Rodent of Unusual Size (Ken Coar): Leaps and bounds and cracks in the pavement

As things (technology, communications methods, social awareness, etc.) advance by leaps and bounds, they undoubtedly soar over and therefore miss a lot of cracks and potholes that would otherwise be obstacles. Of course, there are also times when the leap lands you squarely in a pit..

First, a bit of humour.

I'm checking out whether AT&T's U-verse offering can do better for my home DSL than MegaPath's. During an online chat with an AT&T person, the following exchange transpired:

AT&T: Please allow me 2 minute to check that, I will be quickly with you.
You: /me whistles the _Jeopardy_ tune

Later that same day, I received an email from AT&T with the following salutation:

Dear Whistles Jeopardy,

Thank you for enrolling in paperless billing for the AT&T account(s) below. ...

Here's a pothole: I recently upgraded (?) from a dumphone to an Android smartphone. I noticed right away that my carrier did frequent software updates, which is fine with me (the leaps and bounds I mentioned).

Sometimes I'm on the road when I need to call into a conference service at work, so I have the number in my phone's address book. As part of the process, I need to supply a conference ID and my name, so the stored number uses the standard 'wait-for-user-intervention' syntax. And when I used it last week, all went well.

Yesterday, however, my attempt to dial in first met with a recording about 'Your service plan does not permit you to make international calls.' WTH? So I removed the leading '+' from the number (it's essentially meaningless with most U.S.-domestic toll-free numbers anyway) and tried again. This time the recording claimed that the number had been changed, disconnected, or was no longer in service. I repeat, WTH?

So I wasn't able to dial in.. O well. When I got to the office, though, I contacted my carrier to see if they knew WTH. They didn't, but they did very politely ask me if there was a chance the number had been changed, disconnected, or possibly put out of service. :-)

A little experimenting revealed that I could call the number directly, rather than from the address book, with no problem. A little more uncovered the fact that the phone's dialing software was now treating the 'wait-for-user-intervention' symbol (which is 'w') as case-sensitive. In my address book I used uppercase 'W' as I always have, but the dialing software now only works with lowercase 'w'. I surmise that one of the updates pushed to my phone did this.

I don't know if the standard dialing codes are defined as being case-sensitive (though I doubt it), but this was a clear violation of the PLA. In other words, the advancing software had jumped right into a hole.

A few weeks ago, my iTouch became really, really slow. Rightly or wrongly, I associate the advent of the problem with going online at a Barnes&Noble wifi hotspot. Whatever. The recommended first step from several sources was: back up the iTouch and re-initialise it. This I finally got around to doing yesterday. It wasn't as simple as it sounds, since I hadn't sync'd it recently and my iTunes Windows box has some problems. Here's how things went:

1. Sync up the iTouch in iTunes. ✓
2. Reset the iTouch through iTunes. ✗ No can do; the device's software needs to be updated first.
3. Sigh.
4. Download the device update. ✗ PC hangs partway through.
5. Reboot and repeat the download attempt. ✗ Same thing happens.
6. Repeat sigh, and go to bed. ✓
7. Reboot and download the device update. ✗ Not enough space on C:.
8. Sigh, and clean up some space.
9. Repeat the download attempt. ✗ PC hangs again.
10. Reboot and download the device update. ✓ Yay!
11. Attempt to update the iTouch's software. ✗ No can do, iTunes needs to be upgraded.
12. Sigh harder.
13. Attempt to download iTunes update. ✗ PC hangs again.
14. Reboot and try again. ✗
15. And again. ✗
16. And again. ✓ Yippee!
17. Update iTunes. ✓ iTunes is now updated.
18. Attempt to update the iTouch's software. ✗ Nope, not enough space on C: for the backup which is part of the update process.
19. Clean up space — again. ✓
20. Try the update again. ✓ It works!

And, wonder of wonders, this horrorshow actually restores the iTouch to good performance again.

Sigh. :-)