nightmare in blue

One nuisance of getting a new cell phone is that if you want your own choice of ringtone you have to upload it from scratch again. There's no way to pass it over.

In previous iterations, I think I was able to send the ringtone directly from the site I got it from to my phone. But this time, I was told on the website to save the file and upload it to my phone. Also, the tutorials on the phone's website say that the only way to get files on or off the phone is via Bluetooth, using the phone to connect with the other device which also has Bluetooth.

Bluetooth. Great. I didn't have Bluetooth on my computer. Neither did B. As of yesterday morning, I knew exactly two things about Bluetooth:

1. It's some sort of wireless communication protocol.
2. It's named for an ancient king of Denmark.

Now I know a lot more, including why it's named for an ancient king of Denmark, but first I had to learn it. I read the Wikipedia article, which amazingly was helpful. Then I set out to find some Bluetooth.

I didn't have Bluetooth.
B. didn't have Bluetooth.
The phone repair store didn't have Bluetooth.
The AT&T store didn't have Bluetooth.
Nobody had Bluetooth. Why does the phone require it, then?

The last told me I could buy a Bluetooth device at the computer store for maybe $10. If I hadn't already read on the Wikipedia article about the existence of Bluetooth transmitters that plug into computer USB ports, I wouldn't have had any idea what the guy was talking about, but I did, so I went.

After some trouble finding it, including sending a phalanx of employees around looking for the guy who ran that department, I bought a Bluetooth USB Dongle. I thought that was a slang word, but that's what they're actually called.

The guy said it was plug and play. It wasn't. It came with an installation disk. The disk was 3.25 inch instead of 4.75 inch, so I had to figure out how to get my computer's CD-ROM reader to take one of those without it falling through the hole in the middle.

The installation process gave me some cryptic error messages, but seemed to work. I had to correlate the Dongle's manual with the phone's online tutorials, and found that neither set of instructions bore more than the remotest resemblance to the actual processes, either of getting the phone and the Dongle to recognize each other, or of then designating the ringtone file on my computer and getting it transferred. Only years of experience trying various tricks on recalcitrant computers enabled me to get past the various error messages, failure messages, and lack of options where the instructions told me options should be, and complete the process.

All to put a ringtone on a phone. Good gravy.