Technology – Page 8 – JTOK Chatter

My 12-hour iPhone restore drama.

Posted on September 30, 2013 @ 11:45 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

Of course I’m leaving out LOTS of details…but suffice it to say it was NOT a fun experience. This was the error I kept seeing over and over and over and over…

Or it appeared to have restored, but there were no folders so I had 20 pages of apps all in a mish-mash and was missing anywhere from 10-30GB of who-knows-what depending on which restore I was on. Rebuilding from scratch was an option…just not a desired one (it probably would take a good 4-5 solid hours to get it back to “normal”). So I kept soldiering on, hoping it would finally JUST WORK.

11:53am—Doh! I am now without a phone for at least an hour…oops! In my excitement to get my new phone restored…I forgot it takes FOREVER. I hope there’s no pre-k emergencies today!
3:35pm—Well, it’s on its second full restore…I expect another three hours. I am not happy.
4:48pm—GRRR. I’m currently on my third restore attempt…maybe the third time will be the charm?
5:12pm—Same error message. A 4S iOS6 backup should work on a 5S with iOS7, right? I’m already at the point of wanting to smash this thing with a hammer.
6:16pm—Currently on 5th attempt. Next, I’ll try upgrading the 4S to iOS7 and THEN trying the restore.
8:59pm—If anyone needs to get a hold of me until further notice, email is probably the best bet. Nine hours in and I STILL don’t have a working phone…
11:43pm—After trying two new suggestions, I am setting it to restore one last time and going to bed…and keeping my fingers crossed.

I was posting as I went along on a forum I frequent and they were trying to help me. I’ve posted there many, many times about how technology hates me, and this was a PERFECT example. Someone posted this picture, which explains it just about perfectly (Robn is another user who always had odd issues that shouldn’t happen…but I’m obviously worse off):

Happy 40th birthday to me!

Posted on September 30, 2013 @ 10:05 am by Jen — No Comments ↓

Tom gave me the okay to upgrade…and actually placed the order for me from Afghanistan since it was lunchtime there (when pre-ordering opened) instead of me having to be up at 3am here! (I know—what a guy!)

That it was scheduled to arrived ON my birthday was just…icing on the cake so-to-speak. 🙂

Oooh…it’s sooo pretty… I hate to put a cover on it but I don’t trust myself OR the kids. It’s also why I bought a warranty on it. 🙂

Daddy’s watching you!

Posted on September 23, 2013 @ 1:10 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

What the…?? How did she…??

Posted on September 10, 2013 @ 5:35 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

Katie got a hold of my laptop and I have NO idea how she did this.

She also managed to turn the wifi off and screw up my N key so that every time I typed an N it opened a new Evernote window. Thankfully rebooting fixed that.

The scary thing is how FAST she did it. Normally I turn on a program I have called “Toddler Keys” which renders the keyboard useless…but I was just stepping away for two seconds. And I turned around and she was SITTING ON MY LAPTOP KEYBOARD. Oh, HELL NO, little girl. So now I have to physically put it away if she’s in the same room. Stinker!

He’s good at building cars!

Posted on September 1, 2013 @ 2:00 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

I have had magnatiles on Owen’s wishlist for quite some time but have never bought them because A) he has so many toys already and B) they are damn EXPENSIVE. So when I saw these Magformers available on Amazon Vine (the program where I get to pick items for free and then I just have to write a review on it), I snatched them up!

Owen picked them as his weekly Chore reward this week. (Normally expensive toys aren’t options, but since they didn’t cost me anything—and mostly because he saw them before I could hide them!—I let him choose them.)

As it happened, Tom Skyped in right as Owen was wanting to open them, so Tom got to watch the fun for about 20 minutes! Even though the age said 3+ I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to follow the patterns to make the cars without getting frustrated—but he jumped right in and before I knew it, he had laid out all the pieces for the spaceship with no problem!

Then he made two cars (with a little of my help since the pieces kept snapping together) and then he was making his own shapes and vehicles without the patterns.

Of course, now I want at least one or two more sets so he can build bigger and better things…I’ll be adding some to his wishlist. 🙂 The other good thing about these is that the pieces are big enough AND the magnets are enclosed so they are fine for Katie to grab and play with (though it tends to make Owen melt down when she does that).

Pics from Afghanistan

Posted on August 28, 2013 @ 2:14 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

These are from his trip over and the first week in Afghanistan. He didn’t have time to write info on each photo until recently (which I wanted before posting them) so that’s why they’re a little late.

At the military airport At Cherry Point. The snack bar closes at 6pm, but they have the troops show up at 7pm and wait for 4 hrs…WTF?

Lobsters in the Airport at Bangor. Yes, fresh Lobsters. You can see the tank at the back left in picture.

Giftshop area of Ramstein military annex.

Ramstein computer area where they allow unit graffiti.

Phone bank at Ramstein

Manas International Airport is the main international airport in Kyrgyzstan located 25 kilometres north-northwest of the capital Bishkek.

My (first) room! I now have a new room but don’t have pics yet!

The door to my room.

Angle 1

Angle 2 – you can see where I sleep and sit to Skype.

Extra bed and rifle.

Our in-room A/C unit.

The gym area outside my room.

Stairs to the second level of rooms.

The door to my room.

The pathetically see-through TP.

Halloween costume!

Posted on August 27, 2013 @ 1:15 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

Owen picked out his Halloween costume at Costco today as a reward for being a good boy at the hospital. I had hoped he’d go for Iron Man (since we already have the real mask and arm band) but no, he wanted Robo Knight (one of the Power Rangers). He has never watched Power Rangers (as far as I know) and really only wanted it because it was called Robo Knight. 🙂

Of course, he had to put it on for daddy.

And then of course I made him pose for me:

Edited two hours later to add: He still hasn’t taken it off!

Home again, home again.

Posted on August 27, 2013 @ 12:35 pm by Jen — 2 Comments ↓

Almost as soon as we got home and walked through the door, Tom happened to Skype. Within 30 seconds, Owen told me he had to poop! WOOHOO! So all three of us went in the bathroom (yes, Tom came with us) and…OWEN POOPED! It was still all water but he did it all on his own!!! I was amazed, really.

As we were both praising him, he gets off the potty, points to his mouth, then points to the toilet. Huh? I didn’t think much of it because he has a recent habit of being silent while mouthing words and pointing. But then he leaned over and barfed. Again and again.

One one hand…WHAT?!?!

On the other…YAY!!! He finally realized what was coming and actually remembered that we told him to barf in the toilet!

So Tom got to watch him barf from halfway around the world! And I didn’t have anything to clean up!

Owen: Can you wipe my face?

I’m pretty sure it was just the pizza plus the milk he had when he got home. I guess I should have given him lighter fare for at least a day or so.

But, as usual, he seemed no worse for the wear!

Making daddy dizzy

Posted on August 13, 2013 @ 2:46 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

Tom Skyped in just now and I needed to hand the phone to Owen so I could get Katie more milk. Well, Owen doesn’t really understand that he needs to keep his face in front of the camera—he was just carrying Tom around the house. Tom kept telling him to stop because he was getting dizzy (all he could see was the walls and ceiling fan bobbing around). I finally came back and made Owen stand still.

He made it!

Posted on August 10, 2013 @ 11:55 am by Jen — No Comments ↓

Our first brief Skype:

He popped up in gmail instant messaging asking where I was. I asked where HE was! He meant he was trying to connect on Skype but I wasn’t logged on. My laptop lost its webcam somehow so I can only use the iPad, iPhone, or desktop computer…so I logged on with my phone!

It was just about two minutes—long enough to say he got there with no issues and he loves us! The connection wasn’t great—there was a big lag and I could still only make out about half of what he said. But it’s a start!

I love technology. 🙂

Goodbyes

Posted on August 8, 2013 @ 4:50 pm by Jen — 1 Comment ↓

Tom’s unit wasn’t scheduled to depart until 6:30-7, but we went about 4:30 because the waiting was just THE WORST. I knew we wouldn’t stay the entire time (to actually see them off) because I knew I couldn’t keep from breaking down that long. And it was about eleventy billion degrees and humid and the kids needed to eat dinner. Tom was perfectly okay with an early goodbye.

This is what the staging area looked like (forgive the bad pictures—I only had my phone)—piles and piles of bags and gear, hundreds of people, and lots of trucks.

Of course, now that Katie can walk, she really did NOT want to be held…so we just let her roam and she had a blast. She had a few tumbles because the ground was fairly uneven—but she didn’t let that stop her!

More than a few people commented on how cute she was, how cute her dress was, and how good she was at walking.

That’s Tom taking her picture.

Then as I was trying to get a picture of Tom and Katie, one of Tom’s buddies stepped in to take a family picture. Amazingly, he took two and one was halfway good!

Hugging daddy before getting in the car. I know he understands that Tom is leaving, but I really thought he’d be a bit more emotional—but he seemed kind of lackadaisical about it.

Then Tom and I hugged and kissed goodbye, he walked off, and I got in the car…and Owen started crying. 🙁 I got out to give him some tissue and a kiss, and of course seeing him break down made it worse for me…

THANKFULLY it didn’t last too long—we passed by a playground on the way off base and he said he wanted to go! Well, it was too late for that one (I wanted to be closer to home if either of them got tantrum-y) so I took a different route home so we could stop at a playground…

Skyping…when all hell broke loose.

Posted on August 7, 2013 @ 7:50 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

Subtitled: No our kids aren’t drunk.

It started off innocently enough with Katie crawling up to see what Tom was doing.

Then she has to sidle up next to him.

Waiting for Owen’s potty break:

I definitely see Uncle Rob in these next two pics (she’s definitely a Hudson):

And just like that, all the fun ended when Katie spit up on me. Katie and Owen had apparently just played and laughed so hard for so long that Katie spit up milk chunks all over me. And not just your run-of-the-mill spit up…but horrid smelling curdled nastiness that required a quick shower to get the stench off my skin.

But overall…a good time!

Sword as light saber

Posted on July 25, 2013 @ 4:35 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

Owen was pretending his new sword was a light saber, so Tom downloaded an iPhone app that makes the sound as you swish the phone. So, if you hold it to the sword as you swish…you get a light saber.

Daddy’s Deployed Book

Posted on July 19, 2013 @ 4:15 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

So, in addition to the Daddy Dolls, I also got Owen a personalized book called Daddy’s Deployed. Of course I had it for two months before I could even bear to read it myself…and then I made Tom read it to Owen the first time because I knew I wouldn’t be able to get through it without crying (I was sitting behind Owen so he couldn’t see me). Owen did pretty well during the story, but did get a little teary and sad. Especially on the page where we’re all saying goodbye to daddy with sad faces. 🙁

But he asked to read it again the next night…and it was up to me. I steeled myself and got through it…even with Owen being sad again.

He’s also been sad on and off throughout the day for a few days now…back to saying how much he misses his daddy. 🙁 Thankfully it’s not as bad as its been in the past…but I’m keeping my fingers crossed anyway.

So then this afternoon Tom overheard Owen playing:

Owen: When daddy is deployed we are going to send him letters and packages and call and Skype and he will love it!

Awwww.

Katie and Charlie Skyping

Posted on July 10, 2013 @ 7:46 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

Tom was Skyping with his mom and brother when Charlie jumped up and Katie just started going crazy with her. Charlie was pretty good—but you can tell she definitely wanted the attention.

Google maps has been overhead recently

Posted on July 7, 2013 @ 9:55 am by Jen — 1 Comment ↓

I was checking Google maps today to see how many in-ground pools were in our subdivision (for no real reason other than it’s a question that popped into my head while driving to Costco) when I realized that our satellite view has been (somewhat) recently updated.

I love how much I can determine from what we can see:

Previously, our view was fenceless. Now? The shed is there (so, after April 2012) but there’s a dead spot in the backyard grass where the pool was (so, after October 2012) but wait!—that’s not Tom’s car OR my car in the driveway!—whose is it? Aha! Dad and Linda’s minivan! And they were there in February 2013. And from the amount of stuff on the curb, it looks like garbage pickup day so it’s a Monday morning. And Tom’s at work (hence his car not being there) and since my car isn’t there I’m guessing I was running errands.

Looking back at my calendar, Katie had a 9:00 appointment for her flu booster on Monday, February 18…so that’s when Google got us.

Creepy or cool?

A Happy Daddy

Posted on June 23, 2013 @ 8:00 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

Owen was sitting on Tom’s lap watching him play a game on his phone…so of course Katie had to get up there, too. 🙂

It’s times like this Owen doesn’t love his sister.

Posted on June 13, 2013 @ 5:32 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

Aaaand we’ve reached the stage where Owen cannot play with the iPad without Katie getting right up in his business.

And of course she screeches if she doesn’t get her way. So we all enjoy that.

We just spotted the station!

Posted on June 4, 2013 @ 9:48 pm by Jen — 1 Comment ↓

So, many moons ago (heh heh) I signed up at NASA for “Spot the Station” alerts (go here if you want to sign up) because it sounded cool:

Did you know you can see the International Space Station from your house? As the third brightest object in the sky, after the sun and moon, the space station is easy to see if you know where and when to look for it.

NASA’s Spot the Station service sends you an email or text message a few hours before the space station passes over your house. The space station looks like a fast-moving plane in the sky, though one with people living and working aboard it more than 200 miles above the ground.

Well, most of the alerts have been for my sleeping hours…and while I thought the idea was cool, it wasn’t cool enough to actually set an alarm to wake up for. Or the time was fine, but I forgot about it with bedtime rituals, etc. But tonight, the stars aligned (heh heh) and this was the alert that I reread in my email at about 9:25 tonight:

Time: Tue Jun 04 9:32 PM, Visible: 6 min, Max Height: 77 degrees, Appears: SW, Disappears: NE

So I told Tom we were going out to look for it. 🙂

Of course, neither of us grabbed our phone so we weren’t entirely sure which direction SW was, but we guessed. And waited. And watched. And marveled at just how much stuff is out there moving around at night. And then we saw it—from a completely different direction than we thought—but it was obviously it. The brightest thing in the sky, moving lickety-split. If you hadn’t known that’s what you were looking at, you really would have just thought it was a plane. It looked that close. But of course, it’s amazing to think it was 200 miles above our heads.

It was really cool, even though it really just looked like a plane.

But I did it. And now I can unsubscribe from the alerts. 🙂

Tonight’s Skype

Posted on May 21, 2013 @ 7:40 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

Katie crawls up…

…and over Tom.

While Owen is off wandering.

I wanna do it, too!

Posted on May 16, 2013 @ 5:50 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

Katie HAS to be next to Owen or seeing what he’s doing… Tom took these while I was out getting my hair done.

Owen’s new favorite show

Posted on May 10, 2013 @ 8:25 am by Jen — No Comments ↓

He LOVES Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood-–an animated spin off, I guess you’d say, of Mr. Rogers. I knew about the show but hadn’t gotten around to recording it for him…but he managed to find it himself on the PBS app on the iPad! This is him singing the Good Morning song (eventually).

All TiVo reps are not created equal.

Posted on May 8, 2013 @ 10:10 pm by Jen — No Comments ↓

We have a TiVo stuck on a startup loop. Been there done that six months ago, got the replacement.

Now, I’m sure they get a lot of inept people calling, but seriously, you can see we’ve been customers since 2001 so maybe we might have a F’ing clue about what we’re doing?

But this jerk (hi Bob!) was trying to blame it on:

Being plugged into a UPS (saying those are really just to give you time to back up your 100 page thesis if the power goes out). So, we should “let TiVo take the brunt of the restart” and forget trying to save an $800 investment if there’s a lightning strike…
Bad wiring in our house (asking us when the house was built and claiming “who knows what those contractors do”). At one point he said “I have a $100,000 sound system but I plugged a $1000 receiver in and it blew up. So you just never know.”
Using an external expander (asking us if we read the hard drive manual and/or contacted them regarding hooking it up because they can be wonky). Um, no, we plugged it in and followed the Tivo’s on-screen instructions.
Not plugging in the expander in the right order.
Having anything else plugged into the UPS along with the TiVo (we don’t but it shouldn’t matter).
Having the TV and TiVo plugged into the same outlet (he was talking to us about things like grounding and circuits and…SERIOUSLY?
Claiming we never did a guided startup (then how the hell were we recording programs?).

Basically, it was something we’re obviously doing since this is the second one that’s died. Then he tells us that after a third replacement they won’t replace it again. Huh?! We said we bought the warranty. Nope, three and you’re done.

The whole conversation was just completely ludicrous. The things I’ve mentioned are the BASICS of what he touched on, and everything just sounded utterly condescending. I SO wish we had been recording it because we were just so gobsmacked. Tom and I just kept looking at each other and mouthing “Is he serious?”

Needless to say we asked for a manager and he didn’t seem very with it, either—he was just kinda like “Hey, soooo, where are we at? Let me look at your info…” instead of jumping in feet first and taking control. But to his credit he processed the exchange as if we were still within the first 90 days so there’s zero cost to us AND we still have the rest of our original warranty left. He said he had no idea what the other guy was talking about limiting exchanges to three.

So, if you call TiVo support and happen to get Bob who sounds quite a bit dooshy and questions the build construction of your house while diagnosing a dead TiVo, hang up and try again. Or record it for all to enjoy.