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Category: Tech Fixes

August 13, 2023

R.I.P. My Dear iPhone

There are any number of ways that an iPhone can die. It’s particularly painful when it’s due to human error. Here’s how I killed mine.

The opening scene fades up on a beautiful shot of my wife and me enjoying an afternoon kayaking excursion while our son is away at sleepaway camp.

It was a sunny, summer Saturday, and we were soaking in our experience. Our kayaking route took us a mile and a half out to a little island near Norwalk, CT.

It was all perfect. But there was turbulence for me ahead.

A Three-Hour Tour
I had taken precautions to protect my iPhone and wallet by stashing them in a water-resistant belly bag.

When we approached the shoreline of the island, we had to, of course, pop out of our kayaks and take a few steps through a foot of water to complete the first half of our journey.

Those fateful steps turned out to be a doozy for me…

The Sinking of the Barrett
I immediately began to lose my footing as I struggled to stand upright. And with each step, I moved into deeper water, continuing to slip on the slick stones beneath. There was also a bit of current that further pulled me off my balance.

I know I can continue to make excuses, but as I’m sure you’ve surmised by now, I simply fell in.

And yes, my belly bag fully submerged in the salty water.

I pulled myself out of the drink as fast as possible, unzipped the bag and peered inside. Both my wallet and iPhone were drenched, although they were not resting in a pool of water. My belly bag had at least prevented that.

I emptied my precious contents and placed them on a flat piece of wood in the sun that was conveniently positioned on the sand in front of me.

My iPhone was blinking the Apple logo, trying to reboot itself.

Uh oh. That wasn’t good.

So, I powered it down, hoping that my iPhone would dry out over the next 24 hours and return to its normal state.

But it didn’t. The next day when I turned it on, my iPhone struggled to boot up and then promptly crashed, regressing back to the Apple logo.

My next step was a desperate visit to Apple’s Genius Bar.

My Experience at Apple’s ER
It felt like I was in an emergency room watching a failed attempt to preserve life. My iPhone lay on a table, plugged in to a diagnostic monitor. Its life was draining away.

The Genius Bar technician grimly evaluated the diagnostic scan. The store manager and a sales specialist watched with me. I signed a waiver allowing my phone to be wiped in a last-ditch effort to bring it back to life.

And then it was over. My iPhone had flatlined.

There was no hope. The Apple Genius called it at 12:33pm.

DOA. Repair not possible.

How to Move On
At 12:34pm on an August Sunday, I had officially lost my beloved iPhone Xs Max, my constant companion for the past five years.

Yes. If you were wondering, I had not just drowned a newer iPhone model. Still, I had paid a whopping $1,249 for it. But time marches on, and my phone was clearly past due for replacement by the ‘Lester Operating Standards.’ And I was looking forward to upgrading to an iPhone 15 model this fall.

Soon. But not soon enough. That window wouldn’t open for another six weeks or so.

Of course, I immediately needed another phone.

But I didn’t want to pull the trigger on an iPhone 14, because that will shortly be last year’s model.

Then, the solution hit me.

I wasn’t the only Lester who required an iPhone. There was another.

The Lester Family Plan
My thirteen-year-old son needed an iPhone, and I was planning on getting him an iPhone SE during my planned Apple Store visit for my iPhone 15. It was to be a father/son trip. We’d get our iPhones together.

But that well-planned moment evaporated the moment my old iPhone died.

Of course, I’d need to buy the iPhone SE now and use it as a bridge for the next two months before handing it over to the next generation.

Yes, that meant a variety of compromises, but I knew I could handle going old school for the next two months.

Everyone at The Apple Store following my predicament approved of my strategic choice and within minutes, I had a new iPhone in my hand.

Error in the Cloning Process
The iPhone SE began sucking in my iCloud data. But I quickly realized something was wrong as it tried to fully replicate its former self.

I had missed a simple step in my iCloud back-up planning. And now, that would cost me.

Next time, I’ll explain what I did wrong, and how you can avoid my fate…

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June 4, 2023

How Many Family Members Does It Take to Fix a School Chromebook?

Screws are falling out of my son’s middle-school Chromebook, and this is the result. Help! What’s a dad to do? It’s time to find my inner MacGyver!

My 7th grader casually informed me the other day that he was missing a couple screws on the bottom of his school Chromebook, and the casing was beginning to separate. (Both holes were in the same corner.)

When I took a look, I realized the problem was more than just a little separation. The entire body and screen misaligned when I tried to flip it open, and the guts of the laptop almost spilled out from the hideous opening like a fresh gunshot wound. I couldn’t even close the screen for fear that I would snap off the hinges.

My son had been dealing with this?!

No Amazon to the Rescue
So I immediately looked up “Chromebook replacement screws” online. There had a be a quick fix for this. But in fact, there wasn’t.

I found that screws dropping out of Chromebooks was a well-documented problem, but there was no one-stop solution to buy a replacement screw for 20 cents. Sure, I could buy hundreds of different-sized laptop screws on Amazon and hope that one of them would work. But that looked like a painful needle in a haystack scenario.

Really?

Time to Get Creative
I turned my head and looked at the calendar: Two weeks to go until the end of the school year. Hmmm…Then it hit me.

I just had to keep that computer together for another few days!

Duct tape? No, that’s a silly idea (though I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first to attempt it).

Did I have another old laptop lying around that I could grab a screw from?
Nope… not one that would fit. (I tried.)

Wait! Maybe I could move out one of the other screws on the back of the Chromebook to fill in one of the corner holes. And then I would keep my fingers crossed that the band-aid maneuver would be a sufficient fix to reseal the body.

Does the Chromebook Survive?
So right before breakfast, my son and I cleared off the dining room table and began the surgery. I let him play the role of Dr. Strange. (This would take a delicate touch and a good dose of magic.)

And guess what? It worked!

The body held shut, and the screen opened up and closed like nothing was ever wrong (though the computer was still missing 2 screws).

For good measure, my son then tightened up a few of the other screws that were loose and also about to fall out. (Whoa!)

Yes, the operation was a success. My boy treated it like an easy homework assignment, and I was slightly stunned that we had seemingly just opened up a Lester father-and-son computer repair business.

A Good Lesson
Sure, he had just moved one screw to a different location on the laptop’s back. You might think this to be an obvious fix. And in hindsight, it was.

But in this computer-centric world we all live in with AI on the cusp of changing everything, just the idea that we can still fix a computer at home with a screwdriver feels refreshingly analog.

And it’s an important reminder of who still runs this planet… for now.

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March 19, 2023

How my Mother Influenced my Parenting Style

My mom was always there for me. It’s a high bar to match as a parent today. And one might ask if it’s actually too much. Here’s my parenting story for the day. You decide…

I have this memory from when I was a child. I don’t know why it’s lasted. I was twelve years old, and I needed to finish a seemingly insurmountable school project. It was a research paper, and I had left way too much of it to the last night. I was overwhelmed, and I guess I didn’t have the skills to plan it out better.

My Mom Saved the Day
What I remember from this sliver of my past is that my mother stayed up with me past midnight to help me get it all done. She sat at my desk while I did my work on my bed with numerous books surrounding me.

I think my mom was there mostly for moral support, but I do retain wisps of a moment of her going through a particular book, looking for some key information for me to use, and then writing it down on a yellow note pad.

I think I successfully turned in my project the next day, but that’s not what I really remember. It’s my mom helping me out in the middle of the night, when I couldn’t help myself.

Was that good parenting? Was it the right move to create a study group fueled by the organizational power of an adult? Wouldn’t the lesson of failure due to poor time management taught me more at that early age?

But that’s not how my mom was wired. And for better or worse, my wiring is based on that.

Role Reversal
This memory is particularly present, because I recently found myself in a similar situation with our twelve-year-old son. And now I’m the parent.

Our son had a history research project to complete. It was a group video project that he was working on with two other students. And yes, they fell behind. (And I knew with my own understanding of video production what technical challenges they might encounter.)

Fast forward to the night of the deadline… Their video needed to be finished and uploaded by midnight. The three were furiously working together virtually, and they were completely focused. There’s nothing like a looming deadline to keep you going.

Learning Visual Storytelling at an Early Age
A quick aside… I’d like to call out the fact that these seventh graders were editing a 10-minute video, complete with a script, b-roll, VO and music. They had collaborated mostly virtually and built their video project using an online platform.

This blows my mind, because these kids had to figure out how to line up all of the necessary workflows and proper collaboration to get a complex video finished by a challenging deadline. Plus, they needed to lock a narrative and find collective creative alignment.

That’s what I do for a living!!

So yes, I think this was a particularly big lift. These boys were still building their plane as they flew towards midnight.

Finding the Right Level of Parental Support
When our son announced at dinner six hours before the deadline that he would have to work through the night to try to get it all done with his schoolmates, it prompted my flashback to my own homework gauntlet when my mother came to my rescue.

So I told my son that I would stay up with him to help as I could. (No, I didn’t take over the video edit, though a part of me really wanted to offer!) He had his own team to work with. He wasn’t alone, like I was all those years ago.

I was simply there for moral support, and I prepared some late night snacks to help him feel fueled as he burned the midnight oil.

Perfection not Required
I’m happy to report that the team did complete their video, and I was pleased to see my son celebrate their accomplishment, bleary-eyed as he was.

Yes, it was an entirely imperfect process, and the sprint to the finish line contributed to that hard reality. I hope it was a good lesson that will contribute to future improvements in how he tackles these types of challenges.

Flexing a Growing Skillset
The next morning, he premiered his video for me and my wife, and he separately displayed his complex video editing timeline with pride.
His ability to align appropriate imagery and photos to his VO track seemed almost effortless and entirely organic.

I can claim some genetic talent that I’ve passed down, but it’s just my son getting it done using his own talents. Plus, I think it’s an example of his generation growing up with digital technologies. It’s simply second nature to them. Amazing.

No Need to Come to the Rescue
Our son didn’t require our last-minute help. He just needed our support. And I think someone to stay up late in a nearby room.

I camped out on the couch in the family room. And after I brought him his snacks, I actually may have dozed off for a bit. (I had set the alarm on my Apple Watch to ensure I didn’t miss his deadline.)

Remembering my Mother
Sorry, Mom. I know I didn’t have your endurance in this moment. But your grandson, who you never met, didn’t need it. He was just fine as he approached his own finish line.

Thank you for being there for me all of those years ago, because that’s what I needed.

Though I’m thinking a lot about Dad these days, I’ve been thinking about you too.

I miss you.

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