This is private, please get off my line

When last I talked about phones, it was about the used iPhone 7 that my father had gotten and sent to me. Unfortunately it was still locked to AT&T and I had no way of contacting the previous owner. Well, the phone had a number on it, but I couldn't imagine a not-awkward way to talk with them, if the number were still current. So I e-mailed my father to ask if he could contact the phone's previous owner and ... waited. And heard nothing.

Monday, my mother called, hours before I was figuring to call anyway, and asked if I'd got the phone set up. I said no, because I was still waiting for my father to get back to me with the e-mail. She said oh, well, there's the problem, my father never reads e-mail, which really puts his insistence that I never answer e-mails in a new context. She urged me to call him, and she'd ask him about it when she got back home. So, I did, and explained things. A couple hours later he e-mailed to say it was all set.

Next day I went to the Verizon store and the clerk, who had this weirdly over-reassuring tone about how everything was going to be okay, told me that everything was not going to be okay. If I have this right, the phone said it was unlocked but their system didn't agree. (Also I needed some four-digit code to connect to my account that I never heard of before.) Rather than have me come back for a third time she gave me a sheet with all sorts of customer service numbers to call, with Verizon and other phone providers, so they could guide me through things. And a new SIM card that I guess I'll have to insert. I suspect the core problem was I'd only given it a day for the unlocking to move into their databases and they needed more than that.

The next day my father phoned me, on my cell phone, the long time of this just not working having finally ended. I had nagged him a couple times about needing to un-block my number from him so I guess that's finally happened. I tried to explain that I was still on my old phone, not the new, and this was oddly hard for him to follow.

My plan is to wait another day or two, give it a fresh try, and maybe finally get this sorted out. I do have until the 31st of December to get this fixed without a service interruption, so there's that. And, hey, my father's phone will interact with mine again so that's a net bonus too.

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Let's take in some more of Halloweekends Friday, at Cedar Point.

While getting in line to GateKeeper I noticed this great view of the lift hill and the first loop of the wing coaster.

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And here's a train going over that first loop. Also note the abundant queue space even though GateKeeper can handle so many people per hour.

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Front seat of GateKeeper in the evening sun. Love that gryphon look to it.

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Night falls fast! Here's the Cedar Downs ride, with people in Toothless and Light Fury costumes. Turns out Cedar Point is cool with at least some costumes during Halloweekends.

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I tried a couple tracking shots of Cedar Downs, of course, and look at what came out! I could never have planned that.

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Some of the Cedar Downs horses at rest and showing off how nice and glossy they can be.

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Trivia: Apollo 17's Lunar Module Ascent Stage was crashed (deliberately) at a point 9.9 kilometers southwest of the landing site, about 1.75 kilometers from the planned impact point. Source: Apollo By The Numbers, Richard W Orloff. NASA SP-4029.

Currently Reading: King of All Balloons: The Adventurous Life of James Sadler, the First English Aeronaut, Mark Davies.