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     So I bought a new phone last week. I almost wrote "cell phone" but realized I come off as old enough without rubbing anybody's face in it. I had to — the old phone, an Apple iPhone 12, wouldn't load software updates, no matter how many large attachments and apps I tossed over the side, like a balloonist flinging away ballast. 

     An iPhone 17, if you must know, through a process of extraordinary length and tedium. Hours of study over months. I started to summarize and quickly realized I was boring myself.

     The thing arrived last week, via Fedex. I placed my phones together, migrated my data, and then had to prepare my old phone to return. It was complicated — I had to watch a video or two — but eventually returned wiped it clean, both of information and the screen, using Windex, actually thinking, "Clean her up to meet her parents back at Apple." I thanked the black oblong for its service, packed it up in the little cardboard folder they'd sent me, and shipped it off, itself a complicated, three part process that involved a) going to the Fedex store or, rather, where the Fedex store had been last time I needed it. Being redirected by a sign at the shuttered store to the new location of the FedEx store, b) being told, there, that the label on the parcel I was trying to ship was for UPS, not FedEx, and, c) finally, heading to the UPS store (you see why I'm trying to abbreviate this process? Every step has four substeps and three corrections).
     A few days after that Apple wrote me a stern note under the heading, "Action needed to continue your trade in." Despite my best efforts, I had not, apparently, turned off Find My Phone. Before I got my $120 trade in, I must do that, another dive into a rabbit hold that involved, I kid you not, a 24 hour security waiting period, as if it were. gun purchase or a divorce.
     The thing to do once that was accomplished was to wait — waiting, like shutting up, an art form I struggle to master — until Apple realized the Find My ... feature had been shut off and alerted me that my 120 bucks was en route. But patience is the first victim of technology, and I jumped into the Apple chat support and, after a 20 minute conversation that I should have preserved. for donation to some future museum of head-on-a-board frustration, I was reassured that the check was indeed the mail, so to speak, and I'd be notified in three to five business days.      Satisfied, I went about my business, or tried to. Then this appeared.

     There was something in that tone, like bad news from your spouse. "Honey, we need to talk..." I almost overlooked that nothing was being delivered, or nothing I knew of. I phoned, went through a variety of shells and messages without actually getting anywhere, realized I was wasting yet more time, and gave up, going about my business, or trying to.
    The next day, I got this.

    Oh, for Pete's sake, I thought. What now? Had I inadvertently changed my birth date trying to shut off the Find My feature? I clicked on the link.

    It was a trap, set by my own office, and I was immediately enrolled in one of those generic security seminars that pelt us like rain and I would avoid if I only could. Hoisted with my own petard. Perhaps also as a result, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps because now my tech judgment was suspect, I was logged out of the paper's email system, and could not log in, because my new phone wasn't set up with its One Login Connect security feature. I felt like I was being made to sit on the red stool, for being careless, and ended up calling our tech support, which allowed me to at least talk to an actual person, and apologize for clicking on the poisoned link. He didn't seem to take it personally.
     I planned to illustrate this item with a photo of a bird, taken with what I assume is the vastly-improved Zoom feature on my new iPhone17. Only I haven't been outside enough to see a bird. Because I've been inside. Futzing around with this shit. I decided to describe the tiresome process yesterday, without realizing just how tiresome it would be to relate. But it's 4:46 a.m. Saturday— I didn't get this written yesterday because we had a big pizza party so family could ogle the new granddaughter. So some life is happening, around the tech hassles.  Although that is an exaggeration — we did go for a long walk out in the beautiful weather. Sad that I would choose to describe this process instead of that one. Another wrong decision. Carpe diem.