Apple Wars

July 7, 2025

Today's plan is structurally simple but expected to be frustrating if not outright infuriating as I start my day with our latest attempt to free ourselves from the Apple Bonkers and finally emerge victorious from the Apple Wars, declare victory, and go home and get on with our lives.

As optimistic as I generally am though, I'm starting to lose it as one failed attempt after another still leaves us with the confused, exasperating mess we're in where we have three perfectly fine iPads between us - and two of them brand new! - none of which is fully functional. One can't talk to the internet at all. One can, but only using our hotspot; but it can't get mail. One or the other of us is constantly coming to some task that needs doing and having to interrupt the other to borrow their eBrain for a minute to complete a task that they can't complete with theirs. Beyond frustrating, especially if one of the team is in a manic state and driving both halves of the team mad already. Not the best.

The number one task for the day is to head back to the Apple Store for another session at the Genius Bar two hope they can put us out of our misery, this will be our third visit there, trying to put our lives back together again after I shattered the screen of mine by face planting it on a tile floor.

The first ended with partial success when Rachael walked my broken brain up to the Apple Store to buy a replacement and recycle my wounded warrior. Unfortunately she forgot to take my left index finger with her so they couldn't unlock it and dump its brain into its replacement. We did it at home ourselves, but only after a lot of experimentation and finally resorting to our hotspot, the only network all parties could talk with.

The second was my turn, when I took alll three pads up to the Apple Store on the day before we moved from one apartment to the other. Once I'd succeeded at Apple I planned to walk a few blocks to the Budget car rental office to pick up the car we'll use for the next month, starting with using it for the move the next morning. The car is available ar one, so I bike over, lock Roddy up in a secure spot in front of the Apple Store, and check myself in. Our problem is a difficult one to explain, but the greeter at least gets that I need a technician so she puts my name on the list, warns me that it might be fifteen minutes or so, and gestures me to find a seat while I wait.

Which I do, but I choose poorly; as I realize about ten minutes later when I'm startled by an iPhone sales rep presenting a demonstration of the new features of the newest generation of the device that just came out as one brilliant image after another flashes across the huge screen behind his back. He's got an urgent message to pass on to all within earshot about why it's a device you can't live without for a minute longer and need to buy this now! And there are plenty of folks within earshot since he's practically screaming his spiel. The odd thing though is that he's preaching to an empty choir; or a virtual one perhaps, of folks who've dialed in where they can watch the show from a safe distance where they've got a volume control handy and don't need to be laid out flat like toothpicks or matchsticks because they're in the blast zone, just like all those stripped bare evergreens blanketing the slopes of amount Saint Helens.

By the time he finally wraps up my nerves are completely shot, and it's a blissful relief when a relative silence fills the large hall. And I sit there in stunned horror when he starts up again fifteen minutes later, repeating his spiel word for word.

It doesn't take long to realize that I really will go mad if I sit through another struggle session and walk up to the greeter and ask if perhaps my name got dropped from the list because the fifteen minutes later wait is pushing two agonizing hours now. And no, of course I wasn't dropped; but five minute later Sterling walks up to me and we walk over to a table and sit down together while I tell him what the problem is, and why I think only an Apple technician can resolve for us. Here's what I think the problem is:

I bought the broken iPad maybe two years ago, at a time that we still maintained an MSN mail account. It's ID in the Apple domain appears to be that mail ID.
Later, in an attempt to declutter our lives we riddled ourselves of the MSN mail account.
Still later, Rachael bought her current iPad mini; and when it was set up our phone number was used as its Apple ID.
So, they're cross-linked to two different Apple accounts; and even though they're logically linked we can't unlink them because we don't have the necessary security access. As an added complexity, somewhere along the way we've managed to lose the password to the Apple account my ipas is hooked to. In fact, before this happened I don't think either of us even knew an Apple ID is a thing.

This is not a particularly easy situation to describe, particularly when I'm not certain I understand myself and because I'm suffering from some coherence issues at the moment. So it takes awhile, but eventually Sterling has his aha moment and gets what the problem is. He gets to work, opens his tool box and confirms that I'm right in my understanding of the problem, and gets to work fixing it.

And while he's doing this we chat and find a lot to talk about. A farm boy who grew up in relative solitude in the Central Valley, he reminds me of my younger self in some ways, just like Tatem the ambulance driver did a few days earlier (a story you didn't know you were still waiting to hear told). Sterling is golden, in my book.

It works, but it all takes substantial time. And it's nearing 5:30 when I finally leave the store and start hobbling as fast as I can to the Budget office, which is due to close for the day at any minute. And because I'm a particularly slow hobbler at the moment, the office is closed when I arrive so I can't pick up the car tonight after all so I'll have to come down first thing the next morning to get it in time to evacuate our apartment. Which I think most would agree is pretty aggravating. And then some.

But that's not today. Today I'm heading back to the Apple Store again because it's looking like maybe Sterling isn't so golden after all and botched the operation. I drive this time, parking the car just around the corner in the garage where we maintained a bike locker for nearly seven years. When I check in this time I'm given a more realistic wait estimate of two hours. They take my information and say they'll text me when I'm coming due for servicing and send me off. I decide to walk over to the CBD Caffe Umbria, stopping first to sit in the shade in pioneer square, enjoying the scene and taking a few photos that sadly would later get lost due to the Apple Wars issues.

I'm feeling quite good as I walk up to Umbria, which is about a ten block walk from the Apple Store. With each passing day my knees are improving, slowly but with enough significance that they're making a real difference to my quality of life.

So, it's off to Umbria, but not the one I'd really love to see again someday.

While I'm there I take some additional photos that also got lost, including a few B&W shots of vintage scenes of the building and surroundings that line the walls on the way to the bathroom.

By now though it's been nearly two hours and I still haven't been alerted to show up, even though they had previously sent me a hand shaker that confirmed they'd gotten my address right. I decide that one way or another I'd better start heading down there. Unfortunately I arrive with my right wrist wrapped in a napkin so I won't bleed out before getting the iPad issues resolved because I lost a layer of skin off it when I sliced it on a metal sign that protruded past the wall I was sliding my hand along to steady my balance, a sign I didn't see coming because I'm blind on that side.

So, three things I learn upon arrival. Yes, they have a first aid kit so an assistant heads off to get materials. And yes, they did send a text according to their records, though I've seen no evidence of it. And yes, even though I missed the appointment they'll still fit me in. And a few minutes later a rep shows up, takes me to a workbench, and I start all over again explaining the issue. This agent isn't Sterling though, or even bronzer and after four or five attempts it's clear that she doesn't get it. Frustrating for both of us.

In the meantime, bandaids and antiseptic arrive and another young woman shows up and listens in and eventually displaces the first agent and sits down to hear my story again, starting from the top. And this time is nearly as hard as the previous two and it's clear that Annika is uncertain about manic me and whether she can trust me, but eventually she gets it; because Annika's got the goods, and she fixes it proper this time. I leave the shop whistling a happy tune knowing that both iPads are correctly linked to the same parent account, happy in the fact that my knees are doing well enough that I'll try to just walk home instead of waiting for the MAX or tram to come by.

And fortunately remember before I get more than a few blocks that I drove here and need to turn around and walk back to the parking garage instead. Once there, I drive east across the Morrison instead of the Hawthorne Bridge by mistake and then on the opposite bank screw up a second time and drive back west on the Hawthorne Bridge because I picked the wrong ramp off of MLK. Because that's just how my life is at the moment. It's an aspect of it I'm really pretty tired of.

Finally though I arrive at Clever Cycles, pick up my bike, and am elated to find that they didn't need to perform as extensive of a servicing as I'd expected and it's $200 cheaper. I'm rich! All the way getting there I was whistling or singing constantly - first On a Clear Day and then the 59th Street Bridge Song and then El Condor Pasa. And I crack up when I step out the front door and realize that now I've moved on to if I Were a Rich Man.

And then I take a shot of the Conestoga wagon out front.

A digression, if you'll indulge me one. Five years later, I still feel pangs of guilt about what a fine year we enjoyed in 2002. While so many others suffered, quarantined in their homes and fearing for their lives and those of their loved ones, we used the fact that we had no home to quarantine ourselves into and hopscotched from one base to another for the next several months: John Day, the Palouse, Bellingham, Corvallis, and then against all odds managed to escape America and travel to Croatia for two months after that. Looking back now, improbably as it sounds we both still see it as one of the best years of our lives. And there's a lesson there for us, especially now that we seem to be embarking on a voyage much like that one. When I think back on it now a flood of exceptional memories washes over me, nearly all of which I'd happily relive. We'll, except for this one, which I believe will always remain permanently classified as type three fun, right up there with the night in Silver City watching with horror as the 2016 presidential elections rolled in.

You can thank me for presenting the sanitized view of my injured leg. Doctor Song emailed me before and after photos of the wound, but you wouldn’t care to see either of them. I’ll show you the scar when all this is behind us and it doesn’t look disgusting.

Anyway, where was I going with that thought? Oh, that's right. The Conestoga wagon reminds me of the one at the top of the summit east of Prairie City, the one we rode up to on a day ride so we could reenact a photo of Jen posing in front of the Conestoga wagon admiring the Strawberry Mountains, which you can see for yourself in their terrific journal Undaunted Porridge.

Surveying the Strawberrys, mimicking a pose set by Ms. Grumby two years earier on her and Ron's tour of the Lewis and Clark Trail, Undaunted Porridge.

All hail the glorious HACs! We share a joyous reunion at Bruce's house when the Grumbys and ourselves are back in town, along with other special guests.

OK, back to today. I really feel like a rich man when I open the back end of the car to roll the bike in and am floored to see my missing blue Pendleton shirt, lying right behind the drivers seat where I'd left it two days earlier. Not lost!! So there's a lesson for me though - I need to quit tossing things like this into the back because I don't see them when I enter front the drivers side because they're in my blind spot. Just one more small way I need to reprogram myself.

And then I walk across the street to the Lucky Lab Bruce told me was there, and have dinner. This one has a totally different character than the one on Quimby, with pluses and minuses - as characterful as it is, I suspect I'd still opt for Quimby in the future.

Because I'm hungry and thirsty I open a tab when I place my initial order and leave my credit card with them, and then sit down and relax for the next hour or so. When it's time to go though I look around and see what a game site this place is, including a row of blitz chess players off to my left. I sit and watch for a few minutes, because scenes like this were an important part of my life in the past - I was a tournament player and a decent blitz player, maybe the strongest player in the Salem Chess Club at the time.

I haven't seen a chess clock in use in a long time so I stop and watch for awhile before finally walking out the door and back to the car. Without passing go, or stopping by the bar to pay my bill and collect my credit card. I just leave, because that's how things are now. A total space cadet.

When I get home I open up Dick's wide jaw (and you do know why he's such a Dick, right?) and roll the bike out. And that's funny too, because a part of renting this car has been the discovery that we've been loading bikes into cars ass backwards for thirty years, with Rachael standing at the front awkwardly pulling the bike forward while I lift it up from behind and carefully slide it forward on its side until the hatch will close over it.

Really, it's considerably easier to load it wheel first, where it easily just rolls in and back out again. It's a no brainer.

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