Sweet Fix

So the phone battery starts dying Sunday morning. Only holds charge for five hours or so.

First place I go to can’t quite do anything on the spot, so go to Grand Central Terminal Apple Store Genius Bar.

First, battery is in fact (understandably) dying. Replaced on the spot.

Also recommends restoring of OS. Wipes the phone.

Go home, restore.

But this is where it gets really cool: After OS is reinstalled, restores phone from last automatic wireless back up to Apple server. This is done every day or so when the phone is connected to a charger and is on wifi.

Takes a couple of hours but everything gets reinstalled, including apps’ login info, contact info, mail, diary.

Only exception is music, for which I have iTunes Match, so I download a dozen or two albums and two playlists.

Please. This is the best.

Cage Match! Cablevision vs. Verizon FIOS

Haven’t had 24/7 internet from Cablevison in months.

Then again, this is a company that has abused a monopoly bought by corrupting politicians since the first day of business. A company free to abuse customers because our options are limited.

Today’s fun fact: Customer service doesn’t know that there’s an outage (what we had this morning) until and unless they get a number of complaints from a localized area. In other words, customer service doesn’t and can’t know the status of the system.

So I end up having to drive for a replacement modem because CS couldn’t tell me my modem wasn’t a problem. A tech making a house call later in the day told me that I had been blessed with this morning was the worst one used in the system. He replaced it with what he said was the best.

As if it matters.

The store told me I could register the new modem by phone call to CS. CS said I actually couldn’t do it till service was restored. Which was still hours away.

At least my last payment to Cablevision was my last.

I ordered FIOS.

I am optimistic and hopeful, but only guardedly so.

On the other hand, I’ll be saving so much that Verizon will have to be much worse than Cablevision is to make it a bad decision. And since Cablevision is the worst there is….

As I said, guardedly hopeful.

But happy to be rid of Cablevision. (The TV and phone providers far less so but the former got just too greedy….)