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Sync or SIM? How about both?
Oct. 12th, 2021 09:13 pmI'll spare details on a couple of workdays. Yesterday's semi-holiday wound up with me staying well beyond the half day everyone else observed but getting one major Hairy Bear off my plate, while today began and ended with clients who didn't listen to me, one of whom got extraordinary dispensation for it and the last of them who, so far, didn't:P Plus today was largely taken up with busywork that I will likely never see a dime for but which was the right thing to do for the client(s) involved.
But the tech wars were largely won, and this makes me happy.
----
The one Bit (or was it a Bob?) that I'd been putting off from my tech transfer? Anything involving syncing my new Microsoft-based laptop with my existing Apple-based phone. These marriages have never gone well. The routine that seemed to work, when I was using an iPhone and an older version of Microsoft Outlook, was like this:
- Open iTunes on my laptop; this is their catch-all product that plays music but also gathers calendar and (briefly but never reliably for me) contact information and "sync'd" them between the two devices;
- Plug the phone into the laptop's USB port;
- Wait, painfully long at the end, to get iTunes to open, offer updates of both iTunes and the phone's operating system, and eventually see the phone and sync it.
This drill was five minutes on a good day and more often closer to half an hour.
I knew, from previous upgrades, that as soon as I put iTunes on this laptop, I would have to give up ever using it on the old one again. And that would mean transferring hundreds of music files. So this time, I deliberately did NOT put iTunes on the new device, still using the old laptop when I need to add music for either of us, and I went with iCloud on the new laptop. It said it would sync calendars with Outlook. Only it didn't, until it did.
At the same time I got this new laptop, I sprung for the multi-user version of Microsoft Office, which meant I was no longer using a 2003-era version tied specifically to this hard drive. Over the almost two weeks since purchase, I've been learning how to access the older version's files through OneDrive, save them in a form I can use on even the older one, and which of my old-school file-menu and ctrl-ThisOrThat commands still work. (More do than don't, but I'm learning the workarounds for the latter.)
Likewise, the new Outlook was easier than any previous version in getting my email set up and more-or-less working. But I've yet to learn how to merge my Roadrunner-based new items with my years-accumulated archives of received and sent messages. So I just went with two separate sets of folders: the top one, the new ones since Zero Day, the bottom my 2013-2021 archive:
"Inbox" and "Sent Items" in the top set contain everything sent and received since October 1; while their equivalents in "Personal Folders" are the archival versions. These open and send/receive/display so fast, compared to the last one, that I don't mind looking in two places as needed, and this Outlook version allows both windows to be open at the same time. But calendars still resisted syncing.
Until just now.
At some point, I noticed that below "personal folders" was another tab:
Outlook was displaying everything that Apple had put in the iCloud; I just hadn't bothered to look. And, when clicking "Calendar" in that set, I found every appointment, past and present, that I had both in my "Personal Folders" and my phone-based calendar after my last sync. Including everything new I'd put there since Changeover Day.
I experimented. I set an appointment on my iCloud calendar for 10 a.m. Thursday: Rob Bank. Immediately, it displayed both on that calendar and on my phone without the iTunes/plugin/wait/wait/wait/wait/sync drill.
Now, all I have to do is remember that's the correct one to display, and I'll be syncd like a boss.
----
I also took time today to finally end the Mystery of the Locked Stupid Old Phone.
One more trip to AT&T, the seventh, confirmed that once they ported the number out, they could no longer access the old burner to unlock it. I was desperate enough to ask if they could sell me a basic cheap unlocked phone to put the SIM card into.
No, he frankly replied, but Walmart or somesuch could- and probably for less than one of their more expensive locked ones.
So down the street to Wally World, where no mobile plan specialists were working. But Ken was. I think he was mostly in charge of stocking DVDs, but he felt my pain. We found a $30 unlocked, no-frills Android phone to put my recently reconstructed SIM card into. Before I left, he got it receiving calls, and when I called it from my own mobile and heard the traditional rotary-phone ringtone on it, I knew I'd achieved Burner Nirvana.
I'm still fidgeting with little things like, How do you get past its lock screen?, but I've set up its voicemail and got it charging. The whole business- new plan, new SIM card and now new hardware- ran me just over 50 bucks plus tax, but we'll save almost that much in the first month we don't have that stupid old burner on our AT&T plan. And I still have plans for that ancient Nokia, as soon as I can find a steamroller:
But the tech wars were largely won, and this makes me happy.
----
The one Bit (or was it a Bob?) that I'd been putting off from my tech transfer? Anything involving syncing my new Microsoft-based laptop with my existing Apple-based phone. These marriages have never gone well. The routine that seemed to work, when I was using an iPhone and an older version of Microsoft Outlook, was like this:
- Open iTunes on my laptop; this is their catch-all product that plays music but also gathers calendar and (briefly but never reliably for me) contact information and "sync'd" them between the two devices;
- Plug the phone into the laptop's USB port;
- Wait, painfully long at the end, to get iTunes to open, offer updates of both iTunes and the phone's operating system, and eventually see the phone and sync it.
This drill was five minutes on a good day and more often closer to half an hour.
I knew, from previous upgrades, that as soon as I put iTunes on this laptop, I would have to give up ever using it on the old one again. And that would mean transferring hundreds of music files. So this time, I deliberately did NOT put iTunes on the new device, still using the old laptop when I need to add music for either of us, and I went with iCloud on the new laptop. It said it would sync calendars with Outlook. Only it didn't, until it did.
At the same time I got this new laptop, I sprung for the multi-user version of Microsoft Office, which meant I was no longer using a 2003-era version tied specifically to this hard drive. Over the almost two weeks since purchase, I've been learning how to access the older version's files through OneDrive, save them in a form I can use on even the older one, and which of my old-school file-menu and ctrl-ThisOrThat commands still work. (More do than don't, but I'm learning the workarounds for the latter.)
Likewise, the new Outlook was easier than any previous version in getting my email set up and more-or-less working. But I've yet to learn how to merge my Roadrunner-based new items with my years-accumulated archives of received and sent messages. So I just went with two separate sets of folders: the top one, the new ones since Zero Day, the bottom my 2013-2021 archive:
"Inbox" and "Sent Items" in the top set contain everything sent and received since October 1; while their equivalents in "Personal Folders" are the archival versions. These open and send/receive/display so fast, compared to the last one, that I don't mind looking in two places as needed, and this Outlook version allows both windows to be open at the same time. But calendars still resisted syncing.
Until just now.
At some point, I noticed that below "personal folders" was another tab:
Outlook was displaying everything that Apple had put in the iCloud; I just hadn't bothered to look. And, when clicking "Calendar" in that set, I found every appointment, past and present, that I had both in my "Personal Folders" and my phone-based calendar after my last sync. Including everything new I'd put there since Changeover Day.
I experimented. I set an appointment on my iCloud calendar for 10 a.m. Thursday: Rob Bank. Immediately, it displayed both on that calendar and on my phone without the iTunes/plugin/wait/wait/wait/wait/sync drill.
Now, all I have to do is remember that's the correct one to display, and I'll be syncd like a boss.
----
I also took time today to finally end the Mystery of the Locked Stupid Old Phone.
One more trip to AT&T, the seventh, confirmed that once they ported the number out, they could no longer access the old burner to unlock it. I was desperate enough to ask if they could sell me a basic cheap unlocked phone to put the SIM card into.
No, he frankly replied, but Walmart or somesuch could- and probably for less than one of their more expensive locked ones.
So down the street to Wally World, where no mobile plan specialists were working. But Ken was. I think he was mostly in charge of stocking DVDs, but he felt my pain. We found a $30 unlocked, no-frills Android phone to put my recently reconstructed SIM card into. Before I left, he got it receiving calls, and when I called it from my own mobile and heard the traditional rotary-phone ringtone on it, I knew I'd achieved Burner Nirvana.
I'm still fidgeting with little things like, How do you get past its lock screen?, but I've set up its voicemail and got it charging. The whole business- new plan, new SIM card and now new hardware- ran me just over 50 bucks plus tax, but we'll save almost that much in the first month we don't have that stupid old burner on our AT&T plan. And I still have plans for that ancient Nokia, as soon as I can find a steamroller: