Another Few Days of Mercury in Retrograde
Friday I decided to go into the city to see the High Line at night, when it's lit up. It closes at 10 pm. But it was super hot and I wanted to be outside for a while so I left hours earlier so I could stroll Fifth Avenue for photo opportunities and I took my music off my iPhone to have room, since the memory issue's gotten that bad. I rolled my left ankle a bit on my walk to the subway but refused to turn back.
I remembered that there was an Apple Store on Fifth Avenue when it had the light-up glass box that sometimes showed up in the reflections on my Bergdorf window pics, but didn't know what happened when that box came down. Turned out Apple moved several feet away to the former F.A.O. Schwartz store space. (RIP, F.A.O., I miss you.) So I brought my iPhone there for help. One of the service people did a factory reset of my phone and we loaded the backup I uploaded to my iCloud at the store. (Btw, if you're wandering Manhattan and need a place to rest, you can sit at the Apple Store and use their wifi and air conditioning.) It took two hours, but I had a seat, their wifi, a charger, their AC, and knowledgeable people nearby. The person told me that since my phone's iOS was current and worked fine with my older iTunes, so I could sync all rigtht, but warned me that I might still have a problem if there are corrupted files in my backup.
Guess. Just guess.
(How do files on a phone get corrupted? Why are Apple phones so buggy anyway? Though at least they don't spontaneously combust.)
But it seemed good at the time so I went out and took some photos at Bergdorf, though I was distracted for a while by the unexpected-for-even-NYC turkey wandering the small park in front of the Plaza Hotel. It was just fine with people being close as long as they didn't get super close, so it wasn't a wild one, and I heard it was there for two hours already by the time I walked up. Several people had notified police, including the many nearby traffic cops, but nothing was getting done about moving it somewhere farther away from major streets. I have no idea how it turned out because I had other things to do. Chanel no longer has window displays, Dior was boring and had no real theme or mannequins, Polo Ralph Lauren has closed forever, and Saks totally underwhelmed me.
About then I realized that Manhattan doesn't have many east-west buses, at all, and I needed to get from Fifth Avenue in the high 40s to Tenth Avenue in the mid 30s fast because it was now 9 pm. After giving up on 42nd Street buses that weren't coming, I decided to take the 7 train, but the first entrance was only for the orange lines, the second I didn't know had been closed off for cleaning until I was right on top of it, and after the third entrance worked I still had a long walk underground. When I arrived at the track, the 7 train had just left. The next train I got on kept having slowdowns. Then I got lost coming out of the Hudson Yards station due to the darkness and all the construction fences. Finally I found an entrance and came up at 9:45 into fences and work shed ceilings, which didn't let me see much. Instead of going south, I initially went north, heading back toward Hudson Yards. But going south had better views, though I had to powerwalk to see as much as I could before they chased everyone out. Unfortunately, an employee directed me and others off at 10:05 at 23rd Street.
I tried a Select Bus Service line because that was the only option to take me back east. When I reached the train station at Madison Square, I found out that SBS doesn't have free transfers to trains the way usual buses do.
I eventually reached my home and plugged my iPhone into my computer to put my music back on and transfer my photos to my laptop to process, only to find that there's still a lot of Documents & Data and Other, though about 1 GB less, and that it refused to transfer my photos or admit to my computer it even had any, worse than before the reset. I plugged, synced, and unplugged a few times, with no joy. The photo situation continues a day later. A least I got my music back on with the increased room. And I think all the plugging and unplugging might be why my computer turned itself off an hour later, even without using Firefox, since it's been fine for seven hours and counting tonight.
Then today my phone turned itself off, pretended its battery lost all power, and refused to accept a power source to turn back on. Terror. Horror. It's done the first but never the second before. How did the reset make the phone so much worse? I had to call the Apple Store for help. We did a force restart using the top button and the home button pressed simultaneously to get it back, and so far it's still okay. But it looks like I definitely have corrupted files in my backup. I asked how to uncorrupt them and was told that wasn't an option, I'd need to do a factory reset and not load the backup on it, which would lose me my photos I couldn't transfer at the very least. Would that lose me everything? Would I need to reenter all my address book and health stuff and everything else too? Would I need to get and buy all my apps all over again? In my relief at getting my phone to work at all again, I didn't manage to think of that until five minutes after I ended the call.
I have some thinking to do. I seriously wish I could leave Malfunction Junction already.
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost.
comments at Dreamwidth.
I remembered that there was an Apple Store on Fifth Avenue when it had the light-up glass box that sometimes showed up in the reflections on my Bergdorf window pics, but didn't know what happened when that box came down. Turned out Apple moved several feet away to the former F.A.O. Schwartz store space. (RIP, F.A.O., I miss you.) So I brought my iPhone there for help. One of the service people did a factory reset of my phone and we loaded the backup I uploaded to my iCloud at the store. (Btw, if you're wandering Manhattan and need a place to rest, you can sit at the Apple Store and use their wifi and air conditioning.) It took two hours, but I had a seat, their wifi, a charger, their AC, and knowledgeable people nearby. The person told me that since my phone's iOS was current and worked fine with my older iTunes, so I could sync all rigtht, but warned me that I might still have a problem if there are corrupted files in my backup.
Guess. Just guess.
(How do files on a phone get corrupted? Why are Apple phones so buggy anyway? Though at least they don't spontaneously combust.)
But it seemed good at the time so I went out and took some photos at Bergdorf, though I was distracted for a while by the unexpected-for-even-NYC turkey wandering the small park in front of the Plaza Hotel. It was just fine with people being close as long as they didn't get super close, so it wasn't a wild one, and I heard it was there for two hours already by the time I walked up. Several people had notified police, including the many nearby traffic cops, but nothing was getting done about moving it somewhere farther away from major streets. I have no idea how it turned out because I had other things to do. Chanel no longer has window displays, Dior was boring and had no real theme or mannequins, Polo Ralph Lauren has closed forever, and Saks totally underwhelmed me.
About then I realized that Manhattan doesn't have many east-west buses, at all, and I needed to get from Fifth Avenue in the high 40s to Tenth Avenue in the mid 30s fast because it was now 9 pm. After giving up on 42nd Street buses that weren't coming, I decided to take the 7 train, but the first entrance was only for the orange lines, the second I didn't know had been closed off for cleaning until I was right on top of it, and after the third entrance worked I still had a long walk underground. When I arrived at the track, the 7 train had just left. The next train I got on kept having slowdowns. Then I got lost coming out of the Hudson Yards station due to the darkness and all the construction fences. Finally I found an entrance and came up at 9:45 into fences and work shed ceilings, which didn't let me see much. Instead of going south, I initially went north, heading back toward Hudson Yards. But going south had better views, though I had to powerwalk to see as much as I could before they chased everyone out. Unfortunately, an employee directed me and others off at 10:05 at 23rd Street.
I tried a Select Bus Service line because that was the only option to take me back east. When I reached the train station at Madison Square, I found out that SBS doesn't have free transfers to trains the way usual buses do.
I eventually reached my home and plugged my iPhone into my computer to put my music back on and transfer my photos to my laptop to process, only to find that there's still a lot of Documents & Data and Other, though about 1 GB less, and that it refused to transfer my photos or admit to my computer it even had any, worse than before the reset. I plugged, synced, and unplugged a few times, with no joy. The photo situation continues a day later. A least I got my music back on with the increased room. And I think all the plugging and unplugging might be why my computer turned itself off an hour later, even without using Firefox, since it's been fine for seven hours and counting tonight.
Then today my phone turned itself off, pretended its battery lost all power, and refused to accept a power source to turn back on. Terror. Horror. It's done the first but never the second before. How did the reset make the phone so much worse? I had to call the Apple Store for help. We did a force restart using the top button and the home button pressed simultaneously to get it back, and so far it's still okay. But it looks like I definitely have corrupted files in my backup. I asked how to uncorrupt them and was told that wasn't an option, I'd need to do a factory reset and not load the backup on it, which would lose me my photos I couldn't transfer at the very least. Would that lose me everything? Would I need to reenter all my address book and health stuff and everything else too? Would I need to get and buy all my apps all over again? In my relief at getting my phone to work at all again, I didn't manage to think of that until five minutes after I ended the call.
I have some thinking to do. I seriously wish I could leave Malfunction Junction already.
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost.
comments at Dreamwidth.