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     So I bought a new phone a week ago Monday. I almost wrote "cell phone" but realized I come off as old enough without rubbing anybody's face in it. I had to buy it — 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. Not the 6.8 inch pro, but the smaller, 6.3 inch version. That was my central priority — I wanted the same size. Consistency is a big value to me at this point. I might not be able to keep the country from sliding into autocracy. But I can keep my phone from morphing into something huge and heavy. Same size, more or less, same color, black. I worried over the .2 inch increase, but decided it was acceptable. 

    This is a wild abbreviation of hours of study and consideration, over months. How much capacity? I opted for the 512 GB. Do I need the service plan? Generally no. But my wife says ... I started to summarize and quickly realized I was boring myself.

     Credit to Apple — buying it was easy and intuitive, leaving aside the stress and indecision I brought to the process myself. The thing arrived the next day via Fedex. I placed my phones together, migrated my data — easy as pie —  and then had to prepare my old phone to trade in. It was complicated — I had to watch a video or two — but eventually returned wiped it clean, both of information and fingerprints — wiping the screen, using Windex, actually thinking, "Clean the old gal 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 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, b) being told, there, that the label on the parcel in my hand was intended by folks more observant than myself 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, a system to locating stray devices. Before I got my $120 trade in, I must do that, another dive into a rabbit hole that involved, I kid you not, a 24 hour security waiting period, as if it were some dramatic step, a gun purchase or a divorce.
     I finally did it, or at least thought I did it. No big "Success!" screen comes up. 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 wanted it done. So 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 by some AI chatbot that the check was indeed in 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. The "need" part of the message, 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, as instructed, went through a variety of shells and messages without actually getting anywhere, realized I was wasting yet more time, and gave up and went about my business, or tried 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 Apple Support link. Ba-boom:

    It was a trap, set by my own office, that I had blundered into, softened up by the gantlet Apple had already put me through, buying a new phone and trading in an old one. You know, they used to give us phones. Call us to a room and hand out a box, like Christmas. I didn't care anything about the phones, then. They were free, to me anyway, a benediction that forgave all sins. Now, not only am I required to buy my own phone but if, loggy from the ordeal, I can find it's not a link, but the office in disguise, ready to bite my straying finger.

       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 — who can tell anymore? — perhaps because now my tech judgment was suspect, I was also logged out of the paper's email system, and could not log in, because my new phone isn'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. My OneLogin bona fides were quickly established.
     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 tech 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, radiating cuteness like a new sun. So some life is still happening, around the tech hassles.  We did go for a long walk out in the beautiful weather yesterday afternoon. Sad that I would choose to describe this phony inside process instead of that lovely outdoor stroll . Another wrong decision. Carpe diem.