The Disconnection

Introduction

This has come about with the combination of two things. There was an old Seven Days In reshare that had just one read and one comment, and yesterday, my Google Pixel 6 died on me, getting stuck in an endless startup loop.

The music is "Telephone and a Rubber Band" by Simon Jeffes' Penguin Café Orchestra, which is based around a tape loop of a UK telephone ring tone intersected with a reorder tone, accompanied by the twanging of a rubber band.

Dealing With A Dead Phone

Actually while I was making coffee I thought maybe I should have called this "Incommunicado" so I could include the Marillion song, so I have included it in the conclusion.

So a couple of times my phone (a Google Pixel 6) has died on me, I wasn't sure if I hadn't noticed that the power was draining, as I do share a lot of video on YouTube and Instagram.

Yesterday walking towards Preston Station I noticed it was down to 25%, so decided to charge it in the waiting room, as it had my train tickets on it. I could have printed them out, but I didn;t need to waste the paper did I?

In the waiting room the phone was dead, so I started charging it, but it got into a startup loop where it started an powered off. I tried rescue mode and just got a picture of a dead android robot.

Luckily I had an email which contained my tickets that I could access on my Kindle, but I could not access my discount card. Luckily my explanation and the email was OK for the inspectors, and th egates were open in Newcastle so there was no problem getting out.

The thing is I have a lot of apps that I use on the phone, because they are convenient there. I just added my Tesco card as the one on my keyfob was disingrating. Now my phone has disingrated.

My replacement is coming tomorrow and then I have to go through the pain of adding my banking and shopping apps, when they decided I must be a scammer because nobody ever changes their device do they?

A sort of sad thing is that I keep noticing I have no phone in my pocket, and no one can call me. I don't have a land line although work can call on Teams.

Using banking on the computer now seems an absolute palaver compared with using my phone, but I am not completely adrift.

Last night waiting for my bus home, I could not check my bus app, or even the time because those are two other phone functions I use often.

I did have a backup phone, but I gave that to my daughter because her phone was absolutely attrocious.

Luckily, with it being a Google phone (and I assume this is the same for most major brands) most of my stuff will be backed up, but we shall see what happens tomorrow.

It's like instead of your car breaking down and you can get roadside assistance, it has just exploded and you only have a burnt out useless wreck on your hands.

Conclusion

So the next 48 hours will be quite quiet, and when it comes I will have to swap SIMs and rebuild by phone on my Google Pixel 8, which has more space and memory that I probably don't need.

Thank you for reading, so you know why I am a bit quiet at the moment.

So for the next few days, this is where I am, Incommunicado. I do love thi song.