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Techno-Crabbiness: It’s CONTAGIOUS!

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Okay, okay…I admit: as a Techno-Crab of the first water, my crabbiness has gotten out of hand in the past few weeks. That notwithstanding, it’s refreshing to discover that Better Men and Women Than I also cast the occasional jaundiced eye upon the miracles of modern technology. Our friend Money Beagle, for example, reflects (in a much calmer tone than mine) upon the shortcomings of the smartphone. Ultimately, MB decides that despite a slew of aggravations, the smartphone is a kewl enough gadget.

But is it kewl enough to be worth $500 to $800? That’s the price range I saw in a quick web perusal this morning, ranging from refurbished iPhones to various Android devices. I dunno. That’s an awful lot of money. And I’m running out: don’t have enough cash in the bank, after the various major expenses, to keep me going until the next RMD in September or October.

Spiffikins comments, in a response to yesterday’s rant here at FaM, that as a practical matter all cell phones are required by law to be able to reach 911 — whether you subscribe to a service or not. So…that would mean that if you wanted to replace your land-line extensions with cells, you wouldn’t have to supply them with minutes at all: just keep the things charged up.

That IS an insight. The problem, of course, is that the reason you have extensions is so that you can answer the phone in whatever room you happen to be when someone jangles you up. If what you have is five different phones with five different phone numbers (or, if they’re not supplied with minutes, presumably NO phone numbers), then you would have to RUN to wherever you left your functioning, paid-for-service device at any given time. If you can remember where you left it…

Ooma (VoIP) begins to look better & better…now to find someone to help me figure out how to install it… The price is so low that I could probably afford a smartphone (someday) and still keep my antique set of base + four cordless handsets.

I need another hole in my head….

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So along about 11:00 a.m., having organized this year’s mountain of tax papers, I stroll across the street to WonderAccountant’s place, there to deliver the trash. As I stroll down the driveway, I hear a woman shrieking, truly screaming in terror. Drop the papers on WA’s doorstep, holler at her to call the cops, and start to run in the direction of the yelling. By the time I get down to the house where I think it’s coming from, it’s stopped. I can’t find anyone around, so stand down.

While WonderAccountant and I are waiting for the cops to show up (they never do…) we see the Perp stalk out of Other Daughter’s house, jump in his car, and drive away. We realize the screaming was very likely coming from OD’s: WonderAccountant has noticed before that conversation taking place in OD’s yard bounces off house walls on the other side of the street and sounds like they’re right in her or Joel’s  front yard.

We debate whether to add this to our report to 911 but figure since he saw us standing out there, he’ll know where that came from. If (we’re still thinking, mistakenly, when) we see a cop, we’ll casually mention that they might want to check on her welfare, without commenting on the abusive father.

OD told another neighbor that when her sister, Pretty Daughter, was advanced in pregnancy, he socked her smack in the gut with his fist. Said he used to beat both girls and their mother when they were kids. It’s believable: he really is a beaut. But then: she’s certified nuts, too…evidently for a reason.

So there I am in the driveway waving good-bye to the plumber, who shows up half-an hour before the 1-to-3 slot he reserved, and thinking…God Dayum, I do need that German shepherd back.

Anna. She did quite the little number on the Perp’s schizophrenic accomplice, Son-in-Law (he who no longer lives with Other Daughter). SiL tried, apparently during a phase when his meds weren’t working, tried to get into my backyard through the side gate, while a friend and I were sitting on the side deck. He managed to escape (luckily he’d parked his car in front) before she could catch him, but I’ll tellya…he never came back here again. Scared the bedoodles out of him.

As for the Perp himself: she could’ve taken that aging sleaze out in about three seconds flat.

Sometimes I think I need to get another German shepherd.

Right. Just what I need: another hole in the head.

If I’d had Anna at hand this noon, I would’ve gone down to O.D.’s place to see if she was OK.

Right.

Today’s Day from Hell started yesterday morning, when I managed to clog up the main bathroom’s toilet. It being Sunday, that meant I had to make do until today, when the plumber could send his son to clear out the pipes.

This morning, during a visit from yet another Cox technician, we learned that Cox’s shitty equipment just doesn’t work at all with the VSR Call Blocker 5000, which is damned annoying.

After 309 intercepts, most of the robocallers have given up. It’s been relatively quiet around here the past few days, with the device disconnected.

They’ll be back in due time, of course. At that point, I’ll either switch the phones to Ooma and NoMoRobo (as I should have done at the outset) or deep-six the landlines and replace them with a few cell phones. I figure I can get a real cell phone — an actual smartphone, now that one of my friends has volunteered to teach me to use it — and then acquire a few ultra-cheap clamshells with prepaid minutes to set around the house for emergency use. These can just be left turned off, and the proposed smartphone can take my present phone number.

Last night at about 12:15 a.m. (that actually would be this morning, wouldn’t it?), Firefox (!!! Firefox!) crashed with a resounding roar. In doing so, it took down a website I’d been working on half the day, losing about two hours’ worth of coding. I hate coding. I hate coding even more than I hate grading freshman comp papers. And that is a lot. And yes. Yes, the page was saved. Do you really think I don’t hit “Save” about every thirty seconds, after all my fun escapades in Computer Science?

So spent two hours this morning reconstructing the disappeared content and design. Good morning, fuckin’ America!

In the Hole in the Head Department, y’know what I really think I should do?

I think I should give over all pretense of doing anything that in any way looks like work. Toss a couple pair of jeans, a few shirts, a jacket, the camp stove, the dwarf dogs, and a sleeping bag in the car and just…start…driving.

And never. come. back.

Wining Time

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Time to sit down and swill a nice glass of Kirkland’s best.

The days swirl past like water flowing down the drain. And at this age…well, that’s a pretty apt metaphor. It’s been a very busy few hundred hours of late, some of them fun and some of them not so much.

Today started out pretty fun: A special choir session in the morning, in which we got some extra-special coaching from our professional musicians, met some new choir members, and had ourselves sorted out by timbre and reseated here, there and yon.

Even though one must yodel all by oneself, in public before an audience that does include the aforementioned professional musicians, I always get a kick out this process. It usually results in a set of new seating companions, which is cool because it allows me to get to know more choir members…otherwise, being the recluse that I am, I would cling to the few friends I’ve made and never get to know anyone else. So this is good. One of my favorite Chamber Choir singers is now seated to my right, a lovely singer with a wonderful, effervescent personality who seems, unlike moi, to be afraid of nothing and no one. To the left, a quiet woman who has been around for awhile but whom I’ve never had (or made…) an opportunity to come to know. AND we’re right down in front, meaning no climbing up and down and balancing on bleacher-like things. It’ll be a little harder to see the director from the new vantage point — and that is something I rely on simply because I’m just not that experienced, as singers go. But I think as long as we’re standing, it’ll be OK.

Yesterday was a bitch, as it developed.

Last night we finally moved the current wave of copy back to our journal editor. But not without a fiasco of the first water.

Working on revamping the Plain & Simple Press website and not making much headway, I’m figuring it’s about time to knock off and go do the day’s required fucking blood pressure test. This is the best time of day, when the numbers are at their lowest ebb…and that is a desideratum, because we wish to keep Cardiodoc at bay. I’ve not yet taken a pill, but it’s about time because part of the gaming of the system entails dropping one of these minuscule doses, waiting about an hour, and then running the hated gadget. This results — well, unless the ambient temperature is in the low 60s, as it can be — in a fine set of numbers in the mid- to low 110s.

Impressive. Very impressive. If that doesn’t get the guy off my neck, nothing will. 😀

Just as I’m thinking Get up, lady, and drop a pill, in comes a message from The Kid: where is Essay 4?

Essay 4? It’s on DropBox, in the Essay 4 folder. Of course (just unwittingly typed that “of curse”). Where we put it several days ago, and happy we were, indeed, to see the end of that fine document.

You understand: some of these authors are using their gilded efforts for P&T (promotion and tenure reviews). In its current incarnation, the journal seems to be absent anyone who even vaguely resembles a peer reviewer, nor does the copy seem to have benefited from the advice of an editor who is, shall we say, gifted with a jaundiced eye. The new editor appears to be inexperienced with wrangling creatives or unwilling to ride herd on the livestock. Articles are difficult to read primarily because they’re far from ready to go to press.

That is about the mildest I can get on this subject. And yes. I do remember my mother inveighing about “if you can’t say anything nice…” You can’t.

No, says The Kid. It is not on DropBox. Where is it?

Where, indeed? WhereTF? I search DropBox: and I know that is where I stored it because I no longer stash this stuff on my local disk. DropBox has a back-up/restore function, and supposedly Time Machine is also backing up DropBox.

She’s right. It’s gone. I search “All Documents” on my MacBook.

Not there.

WTF?

I fly to the big computer, fire up Time Machine, and search directories going back a week.

Not there.

By now, I am seriously freaking out.

I break into DropBox’s website, parse my way through the nightmarish techno-instructions, and search DB’s back-ups.

Not there.

Holy CRAP! This file, which was utter diabolical torture to read, is flat-out fucking GONE.

I email The Kid and tell her I’ll have to plow through the whole.god.AWFUL.thirty.god.DAMNED.pages again, which will take another full (agonizing) day.

So I go to open the hideous unedited original in Wyrd. Of course, when you open Word it proposes to “Open Recent.”

Hmmm….  No sign of the missing files in “Open Recent.” But what do we have at the bottom of the “Recent” list but a MORE tag….ah, yes.

Click on that. Select “this week.” Wait for some unholy number of files to register in Wyrd’s memory.

And lo!

There the little bastards are!

W-H-A-A-A-T??

W-H-E-R-E??????

The things are stored in a folder — that would be a “directory” for grown-ups who use Microsoft Windows — with a title that is a long, arcane number: D123455432211 or some damfool thing. Both of them: the clean edited copy and the marked-up copy.

WTF is D123455432211????

Not caring much until I can contrive to open the things and then save up to DropBox, I stash the files, open them, and confirm that yes, they are the edited and clean versions. These, I mail to The Kid and to myself, by way of ensuring that they will not get “disappeared” again.

Whatever a D123455432211 is, I’ve never seen anything like it. Search the Internet. Whatever terms I dreamed up, at this moment I do not recall…but something that I typed into Google called up the answer. As it develops, when someone sends you a MacMail attachment and you open the damn thing, MacMail will save it into a “Downloads” folder. It does not prompt you to save the file where you want it to go. It just quietly saves in some un-findable location where Apple wants it to go. To make it even more un-findable, MacMail will designate this folder with a zillion-character numeric title.

By the time our author’s fine piece of literature has resurfaced, I am simply beside myself with rage, frustration, and horror.

Not only have I neglected to run the damn blood pressure machine, by now I’m about 5 hours late in taking the hated anti-hypertension pill. Along about 11 p.m. I gulp down the drug and test the BP. Really, it’s not that high: in the 130s. One figure is in the dramatically high 130s; the rest are in the middle range. The last time I flew into a state of Extreme High Dudgeon, the gauge reached 165/105, presumably in the bust a blood-vein category.

Unfortunately, in the brave new world of the American Heart Association, anything above 129 is now regarded as “high blood pressure.”

Questionable though I suspect that to be, nevertheless Cardiodoc takes it as received wisdom from Rome. So sticking those numbers in the record is contraindicated.

This evening they’re back down into the 110s. Those, we keep.

I hate computers.

That notwithstanding, I’ve spent a fair amount of today rebuilding the Plain & Simple Press site so that I can offer content from two completed books and one work in progress for free to readers.

This required a refresher course in rudimentary coding. Needed to figure out how to build an internal link in a web page. You understand: once, back in the dark ages, I knew how to do this. That was when my mind was young and elastic. Today: phbphphbhphphbbbt! I do not want to know it and so I have forgotten all that arcana.

Okay. I now know how to do it. Again. Probably will not remember until tomorrow. But for the nonce, code that can be self-plagiarized is installed in one of the new pages under construction.

I should take the dogs for a walk, it being not even 8 p.m. Exercise is needed for dogs and for human. But…

One is given pause.

An admired friend of mine, one of the most elegant European women I have ever met, lives within walking distance, in a tiny development of patio homes that fronts right on Central Avenue. This is within easy walking distance of the Funny Farm.

She reports that a couple nights ago someone came to her door about 9:00 p.m., rousting her from whatever she was doing and alerting her German shepherd. Fortunately she has a steel security door.

When she opened her front door, she found a guy on the other side of that security door foaming obscenities at the mouth and waving a gun around. He was in some kind of rage, he was trying to get in, and he threatened to shoot her.

She being a woman of some self-possession kept her cool, closed the door on him, and called the cops. He was gone by the time the gendarmes showed up. But as you can imagine, she was somewhat alarmed.

She speculated that he was a transient, as he was dirty and probably high on the usual drug of choice in our parts — meth.

Mmm hmm.

Well, I walk these dogs at night all the time, partly because in the summer it’s the only time they can walk on the hot pavement and partly because I’m busy from dawn to well after dusk. I never see anyone — sketchy or otherwise — wandering around after dark here. The bums are sleeping in the alleys, and the residents are nailed to their TV sets.

But just now I think…maybe not.

If there’s some drug-addled animal out there waving his gun around and threatening elderly women, I really do not want to meet him at night. Not in the daytime, either, but especially not at night. My gun is heavy and I do not even know where my father’s holster is stashed. Nor do I especially fancy the prospect of keeping two wackshit dogs under control while I try to defend myself against a wackshit human.

And so, to pour another glass of wine.

Prosit!

 

Flyin’ Low…

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Wow! Last few days have fallen into the “Whirlwind” category. Yesterday — yeah, flyin’ low — I got through not one but two interminable scholarly emanations for our client journal, each about 30 pages long.

This has become do-able thanks to the machinations of The Kid, my ineffable and amazingly entrepreneurial young business partner. She has devised A System, and it works. First, she assigns Incoming Flak to her assistant, a.k.a. The Underling. This young woman actually enjoys performing tedious chores — sort of like some of us enjoy ironing in front of the television. And she’s pretty darned good at it.

The journal in question has not come unstuck from the 20th century. Instead of using Word’s “Styles” function to format MSS for the designer, the new editors still indulge in, God help us, manual mark-up! We have tried to persuade these folks to quit that, but to no avail.

Manual mark-up on a computer entails entering what we call “fake HTML” tags before and after every. single. god. damned. design. element. in. the. document. <i>Every</i> italic. <b>Every</b> boldface. <ext>Every indented block quotation</ext>. <pext>Every quoted passage of poetry</pext>. <t>Every Title</t>… and on and on and interminably, idiotically ON. It is an utter, total waste of time, given that a file set up correctly in InDesign will import a Word file formatted with “Styles” and convert the styles automatically to fit the designer’s layout.

We have suggested using “Styles” and even have gone so far as to create a Wyrd template for the purpose, to no avail. The last time we did that, for a variety of reasons the strategy proved to be more hassle than it was worth, and so we gave up.

So, where you are is where you’re at. Starting at that point, The Kid has created an assembly line.

  1. Copy arrives in our precincts (this also is stupidly complicated for different reasons, but I’ve gone beyond complaining here…)
  2. The Kid reviews documents for our purposes. Once approved,
  3. Copy moves to The Underling.
  4. Underling enters all the mark-up tags and checks formatting of references (another mind-numbing and annoying chore).
  5. Copy moves back to The Kid.
  6. Kid reads copy and does first edits, checking references section with some care.
  7. Copy moves to The Old Bat.
  8. Old Bat reads and edits copy behind The Kid, applying the benefit of an eye jaded by 40 years of academic bullshit.
  9. Old Bat generates “clean” and “edited” version; posts to DropBox.
  10. Kid gives copy a final read.

Great stuff, ain’t it? Foisting the tedious mark-up chore onto Underling eliminates a large part of the annoyance factor entailed in editing this content. When you’re not thinking about that ditz, it becomes relatively easy to edit language, style, and fact-checks. So much so that yesterday I read least twice as much content as I could normally plow through with that journal’s offerings.

In more altruistic precincts, on Sunday we — the choir — went over to the home of a member who’s knocking at Death’s Door, brought there by a case of pancreatic cancer. He has planned his funeral service, including his choice of music, and wanted us to sing it for him so he could hear how it sounds. So that was kind of a {gulp!} moment…

But in fact it was really cool and none of us started to cry whilst singing. Despite having reached the wraith-like stage, he was still able to walk around, sit in his favorite easy chair, and hold court with some élan. Would that we could all go out with so much class.

Friend on the choir came over afterward — we dined, consumed a fair amount of wine, and plotted the destruction of the Ruling Class. 😉 Actually, what we plotted was a scheme for the two of us to acquire voice lessons from the choir’s astonishingly talented new organist, who has a gorgeous singing voice, knows how to coach singers, and is classically trained every which way from (heh!) Sunday. Haven’t heard back from said organist since I e-mailed an inquiry, but it being a three-day weekend she probably hasn’t checked the job-related email.

In the interim, I managed to write a few words in the noveloid in progress. And tried to talk to our marvelous Web Guru about a multi-site WordPress template for Plain & Simple Press, which would allow me to publish several works at once, a passage or a chapter at a time. Then YOU, my fine readers, could sample them online and could buy the finished products as PDFs, paperbacks, or e-books. Whether I will bother to put these things on Amazon or not remains to be seen — Amazon embargoes the content if you market a book for less than $2.99, and since the only effective way to “sell” a book on Amazon is to give it away, I figure I might as well give it away for free to my readers than give it away for 99 cents minus Amazon’s share. WTF? I’m retired…I don’t care if any of these things makes me rich or not.

More likely not. 😀

Connie the Trucker calls to report that her dog, a Weimeraner that lives in the truck with her, has developed the same vehicle neurosis that almost killed Charley the Golden Retriever. Unlike my skeptical son, though, she decided to try a Thundershirt, and lo! It works. The dog is much calmed when wrapped tightly in a kind of canine straitjacket. Thereby, we may add, rescuing Connie from having to quit her job.

The blood pressure drug is working: it not only pushes the BP into the 110s or, at worst, the low 120s, it stabilizes the numbers so they don’t jerk up into volcanic spikes every time I lose my temper. Which is often. And — unheard-of miracle!! — it seems to have NO side effects.

And speaking of losing my temper, I have yet to re-wire the robo-call blocker. This will entail a call to customer service, since I cannot remember how to do it — it’s much more complicated than simply attaching it in line, because I have so many devices running out of the same cable connection.

And lookee here! The Kid has sent another pre-edited, pre-formatted article for me to finish off. And so, away…

Techno-skeptic: I could’ve predicted this…

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Friday: Dispatch to NextDoor readers…

Ohhhh the techno-life just gets better and better!

You may recall my whinging a few days ago about Cox’s announcement that it’s taking down the copper connection to our land-line telephones, and that if we want to continue to have a land-line-like set of phones (i.e., a phone in every room), we’ll have to get Cox’s digital phone service, which is connected through one’s computer via a second modem to clutter up your desk.

The Cox guy showed up: extremely nice man, seemed to be competent. Yes, he admitted: if the power goes down — no phone. If my computer crashes — no phone. If my computer’s modem crashes — no phone. If the extra annoying modem goes down — no phone.

Sooooo…now we have three ways from Sunday for your phone to die. And say what? you need to call 911? Well ..|.. very much!

Ohhhkayyy, well there doesn’t seem to be much choice here. I can buy an Ooma modem and pay a guy $90 or $180 to come over and help my untechie self connect it to my computer and attach my call-blocker to it. Or I can have Cox come over and install its wondrous modem for free. And continue to gouge me $35 a month for less-than-optimal phone service.

I decide to opt for Cox despite the rip-off, because it’s at least sort of a known quantity. The lash-up was installed Wednesday.

Two days into this Brave New World… A phone solicitor calls. I pick up the phone so I can cut off the call and capture the number in the call-blocker before the voicemail picks up. And what I hear when I pick up the phone is this LOUD racket that sounds like an unmuffled motorcycle engine accelerating: b-r-r-r-B-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R

I figure this is the robocaller SOBs doing a number on me. Hang up. Block the number. Pick up the phone and try to call another number, and when I do, I get the same racket. My phone has been taken over by a motorcycle on meth!

Now I walk across the street carrying one of the system’s handsets and call Cox from my neighbor’s phone. As usual, this entails a great hassle getting through the aggravating phone tree, but eventually I reach a very helpful tech guy.

He is beyond extremely nice and is anxious to help, but he has NEVER HEARD of what the phone is doing. But since my handset’s signal reaches all the way across the street and into my neighbor’s home, I dial up a phone number out of the device’s memory and get B-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R…, which of course he can hear loud and clear. He tries to manipulate the modem from his end, but it’s not working.

I go back to my house and disconnect the call blocker, which is in-line with the modem. This does not help.

He arranges for a workman to show up here tomorrow morning — because after all what DOES the little woman have to do with her day than sit around waiting for yet another workman, eh?

Meanwhile, he suggests I try unplugging the modem, letting it set for 20 or 30 minutes, and then replugging and testing. This I do, with baleful results.

The phones are now completely nonfunctional. You can sometimes(!) get a dial tone and if you do, you can dial out, but within 30 seconds the meth-headed motorcycle starts back up again.

Okay, I’m willing to allow that maybe there’s something wrong with my phones. But I doubt it. LOL! Guess I should be glad this little fiasco hasn’t taken my computers down. Yet…

* * *
Comes the Dawn…
* * *

So it is now “tomorrow”: Saturday.

Right about as scheduled, a new Cox guy shows up. Actually, this one is not “new” but grizzled and road-worn. This is a fellow who has had long experience. Let us, I reflect, hope that most of his experience has to do with the electronics of telephone systems.

The guy is flummoxed by the motorcycle on meth serenade: admits he’s never heard anything like it. He tests every piece of equipment on the line. He discovers an outmoded DSL connector, which he tosses. So far: nothing works. What, he asks, is really connected to this line, amongst the 6 handsets I say I have online???

Finally we figured out that the problem is the old Panasonic base, which for reasons unknown continued to operate after I plugged in then five-handset Uniden base with which I intended to replace it. Long as it was working, I just left it sitting there, giving me a 6th phone. Very convenient.

Upon examination, we realized the reason it was working was that it wasn’t really talking to the Uniden. It was plugged into the copper wiring, and so was ringing on its own: not as a de-facto sixth handset, but as an entirely separate unit. That thing, he theorized, could be causing a short.

Interestingly, the copper wiring has been disconnected and none of the outlets work anymore. Yet…wait…that phone does have a dial tone. Wot the hell?! We unplug it, and damned it that doesn’t work!

So now the phone system is working. I’m down one handset in a location close to the floor, where I might reach it if I fall and hurt myself. Fortunately, one of the Uniden handsets was in a location where I rarely go, and so I just moved it into the family room, where…yea verily, I can crawl to it if I fall in the kitchen, dining room, or family room. I hope.

Once again, then, all is well in the Brave New World. For the nonce…

Getting Rid of Siri

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Lordie, but I hate the new MacBook’s frikkin’ “touchbar.”

It comes with an icon to turn on annoying “Siri,” a talkbot that in addition to responding to voice commands and various such bullshit also reports everything you say back to Apple. I want it turned off and left off. That’s OFF. As in off, off, OFF, goddammit!

The problem is, the Siri icon defaults to appear on the far right-hand side of the annoying and cumbersome touch bar…right above the “Delete” key. This becomes a problem because the new MacBook keyboard is sized just slightly differently from the old MacBook’s. The keys are wider. So if you’re a fast typist and you’re used to typing on the old Mac’s keyboard, your fingers keep hitting two keys at once. If I try to type an “h” at speed, for example, I’m going to hit hg or hj or hy. Typing the word “I” with quote marks gets you :”I” — and the “word” and “I” just now came out worfd and “IU:  This means you are CONSTANTLY whacking angrily at the “Delete” key — and every third time you hit “Delete” you accidentally tap the effing Siri button and call up a message nagging you to turn Siri back on.

As it develops, there’s a way to remove the Siri icon from the damned touchbar. The instructions are a little arcane — by “drag it to the trash” the author means  a trash icon that magically appears on the annoying touchbar when you get into System Preferences > Keyboard > Customize toolbar.

You end up with the “mute sound” icon positioned over the all-important Delete key. But since sound-OFF is the default mode for cruising the internet, by way of defanging the autoplay videos and aggravating background jingles, that’s much less of a problem than the constant Siri pestering.

This keyboard business is really a PITA. In fact, it’s enough of a problem to impinge seriously on your productivity. I find myself having to backspace, delete, and retype with every sentence — had to do so four times (!!!) to type the first 12 words of this sentence. Even after the endless backing and fixing, you still end up with copy sprinkled with typos. Yet another time-consuming nuisance…

The MacBook has a lot of things going for it — it’s an amazing piece of machinery. But “user-friendliness” ain’t one of them. I’m still thinking I should go down to Costco and pick up an inexpensive PC so as to begin re-learning to navigate the Windows environment.

Since it’s beginning to look like I’m going to have to buy a smartphone whether I want one or not, and since I surely can’t afford an iPhone, I’m going to have to get back into Windows anyway.

Please, Apple: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!