The new writer takes over my work on my third team. Yes, I am on three different agile teams, which is both crazy and ludicrous when it comes to my workload of being the lead writer.

I am happy. I had another talk with my manager on Tuesday, who confirmed that this plan is going ahead. Yay!

As for my guy, I am missing him these days. At work on Tuesday, I managed to park my car in front of his. Of course, I am itching to tease my guy by telling him that he should let me drive his manual car while he is away.

Whenever I am travelling in the States, I change my SIM card in my phone and go with a cheaper phone, text, and data plan than my regular cell phone provider. After work on our first full day in Seattle, my guy tried calling my regular cell phone number. When he got back to the hotel, he had wondered what had happened to me. I told him that I have a different number and texted it to him.

My guy has some decent company perks. Since he travels a lot, our company pays for his cell phone and plan, including travel data packs. So, it's perfectly fine for me to text and call his cell phone in the States with my different SIM card. I would not be that fortunate and would probably fork half my paycheque out if I did the same with my regular cell phone plan.

My favourite text exchange was on Friday afternoon. We had discussed having lunch together before my guy left work work. It didn't pan out, though.

MG: Hi, guys want me to have lunch with them to ask some questions. Sorry our lunch plans have to be cancelled. Will see you shortly after lunch.
Me: Hey, no problem. Just need to deal with you later about that. =) I'm music-shopping. Ping me when you're done. Enjoy lunch and hope the questions aren't too hard.

When we text, we actually write full sentences. We don't find that weird at all. We aren't too crazy about short forms, which is nice.

My guy did call me when he had arrived at the mall, in a specific store. It was nice to hear his voice. I had to ask him where he was. I found him in the men's clothing section. It would have been much worse had I asked my directionally challenged guy to find me in the store!

We did spent our final night in Seattle shopping, eating, laughing, and more.

Being close with my guy from afar

During my guy's two-week trip to Seattle, his hotel's Internet connection was horrible. It was okay for us to text on Skype, but it wasn't a strong enough signal for us to chat.

The last night that my guy was at that hotel, we started off texting, but he insisted on hearing my voice.

"I will use my phone's data plan," my guy stated.
"Will that be a lot to expense?" I asked him.
"It's okay. I have done it in the past."

It was nice talking to him. To make a long story short, I was helping my guy buy voltage converters. He has to travel to Cairo and needed a number of them. He was flying back home for a few hours before jetting off to Cairo. I offered to do the shopping and save him some time. He greatly appreciated it.

He asks for my opinion on various topics. He had bought a new suitcase and asked me what I thought of a hard shell versus a soft one. He felt reassured after I told him my view. It eased his mind.

I could hear in his voice that he missed me. He asked me to take a selfie of my new haircut. I don't like taking selfies, but he wanted to see me badly. I did and he loved the new hairdo. He wanted to see me on Sunday badly. The wait was too long for both of us.

On Saturday morning, I had slept in. Half an hour later, my guy called me on my cell phone. It was nice to start the day hearing his voice and chatting. His flight was later in the day, so he had time to shop and do some touristy stuff.

In the afternoon, my guy called me again from Macy's. He was looking for a jacket. I talked about getting all the voltage converts at great sale prices. He was so happy, because he is Cheap Bastard. He couldn't wait to see me again. The feeling is always mutual.

We texted before his flight, too. We are like teenagers in love. We can't get enough of each other. 

Being apart this time around has made us closer than ever.

Farewell to the old laptop

Back in 2008, I was a graduate student and completed my degree through distance education. It was the first year in which our chats went from an instant-messaging, text-only discussion to an online video format. 

I had a Mac mini at the time that was one of the earlier models, which could not handle streaming video. So, I was one of the lucky ones who didn't have to turn on the video camera, but could simply participate through the voice chat.

Eventually, for one of my courses, I needed to run software that was Windows-specific. I couldn't run it on a virtual machine on my Mac mini. I caved and bought a laptop that was on sale at Staples.

Well, this laptop finally died on me last week. I ended up with a system error. I didn't even get a glorious blue screen of death. I just kept looking at my black screen of horror.

Okay, it wasn't really a horror. It was more like an inconvenience. I was at a crossroads. Should I attempt to salvage all data on my hard drive and throw out the laptop, or should I save it by getting a new hard drive and reinstalling Windows?

I opted with the former. These days, I can get a faster, more powerful laptop than spending hours trying to fix old technology.

I am not your average technical writing gal. My undergraduate degree was computer science, which was my major. I had friends during those days call me a techie because I fiddled with my computers over the years. I swapped out and upgraded hard disks. I changed sound cards and CD-ROM drives. I upgraded motherboards and added more RAM. 

To this day, I still like doing all these things, but I haven't needed to do it because I became a Mac user at home. I am lucky that I haven't had any issues with it. At work, I have a Windows-based laptop and don't have the luxury of tearing it apart, whether I want to out of frustration or not!

So, last Saturday, I went to my local computer store. I walked through the main doors and was immediately greeted by a helpful male staff member.

"Can I help find something for you?"
"Yes, I'm looking for a hard drive enclosure," I stated.
"This way," he replied, leading me over to the proper aisle. "Computer or laptop?"
"Laptop," I replied. "I need a 2.5" enclosure."

I go to this store because I am not treated like a woman who knows nothing about computers. I get that often. However, after talking to me for a bit, you can tell that I know a decent amount to get by.

He was helpful. I bought my new enclosure, went home, took my laptop apart, and seated my laptop hard drive into the enclosure. I now have a new external hard disk drive with a USB 3.0 connection. All my files are there.

So, my next debate is whether I truly need a replacement laptop. I could use my work laptop, but there is so much encryption on it that it's just sluggish to do fun stuff on it. Fortunately, I am not under any pressure.

After I was done with graduate school, I bought a new Mac mini. It is my main computer at home ever since. The majority of my blog post are written from it and I have yet to complain about its performance.

I will miss my old laptop. My guy and I have spent many fine times talking on Skype. Lately, we both noticed that when I was using Skype on this laptop now and again that the connection would drop because Skype would hang. I do have fond memories of my conversations with him using this laptop. I should stick to using Skype from my phone or my tablet.