...And whatever did happen with my phone and computer?

Bottom line: Computer = Still Broken. Phone = Discovered It Had Been Destroyed, So Had To Replace. There's a little more to it than that, if you care to look...


So, as I've written before, just when I was able to stand in front of my computer in late April, and finally got back to writing, my Toshiba laptop gave out. I'm still trying to order parts for it, am $250 down, and still don't have anything to show for it. I sent the malfunctioning motherboard back, and was never able to get a replacement or refund.
` I'm still borrowing this inferior non-Linux machine that is incompatible with my hard drive, and is not physically quite as large as I need for pain-related reasons, so I am making videos and comics and doing things I don't normally do in lieu of having a podcast to edit, go fig. It hurts too much to write for long periods of time on this computer, so I haven't been up to causing myself pain by doing that to myself, hence lack of blog posts.

As for the Samsung S6, which is a real phone with a removable battery, that I bought to replace the iPhone. The camera wasn't as good because it doesn't immediately take photos, but if it ever locked up or needed to be reset or have the battery replaced, I could do it in a few seconds. The iPhone, on the other hand, is like a car with the hood welded shut, so if it ever locks up you have to wait 7 hours before it runs out of juice before it can be reset. I couldn't wait to take this new phone to my next skeptic's conference, but it was never to be.
` In December, I actually had 21 tabs open on this phone, all articles about psychedelics that people had sent me over text messages, but that I had never looked at because I was in too much pain to make my eyes and the screen meet and stay there for more than 10 seconds at a time. I was going to write/record about the things in these articles, in the same way that other podcasters take a look at other science news.
` So, I was finally going to do it, I was going to read these articles, and I was drawing up a plan of how to read through all of them and keep track... and then, I couldn't because the screen was mysteriously destroyed!

All I know is, I was with a particular individual and I had an item for him in the same pocket as my phone. But I forgot about the item. We went to a movie together and at one point he sat on my coat, and I had to pull it out from under him, but I didn't check to make sure whether my phone was okay.
` Afterwards I was reluctant to let him give me a big bear hug because I was wearing this coat with high pockets, and I knew he would just mash that phone into the stuff in my pockets, but wasn't able to think long enough to say anything, it was just an automatic behavior.
` Now I finally remembered to give him the item, then afterward I looked at my phone and found the screen was cracked, like they were pressed together really hard.

He offered to fix it, and part of me said, "Good, because he probably is the one who broke it," but I didn't want to sound whiny, so I didn't tell him. In fact, I took this phone to a professional repair place, but they told me to buy a new phone instead of fix it. I couldn't find a new phone that had a removable battery, so took him up on his offer after all. He even gave me his old smartphone to use, although I couldn't do all the things on it as the other phone.

In May, just before the Northeast Conference for Science and Skepticism he eventually did swap out the screen that I bought, but left the plastic wrap on. When he first gave it back to me, the touch screen worked, and he said it was fine, it seemed to be. But later on, when I went to swap out the SIM card and get back to my open tabs, it didn't work at all, maybe because it had cooled and was no longer pliable.

So, determined that he should still pay for damaging my phone in the first place, even though I paid for the screen, I gave him the phone back to try again. After some time, he got fired from his job, and told me that he should have time to fix my phone now that he wasn't killing himself on night shift. So I kept bugging him about it for a couple months. And then he told me he was having technical difficulties.

I was picturing him and my phone and the little screwdrivers we let him borrow to fix it, and something not working right, so I kept asking what needed to happen. Finally, on the 12th, he tells me that when he was fired from his job, it was on lunch break, and he wasn't allowed to go back to his desk to get his things. My Samsung S6 was in his desk, but he didn't seem to remember that clearly at the time, and took him this long to figure it out.

So, he agreed to let me swap the phone he was letting me borrow for his S6, which is all scratched to hell, but another individual was able to find me a carrier with a better deal and a better phone, also with a removable battery, called the LG G5. Yes, it has an even bigger screen, and it's more powerful, so I finally have a chance to get back to my months-long near-absence on Facebook and Messenger.

I've got a working phone now, although it doesn't have my old stuff on it, I have no idea how much was lost with the old phone. Now what I need to deal with is the pain-sleep cycle, and getting ahead on cracking down on pain.