I’ve grumbled about replacing my cell phone ever since I cracked the outer screen. That was about a week after I bought it, so there has been much grumbling. I dreamed of upgrading to an iPhone after seeing my friends use their fancy pants apps like google maps, facebook and shazam which recognizes songs it hears. I figured that was way out of my price range, until today. At lunch I asked my friend Mark what he pays and it turns out it is only moderately out of my price range. Close enough!

I went to the AT&T store with Mark. I had reservations about this, because when it comes to tech shopping Mark acts as an agent of Satan. He once convinced me to get a bajillion dollar Gateway computer. It’s currently the most expensive paperweight I own (now that my car is fixed). However this time Mark actually acted in my best interest, talking me out of buying a case for the phone. This frustrated the salesman so much he ended up throwing in the case for free. Score.

I was excited by the potential of my new toy. The iPhone is essentially a computer in your pocket. Now instead of wasting countless hours in front of my laptop at home, I will be able to waste countless hours anywhere I go. Portable procrastination rules! Sadly it did not take long for my techno curse to strike.

Mark suggested we go to Crumbs where I could test out the Wi-Fi. We grabbed a table there and pulled out our phones. Mark connected to the server with no issue. I clicked on their server and was greeted with an error. My phone could see the signal, but refused to connect. Mark went through every setting and even rebooted the phone, but nothing worked. In hopes it was just the Crumbs server, we headed over to the Magic Bean Cafe. Again my phone refused to connect.

Tomorrow, I pay another visit to the AT&T store and hope that my friendly salesman is still friendly when I show him my defunct phone. Hopefully he can fix it as I already have several pieces of electronic equipment to hold down all my paperwork.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.