Spoiler warning: I’m sticking with Pocket Casts.

Why have I been struggling so hard with this? Turns out it was actually a bit of self sabotage, but we’ll get to that shortly. Numerous times I have made a pros and cons list of each app in my head, and always found that what one was lacking in, the other had available, which is what caused me to keep jumping back and forth between them. 

Apple Podcasts

Pros

• Comes preinstalled on iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS
• Windows support via iTunes
• AppleTV App
• Free
• Handoff
• Excellent AirPlay support, including on MacOS and Windows
• Allows you to pause a podcast playing on your MacOS through AirPlay on your phone or directly on a HomePods
• CarPlay
• Easy offline play on MacOS and Windows
• Play Stations in Manual Show Order
• Organize your Shows in what you consider a priority, and the episodes in a station sort that way for playback
• Subscribe to show by URL

Cons

• Syncing isn’t always reliable
• Especially AppleTV. What is played never syncs there
• Up Next doesn’t sync
• Windows app, iTunes, will not play at higher speeds
• Can no longer set limits of episodes to keep on MacOS and iOS (lack of auto-archive)
• If you are playing from a MacOS through AirPlay, the podcast play position gets weirdly out of line if you pause for a while, resulting in many minutes of silence while it catches up at the end of an episode
• Stations do not allow you to define if you want only episodes that are download to show up
• Sometimes, new episodes that are in the feed do not show up at all
• Automatic downloads on iOS and iPadOS are not working in the background
• Apple Watch syncing barely works
• No way to select multiple episodes at once on mobile

The syncing is honestly the biggest thing for me. If you’re not going to actually do the single most basic thing that I need you to do, then what the hell is the point? This isn’t 2007. I’m not listening to podcasts on my iPod where the only way I have to sync them is to hook up to my computer. I need over the air syncing to be reliable and fast. But the Handoff, and the AirPlay support, I have AirPods in most every room, I play to the majority of them all day while I’m working so I can walk around and listen to everything. It’s so great, and I do it from my MacOS so I’m not killing my battery. That means, if I get a work phone call and I’m in the kitchen, I need to be able to easily pause my audio. 

I get sick of having to mark some weekend episodes of my daily podcasts played, because I never listen to them. If I could just set an episode limit like I used to be able to, then that wouldn’t be a problem. I also have some actual play RPG podcasts I listen to when I have time, and I don’t want the episodes showing up in stations if they’re not downloaded. I want to be able to just put the podcasts in a station, then only see the downloaded episodes, so I can keep a few around to play when I’m caught up on everything else. Not with the Apple Podcasts app, though, you mush see all 90 unplayed episodes, or you don’t get to add them.

Even with that list of cons, why did I keep coming back to it? Mainly because of Handoff and AirPlay. Since automatic background downloads weren’t working for me with Pocket Casts, I just didn’t see the point in choosing it. If my shows can’t just be there, I was willing to take the extra quality of life improvements of those two features over everything else. This is also where my self sabotage came from.

Pocket Casts

Pros

• Available on iOS, iPadOS, MacOS, Windows, Android
• Lightning fast and reliable syncing
• Up next syncs across all devices
• Granular speed controls
• Trim silence on mobile
• Volume boost on mobile
• Skip intro/Skip outro settings
• Ability to upload your own files
• Great for DRM free audio books!
• Fine control over Auto-Archive settings
• Maybe too fine, see Cons
• Filters can only show downloaded episodes
• Apple Watch app actually syncs and downloads
• Intelligent playback resumption on mobile
• Subscribe to podcasts by URL
• Good AirPlay support on mobile
• Mark as played button in the CarPlay app on the Now Playing screen
• Sort subscribed shows into folders
• Ability to automatically add episodes of shows to up next

Cons

• Not free
• For me this is not an issue. I bought it before the subscription model so have Pro for life.
• No easy offline playback support on MacOS or Windows
• Filters are not available in the MacOS or Windows app
• No Handoff
• Lack of AirPlay support in the Windows and MacOS apps. 
• Yes, you can AirPlay to one HomePod from the MacOS app and you can tell it to pause and do all the other stuff, but I want to play to multiple. This is not Pocket Casts fault, this is Apple’s for not allowing this in MacOS
• Setting up auto-archive can be time consuming because the global setting only allows removing episodes after a period of time, and won’t let you globally limit the number of episodes per show
• Automatic downloads on iOS and iPadOS are not working in the background
• Playing a Filter in CarPlay will not result in continuous playback of the entire filter
• MacOS app lacks AppleScript support

The pros of Pocket Casts clearly outweigh the cons, and the pros of Pocket Casts put it light years ahead of Apple Podcasts! But that background download not working, and lack of AirPlay support just keep biting me in the ass. 

I tried to take care of AirPlay to multiple HomePods at once by purchasing an app called AirParrot. It kinda works. Sound drops constantly. Sometimes you can a howling feedback scream through the HomePods. The HomePods just won’t show up. It seems to be better on Windows than MacOS, but I rarely listen on Windows, so I don’t use it there very much. I found another app that lets you do the same thing, and it’s called AirFoil. It works a lot better than AirParrot, allows you to create groups of speakers so you can transmit to multiple ones at once with a single click, and even has an iOS and iPadOS app that allows you to control AirFoil on your Mac from your mobile devices. However, it will not allow you to play or pause unless you’re sitting at your computer.

Not being able to play or pause was the biggest issue I had, and why I kept going back to Podcasts. If Pocket Casts on MacOS had AppleScript support, it would be easy to create a script to run via Alfred to pause and play shows in Pocket Casts. Since it lacks AppleScript support, that wouldn’t work. Then, one day, my Google Fu proved productive enough for me to find an Alfred workflow that would call the Play/Pause and Forward/Back which I could then add to the Alfred Remote app on my iOS and iPadOS devices, and allow me to remotely control playback. 

Lots of workarounds, but it all worked. Still, no background automatic downloads.

Turns out that was entirely my fault. I looked at the Pocket Casts FAQ to see if I could figure out what was going on. Backgroun app refresh was turned on. They suggest having notifications turned on as well to help with background refresh, so I made sure I had notifications turned on, because they had actually been off. My download queue filter was set to automatically download. Everything should have been working, but I never received a single notification of new episodes. I thought this must be the culprit, but I could not figure out why I wasn’t getting notifications.

After turning them off and back on, changing how they were delivered, and messing around with them in multiple different ways, I finally decided to just delete the app, reinstall, and start over from scratch. When I go into the app and turn on notifications, I am presented with the usual popup asking if I want to allow notifications. I tapped allow. Then I had a think.

Even though I had been jumping back and forth between the apps, I was not deleting them. I know me, I knew what I was going to do, and I didn’t want to have to fight with setting up specific show settings all over again, especially since I had stupidly gone through all of my podcasts and set them to limit to a certain number of episodes instead of just thinking about how often the show comes out, setting the default amount of time for what most are, then setting the one offs to be specific, like I tell my customers to do all the damn time when setting things up for their warehouses in our WMS, but I digress. I must have hit don’t allow when I installed Pocket Casts forever ago. I try to keep notifications to a minimum. I don’t want my phone controlling me, I want to control it, and notifications are the worst. But I can have them delivered silently.

The next time a feed refreshed, I received a notification of a new episode, I had them set to be immediate at first for testing purposes, and I checked and the episode had downloaded. It was me. I’m the problem.

Sure, I have to do some workarounds to make everything work the way I want it, but that’s fine, because I am finally happy with my choice of podcast player.

However, it isn’t always necessarily the best, depending on the prop.

There might be spoilers ahead for Lost Laboratory of Kwalish, so you have been warned.

Last night, while running the module Lost Laboratory of Kwalish for my Tuesday night group, the party decided they wanted to charge the main cathedral, confronting the Grand Master. This was after they had seen a monk about to have his face flayed off, heading to the prison and seeing some rather insane prisoners, and meeting the others who were too injured to keep working, and previously running across a group of prisoners mining in the tunnels on the way to the Monastery of the Distressed Body. So, when the characters arrived at the main cathedral, what is the first thing I did?

Shared the battlemap I had created for the encounter. 

If you know anything about this module, then you know that as a combat encounter, this is definitely a very deadly encounter. “Dozens” of monks in the balconies. The Grand Master is a Bone Devil with teleportation bracelets that let him attack anything, anywhere, and his claw attacks are Vorpal Blades capable of decapitating a character on a critical hit. The guards East and West have a Polymorph Blade, polymorphs a character into some other kind of creature on a critical, and Blade of the Medusa, which will potential turn a character to stone on a critical, respectively. Seriously, deadly.

How should this encounter play out? Some roll playing fun, the Grand Master boasting about this, that, and the other, talking about the great things he has in various places around the monastery, and if combat breaks out, the party, hopefully when they realize just how much shit they’re in, run away and go find some of the stuff the Grand Master had been boasting about.

The problem, though, is that I immediately classified this as a combat encounter, because i showed the players a map with a grid, plopped a bunch of tokens on it, and had them start moving around and positioning their characters on the map. Tactical thinking led to a very short bit of role play followed by one of the players declaring they were firing a firebolt at the Grand Master, immediately initiating combat.

Now, where are we?

Had to stop halfway into combat. One character is down. I decided that it was non-lethal damage, so he’s unconscious, and not dead, since they have a nice prison to throw the characters in. The barbarian, if I hadn’t decided to go with the optional extra 6d8 damage for the Vorpal claws, would be decapitated because of a critical hit by the Grand Master. East had one critical hit, but it was the one that took that character down. West had 2 critical hits, but luckily the characters made their saves and didn’t turn to stone. Things are looking bleak, but I will keep making sure that, if anyone else goes down, it is non-lethal damage, since I know that the Grand Master doesn’t want people to die, since then they can’t mine ore or be turned into a brain in a jar, or do whatever machinations the Grand Master desires to do.

How could I have done this better? Visual aids are great things. I didn’t need to show a map. I had an image of the Grand Master, that I could have shown them first. I could have done better describing the room, what was going on in the room. If I hadn’t sent them straight into “combat mode”, then someone might have asked to attempt to perceive those special looking claws I described it and seen that they were Vorpal claws. 

Obviously, it is still possible that, after seeing the goings on at the monastery, everything still would have played out the exact same way, but there is no way to know for sure. I just know that, in the future, I need to strive to do better by my players and me, since all we are here for is to tell a story and have a good time doing it.

A few weeks ago, I was searching around on the internet for recipes for scones, and with my love of the cinnamon crunch scones at Panera, and my overall general love for all things cinnamon, I came across this recipe for cinnamon sugar scones. The recipe looked easy enough, I know how to follow directions, so I figured lets give this a try, can’t be too difficult!

During our most recent trip to ALDI, I picked up the few missing ingredients, unsalted butter (I don’t know why I prefer salted for everything in my life, don’t judge me) and some heavy cream. The only thing missing were the cinnamon chips, and I figured an easy trip to any of the Kroger stores near me would be sufficient for picking up those. How wrong I was.

Friday Night

My plan was to make these for breakfast on Saturday morning, prior to going to the French Food Festival here in Richmond, VA, at the Little Sisters of the Poor for lunch. Since Amber and I were going to be out on Friday night, getting dinner and making a trip to a department store to look for some other items, I asked if we could just run down the road to (not my usual) Kroger and grab some cinnamon chips so we could be on our way home to finally finish watching season 3 of Fargo. Naturally she agreed, because it was just going to be a dash in, grab item, dash out.

We dash in. We look around for a few minutes in (not my usual) Kroger trying to figure out where exactly the baking goods are. We find the appropriate aisle and walk back, looking for various types of chips. We locate chips. We search through chips.

There are no cinnamon chips.

I feel mildly defeated.

We start to head out, and I pull out my phone and download the Kroger app, thinking that maybe they’ll have them at (my usual) Kroger 10 minutes down the road.

They don’t.

Amber says, “Maybe they’ll have them at one of the bougie ass grocery stores, like Publix?”

I reply, “Yeah, I’m already downloading their app to see if they do.” Oh, but Publix won’t let you check to see what’s in their stores without creating an account first. Great. Dicks. Account gets created and verified and all that bullshit is followed and I search the store just down the road from (my usual) Kroger and…

They don’t.

Great. Now it is looking like my dream of baking on a Saturday morning is almost dashed! I have an ace in the hole, though. Wegman’s! I download their app, sign in with the account I created years ago when the first store in the area opened in Midlothian (I still had never actually shopped at a Wegman’s) and checked the inventory for the store in Short Pump.

Success! Cinnamon chips! We get in the car and quickly head to Short Pump. By the way, I hate Short Pump. Also, if you’re ever going to the Wegman’s in Short Pump, make sure you get off an the 288 South exit and East on Broad Street to get there. You’ll thank me.

We get to the Wegman’s, and are immediately impressed. Prices don’t look too bad, either. Might have to try doing some grocery shopping there in the future, after doing some price comparison with ALDI, and we start heading back to aisle 12B. Having never stepped foot in a Wegman’s, I was very pleased that the app told me exactly where to find my item. Arriving at the allotted space for various types of baking morsels, we spy a loan bag of cinnamon chips.

This is the part in the story where I would love to tell you how someone else was after them, we both put our hands on the bag at the same time, a fight ensued, we ripped the bag, chips flew everywhere, and we both walked out disappointed. None of that happened. I picked up the bag, we looked at some cheesecake and picked up a lemon one (it was pretty good) paid and left.

Saturday Morning

I want to preface this by saying that my oven hates me. It is probably my fault. I complain about its size. The fact that the temperature isn’t calibrated properly, off by a full 25ºF (thank you over thermometer that I purchased years ago), the broiler doesn’t seem to broil very well. Look, it’s a piece of shit space saver range/over and it sucks. If I use more than one burner at a time then the pans get overheated by the burner next to them. Seriously, fuck that thing.

You know one thing I never bought that I should have? Parchment paper. We’re not going to discuss that, though, suffice it to say that the scones did not stick to my baking tray.

That over, though…

Ingredients are mixed. Dough is kneaded. Scones are cut into nice little triangles. They are placed on a baking tray. They are popped into the oven. I leave. I come back to check on them after about 7 minutes.

The oven is getting cooler. Shit.

Somehow, the over completely turned off after pre-heating. No pilot light, no flame on the burners, nothing. Just turned off. Have you ever tried to light a pilot light in an over when you need to remove both racks and then the burner cover and the oven is currently sitting somewhere around 350ºF? It is not the most fun thing in the world and resulted in a few, not very serious, burns. But I successfully got it relit. Not so successfully put all of the hot pieces of the oven back together, but it’s all in there.

I had to play around, figure out baking times, test test test, but finally, I had a finished product. They might have been a little under baked in the middle, and there were a few other things I didn’t like about them, but being a first effort, and with the problems with the oven, they came out pretty good overall. I just need to make them again without the oven issues.

I arrived in Littleton and immediately noticed two things. Naturally, being a small town in rural America, they had to have their name painted on the water tower.

The second was that there was actually a grocery store called Piggly Wiggly. I’m going to be honest with you, ever since I had heard that name in “Driving Miss Daisy” I thought it was just a joke. I never thought these actually existed. It also appeared that everyone in the entire town was at the Piggly Wiggly because the parking lot was packed.

Driving through the rest of Littleton was honestly like going back in time. I should have taken more pictures, but I wanted to get to the museum, because that was my reason for being there.

I arrived at the museum and immediately knew I was in for a treat. The proprietors had set up a couple of pop up canopies, they had a few chairs sitting around, and Steve’s wife was outside grilling. I approached her, she thanked me for coming, and I asked her about the museum. She told me the museum consists of two rooms of their house, and that they started it a couple years ago because of all of the paranormal activity going on in the house. They have heard voices, picked up EVP, and seen shadowy figures at various places throughout the house. In addition to the museum, they also do haunted tours around Littleton. The house is situated along an old carriage route, and the carriage route intersects with Butterwood Creek, which runs all the way through town, and they believe is a source of high paranormal energy. I asked her if she thought the house was situated along a ley line and she said that maybe it was. After chatting with her for a few moments, I entered the museum itself.

The museum currently consist of two rooms, one with some Bigfoot items, mainly casts of footprints, and various other cryptozoological items. Including some hoaxes, of course, like the Feejee Mermaid. Inside a glass case is a doll, a doll that Steve and his daughter will both tell you is possessed. The case is locked, but they have seen this doll, named Mrs. Beasley, move. She doesn’t move very often, just every so often, but in the time that they have been living there she has made an entire 360º turn in her chair, and no one has touched her. They are currently working on opening a third room dedicated to the paranormal, and when they do Mrs. Beasley will be moved in there with a camera on her 24/7 so they can capture these events.

In the corner of the room is the reason for today’s celebration, Bigfoot himself! It was quite an honor to be in the same room with such an illustrious figure.

Hanging on the wall was a map of Littleton with pins showing all of the local Bigfoot sightings!

In the second room, off to the right, Steve was giving a presentation about the Bigfoot sightings in the area and paranormal documentaries he has made in the past. Seated in the room was a couple and their two sons, listening to Steve’s presentation. While I was sitting there, listening along to the presentation, the single most amazing thing happened. It was one of those moments where you have to ask yourself if what is happening is really and truly happening. There I was, sitting in a cryptozoology museum, when the man sitting in front of me in a very Appalachian accent says, “I seen Bigfoot…”

Internally, my jaw hit the floor. Externally, I sat up a little bit straighter and listened to this man’s story. What is the likelihood that I would go to a cryptozoology museum and be in there at the exact moment when a man starts telling a story about his Bigfoot sighting?

Approximately 32 years ago, he wasn’t sure if it was 1984 or 1985, he was walking through the woods near his house on Ruffin Collie Rd when Bigfoot attacked his dog. It was a large, shaggy creature with brown colored fur that walked on two legs and the creature hit his dog hard enough that the dog flew 20′ through the air before landing, breaking a couple of the dog’s ribs. He later had to tape up the dog’s ribs with duct tape. Since this large creature attacked his dog, he pulled out his rifle and shot at the creature! This wasn’t some small caliber rifle, either, like a .22, but was a 7.62mm. He referred to it as a sniper rifle. He said he shot Bigfoot directly in the chest and Bigfoot just stopped, looked at him, then slowly walked away, not even caring about having just been shot. His wife chimed in saying that her father had yelled at them for shooting at the house, but they explained that they had seen Bigfoot, and that he was shooting at Bigfoot! She said they pushed the couch in front of the door that night in case Bigfoot came back!

Steve went on with his presentation, talking about ghosts and other paranormal activity, then when it was complete, the other guest had more to say. Apparently he had heard that Bigfoot is the result of Cain slaying Abel. That was a new one on me. I never knew that Cain turned into Bigfoot as a result of wandering the Earth. He also told us about when he used to be a logger and how they would see these lizards running around all over the place that looked like mini T-Rexes! Honestly, I didn’t know what to make of the man after that.

After the couple left, I chatted with Steve for a little while, learning about the history of the museum, his background, he used to be a journalist of the NY Daily News, and the future of the museum. I am pretty sure that, once they have the new paranormal room open, I’ll be heading back to visit again.

I also got my picture taken with Bigfoot!

I was married. We’re not going to discuss the nature of that marriage, because the only thing that matters it what I’m currently talking about, being called by my first name, Michael, versus being called Mike. I spent years not actually having a first name when I was with my now ex-wife. She always had nick names for me, nothing bad just cutesy type shit, unless she was angry with me. Then, it was always , “MICHAEL!” in what we will just describe as an unhappy manner. Hey, she was angry, it’s to be expected, right? Like I said, though, I see no nosed to actually go into any details about this, just trust me when I say that it was not good in a lot of ways. Because of this, I came to hate my name. I associated it with everything bad in my life. Honestly, I can’t even say that I enjoyed being called Mike any more. Ok, let’s not go down that road. Not a happy place.

I tried doing this a few years ago, but there was nothing to associate the name with that was good or positive. I know, it’s just a fucking name, right? But, isn’t that part of your identity? Part of who you intrinsically are? Maybe I’m weird, fuck, I don’t know, this is just how I’ve always felt about it.

Lately, though, I’ve been finding a new sense of happiness with my friends in Richmond. I’ve also been meeting new people, yes, I already said that, and when meeting this people, Meghan has been introducing me as Michael. I honestly don’t know why she decided to do this, but with her being such an integral part of the happiness I have in Richmond, it has kind of taken a negative and turned it around into an extreme positive. It feels like a chance to start over fresh as a new person, to begin a new life without old baggage dragging me down any more, which is the main reason why I am moving away from the MOV.

So, yeah, Hi, new people, I’m Michael. I guess if you knew me in my previous life you can keep calling me Mike, I won’t complain, because if we’re friends it means I love you and shit, so I can handle it.

Speaking of moving to Richmond, I sent in an application for a place yesterday. Huzzah.

Can you say worst couple days ever, because I sure can. I have never had my travel plans go quite as awry as this trip to Toronto. Honestly, I’m so fucking stressed about the whole thing that I’m about to have a complete breakdown.

Everything started out well. I woke up a little later than I wanted to, left the house about a half hour later than I would have liked, but still managed to make it to the airport an hour and a half before my initial flight. Security was a breeze, like always, made it to my gate, and proceeded to wait for the time to board. I did the nice thing by offering up my seat to a man and his  daughter so they could fly together and then had to sit in a center seat, but it was ok, because the flight to Atlanta is fairly short. Flight to Atlanta. When I was traveling to Toronto. You know, in Ontario. Canada. Unfortunately, Port Columbus International Airport is not an international egress, so that means instead of a nice short flight, I had to go way the fuck out of my way. Whatever. I don’t care. Just racking up those Skymiles.

Things started their downward slide when we boarded the plane, though. Because of weather in Atlanta, we were forced to sit in the plane at the gate for about an hour before we were allowed to taxi and takeoff. Whatever, I thought, shit happens, and it’s not like it mattered too much since I had a roughly 4 hour layover in Atlanta before my flight to Toronto. We take off, fly to Atlanta, one minor little weird sound from the plane on the trip, but overall, all was well.

Arrive in Atlanta and I hoof it to the gate just to see where it is, then head back and grab some food. I happened to run into one of my seat mates from the flight to Atlanta, he was headed to Puerto Rico, and we chatted for a little bit, which was nice. Food done, back to the gate, and all still seems well when they announce that they will not be using the plane that just arrived from Harrisburg to fly us to Toronto. The pilot felt that the plane was not flight worthy, and while I do appreciate that, because no one wants to fly on a plane that isn’t flight worthy, this commenced an almost 4 hour delay for my flight. 

I did meet another person, a woman from Atlanta who was also flying to Toronto, and she was stuck in the same predicament as me, like roughly 53 other people, although her probably was slightly her fault. She originally and a flight at 5 but missed it because she left her passport at home. Whoops. She and I chatted for a bit a few times over the next 4 hours and just laughed at the absurdity of the whole situation in general, so at least that helped the time pass a little bit better. 

While we were sitting at they gate, the fine folks at Delta announced that, anyone flying to Greenville would have to land at Tupulo because the crew was all out of hours and they could not fly all the way to Greenville, so anyone flying to Greenville needed to tell their family to pick them up in Tupulo instead of Greenville. I may have chuckled a little bit.

Finally, one gate change, a snack tray, and 3 hours and 52 minutes after our flight was supposed to depart, we board a plane that just arrived from Houston to take us to Toronto. A small cheer did not go up from the exhausted crowd. Everyone boards the plane, the pilot apologizes, because it’s still the same guy who was supposed to fly us earlier and decided not to use the original plane. In hindsight, should I be worried that he had been sitting around for 4 hours getting nice and tired before flying? But I digress.

For once, I managed to actually sleep on a plane. Basically from wheels up to wheels down. This is nice, since we didn’t land until about 2am and my hotel is about 40 minutes away from YYZ. Deplane. Breeze through customs, grab my suitcase, yes I checked and yes it arrived at the proper airport (WIN), and head out to the rental cars. The fucking rental cars…

It turns out that, everyone who works at the rental car agencies had departed approximately 5 minutes before we got there. That meant absolutely no rental car to drive to the hotel. My feelings? I think Marcellus Wallace said it best.

Yes, it also felt like I had just been hit by a Yugo.

I walk back over to the taxi area, since now that is the only way I’m going to make it to Cambridge and the hotel. Mind you, it’s now about 245 in the am. First cab? “No, no, I can’t go to Cambridge, my shift is almost over.” Second cab, hop on in. So, $170 and 40 minutes later, I arrive at the hotel. Now, I did do one intelligent thing and I called the hotel while I was sitting in Atlanta and told them I was going to be late, so at least I still had a hotel room.

I talk to Chris who was working the counter at the hotel, a very nice and helpful gentleman, and he got me the number for the local Enterprise and their hours, since, you know, We’re Enterprise and we’ll pick you up. Unless you call in the middle of the night and try to arrange a car since they don’t open until 8am. Still I reserved a car so I could pick it up in the morning, asked Chris if the shuttle could run me there, he said yes, and proceeded to head to bed to get a little bit of sleep. I got more sleep than I should have. 

A text at 810 wakes me up, I dive through the shower, and head out to the front desk to ask if the shuttle can run me to Enterprise. Guess what, the shuttle is gone and won’t be back until 9. I should have been at Enterprise 30 minutes ago, so this is not good. I ask the ladies how far it is to Enterprise, they said it’s just down the road. I ask how long it takes to walk there. They said it’s a bit of a walk, about 15 minutes. I chuckled, that’s nothing, and head out the door. For a very brief period of time, my life becomes The Lord of the Rings. 

Finally, I arrive at Enterprise to pick up my rental car and drive to the customer! Wait, no, that would be too fucking easy, wouldn’t it? Since I reserved a car at 4am and this is not a location that actually has cars, they do not have a car available and cannot have one ready until about 430pm. All that walking for nothing. 

Luckily, I was able to get someone from the customer to come pick me up, and he ran me to Waterloo after we were done today so I could pick up a rental there that I can drop of at YYZ on Friday morning, which is nice since I couldn’t have done that with Enterprise.

Seriously, why didn’t I fucking drive?

Go me.

How, you may wonder? I’m glad you asked.

Back in December, when I took the first of many work trips to our new customer in Harrisburg, PA, I was driving to their facility on a snowy morning when my iPhone went from having cell coverage and network to just Searching… This wasn’t the first time this had happened. The week before, I had been driving home from New Jersey and the same thing happened from Edison, NJ, until I reached Bethlehem, PA, only this time it never left Searching…

I ended up driving a half hour to Lancaster, PA, and getting my iPhone replaced, for free, because it was still under warranty and it was obviously a hardware problem. Huzzah for the new phone.

Unfortunately, a few short months later, I was on my way to Harrisburg, PA, once again when I managed to blow up the engine in my MINI. How does this relate to the saga of my iPhone? Simply, I had the car towed to the MINI dealer in Pittsburgh. When I got there, I climbed out of the tow truck and my iPhone slid off my lap, landing on the ground, and shattering the screen. Trust me when I saw it was not a good week.

When I made it home, I went to a local computer repair store and paid them $200 to replace the screen on my iPhone, because I don’t have AppleCare. I feel that’s a fairly reasonable price to replace something that would have cost me like $600, otherwise.

I thought everything was just peaches and cream, up until the proximity sensor on my phone stopped working. The proximity sensor is the thing that lets your phone know when it is close to your face so the touch screen is deactivated. In addition to that, it was starting to, “touch itself”. The screen would jump around, apps would open, letter I wasn’t touching would get typed continuously. It was very annoying. Since I’m in Jacksonville and staying at a hotel that is a 5 minute walk from the Apple Store, I decided to head over there tonight and see about trying to get it replaced, even though I was pretty damn sure that the entire cause of my problems was the third party screen and having it replaced by the guys at the repair shop.

I walk in, tell them my out of town sob story, and managed to get an appointment for one hour later. Walk back to the hotel, drink a Tom Collins, and head back over to the Apple Store for my appointment. I explain the the Genius Bar people what my problem is, one of the guys takes it into the back room to check it out, then comes out a few minutes later. 

He immediately asks me, “When did you get a 3rd party screen replacement.”

I said, “I had it replaced at the Apple Store in Lancaster, PA, back in January.”

I know, that wasn’t true.

He says, “Well, I cracked it, so it’s on me. I can’t remove third party screens.”

I just smiled inwardly since that meant new phone, no cost to me. 

It’s nice when things work out your way for a change.