Some days are just crap 'til the end

Yep, it's been one of those days.

Yesterday. Now there was a great day. That was a day by the end of which I was filled with complete satisfaction. Everything went well yesterday.

Yesterday I wore a frock (this is almost unheard of, you understand), and I looked Damn Hot (for a 46 year old). Work was awesome, because I fixed more problems than usual, everything went well, and I ate lunch with the Bursar - a charming man who flirts outrageously with me!

Today, on the other hand, was a disaster. Well, not BP-oil-spill disaster, just low level, nothing-bloody-works disaster. I've been testing Windows 7 in school, and I'm coming to the conclusion that we'll be an XP school for a while longer. I mean, it's easy at home - if a piece of software doesn't work, I'll browse the web and find something, usually better, which will do the same job. The financial commitment we've put into our software in the school is monumental, and there never IS a freebie replacement (except for Ranger - you just wait, your time is coming...)

But worse, my phone gave out on me today.

Yep, the 5800 had a bad day, too. Actually, it's been a bad nearly-week. Last week, I think on Friday, I was messing with some software on the phone (Wifi stuff, I think), which hung up, so I flipped out the battery, waited a second or two, and put it back in. This is pretty standard, it takes all power from the machine, usually allowing a clean reboot. But the phone refused to boot up beyond the large, friendly "Nokia" logo. I power cycled (battery out and back in again) a couple more times, but still nothing happened. So when I got back home I slid out the SIM and shoved it into the old N78, much to Lizzy's disapproval - after all, I'd let her have that phone when I moved on. I don't know why she's getting quite so cross, it's not like she actually makes any calls on it. On this I called O2, with whom I have my contract, and who have, in the past, been able to help me with some technical difficulties. Their suggestion was to take the phone to the nearest O2 shop, if I didn't want to send it off and wait for a repair. In fact, since I didn't know if there was an O2 shop in Farnborough, the guy suggested that a Carphone Warehouse would be able to fix it for me too.

As it happens, I slipped out both the SIM and the memory card when I moved over to the N78, and, just for the hell of it, I decided to try to reboot the phone one last time. To my surprise and delight, it booted up fine. So I powered it down, inserted the SIM and powered up again. Yes! So I just clicked in the micro-SD, and all went well for a few days. Until Monday. Same again, although this time I wasn't messing about with any software. So I thought I'd pop into the Carphone Warehouse on the way home and see if they could suggest anything. Sadly, because I bought the phone directly from O2, Carphone W don't have any information for me, and wanted some kind of proof of contract - which I could get, except that my phone was hung up!

Once again, when home I slid out both cards, and rebooted. And it did. At this point I began to wonder if it was the SIM or the SD card which was causing the problems. And because the phone failed again today, I was able to check this - the SD card.

So I thought to myself - I have been messing with a load of software recently (you know how it is, you install a bunch of software, look at it, decide it's useless, and if you remember, you un-install it again), so I thought - I'll take it back to factory settings, and completely erase the memory card.

To my surprise (and NOT delight), while this totally buggered my nicely setup interface, it left a whole bunch of settings still in the phone. In addition to which, it rendered parts of the "home page" as it's called, unworkable. Tapping on the dialler refused to bring up the numeric keypad so I could call anyone. Tapping on the contacts icon did nothing. None of my shortcuts showed, and on trying to edit them so they would, I was told there were no configurable shortcuts for my chosen theme.

Having found that there is an O2 store in town, I resolved to go there directly after school. Sadly it turns out that 3 days ago the shop shut for 3 weeks for some renovations - Oh, I could have cried! So I stole the N78 again, and made the call. I was prepared to risk the wrath of Lizzy for a week or so in order to get my phone back to O2 for the fix.

Only... I don't need to! After much messing round, I finally got one of the lovely people to give me the REAL reset to factory settings keypresses. Just in case you need to know, it's *#7370#. This really will reset to oh-my-god-this-is-so-exciting-I've-just-got-a-new-5800, right out of the box, true factory settings. So just make sure you really want to do that. I was able to make a back up first, so I could bring back my contacts and calendar information.

You see, it didn't take much to cheer me up in the end. You know I don't mind starting from scratch. It's quite a lot easier, sometimes, than trying to fix the problem when everything you try fails completely.

So although I'm still no nearer sorting out many of the problems in school, at least my communication woes are currently settled.