I had forgotten that today was the first day of testing for one of my schools, and luckily stopped by Oakland first thing this morning. There weren’t really any issues, so I left there to try and get some things done at the junior high. I got caught up at the office for a little while though, and ended up getting a panicked email about testing, so I headed back to Oakland instead. Once there, they had already resolved the issue using the processes we have in place for when something goes wrong. That didn’t stop Ben from getting a call from those in charge of testing. It really aggravates me that I make myself available and we provide all the tools necessary for a successful run, but someone ends up complaining for no reason.
I ended up having to babysit, and killed the entire day’s worth of work sitting in the office. Defining moments were a conversation about life, the universe, and everything with the music teacher, and then the rest of the morning and afternoon hanging out with the girls in the office. I even ended up skipping lunch for some reason. Julie started texting me as she seemingly binge-read through my blog. I don’t know what’s creepier: having someone stalk through that much history in one sitting, or having someone blog about things you’re doing while you’re completely unaware of being the subject of the day. What expectation of privacy do we really have in 2017, anyway?
I laughed about it a bit with Erica, and ended up giving her a card, so we’ll see if she shows up to the digital hoedown. Mollie shared a cupcake and some popcorn with me, which held me through the rest of the school day, and then I was off to the junior high to try and take care of at least a couple things before tomorrow.
After work, I went to my parents’ house for some leftovers. Mom started asking me questions about her phone again, and I didn’t have any good answers for why it acts the way it does. It makes sense to run into these kinds of questions with Android because of the options and additional features, but the iPhone doesn’t have an abundance of either. It’s the same frustration I had with randoms that would come in to a retail store and not understand how to use their phones. There’s a break in my perception of everything in life where I simply don’t understand how someone can’t be curious enough to figure out these kinds of things on their own. It’s not technical knowledge. It’s not even basic understanding of anything in particular. It’s the lack of a fundamental desire to tinker with something to get it working the way you want. When I buy a phone, install a piece of software, get in a new car, or do anything new at all, the first thing I do is lay my hands on every single option I can find, and I don’t stop until I’ve covered the same thing two or three times. I just want to know everything about it.
When I got home, I called my old friend Clint to get a referral code for Google Fi so I could order the newly announced Pixel 2 XL. Unfortunately, after several attempts and probably too much time on the fence, I got an out-of-stock message for my color option. I’m not paying $950 for a phone that doesn’t have an orange power button. I’m just not gonna do it.
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