another fine mess

An additional stresser discovered as I unpacked from the Mythcon trip is that I seem to have lost my cell phone. My best guess is that I put it in the seat-back pocket on the flight and failed to find it (it's rather small) when digging around to retrieve items at the end.

An online report to the airline's lost and found having failed to produce a reply within two days, and I needing the phone tomorrow, I set out today to replace it. The helpful AT&T store (the helpful ones are the corporate-owned ones, but you won't know which they are until you get there and ask) that I'd used in the past has closed, though it's still listed on their web site, but I found another one. They didn't carry the flip phone I use - I've never used a smartphone yet, and with luck I never will - but they did say it might be found at Target, and there was a Target a block away, and there I found the kind I previously had while the store's sound system played songs from Encanto.

Back to the AT&T store, where the employee struggled at getting the back of the case off and struggled with replacing the SIM card. All this time my eyes were distracted by the big tv at the back of the store, which was showing a women's volleyball game. The words "Paris 2024" on the side court suggested this was part of the Olympics. Never having paid much attention to the Olympics, I hadn't even known volleyball was an Olympic sport. For all I knew, the Olympics consisted of nothing more than Simone Biles prancing around on a mat and showing off her medals to interviewers.

That done, it was time to take the machine home, look up my frequent callees and add them to the phone's list and then transfer in the file, which I've learned to keep on my computer, of my distinct ring tone (the Addams Family theme). When I plugged the phone into the computer, a message popped up saying "To add files, turn on Enable USB Storage," which is exactly the hidden switch that that brilliant tech at the old helpful AT&T store figured out after much travail the last time I bought a new phone. At least they've figured out to make a message out of it by now. Did that; transfer worked on first try.

Now I have a new phone just like my old phone and all is well.