I led the group hike yesterday and we did about 7K up and over Black Rock, then roundabout back to Barretto. I was excited about doing the Black Rock hike because it has just about the best views from up top in the area and I wanted to give my new phone camera a tryout. The hike was great and the views were awesome on a sunny clear day. I took a shitload of photos but I won’t be posting any of them here. Here’s the convoluted story of why:

I mentioned that I bought a new phone. It’s a Samsung Galaxy A53. My old phone is an A50. I’d gone online to research which Samsung phone features the best camera. Of course, the best cameras are on the S-series phones, but they cost a thousand bucks. The review I read said the A52 had the best camera in the mid-price range. I went to the Samsung store at the mall and the salesman showed me an A52, but then pointed out that the A53 was this year’s upgrade of that model and it was on sale. Sold!

After the purchase, they helped me do the transfer of all my data, photos, and apps to the new phone. That went smoothly. Of course, the real pain in the ass was opening up my apps and programs on the new phone. Everything required a password and in a lot of cases it had been years and I couldn’t remember what some of those passwords might be. Well, the fix for that is the app will email me a code to insert in lieu of a password. I remembered my Google password, but not the one for my AOL account, so that upped the level of being a pain in the ass. But I eventually got everything functioning again on the new phone and I was good to go.

So, I did the hike, took my photos, came home. I’m going to donate my old phone to someone in need here, but first I had to delete all the data, apps, and photos there. Someone had shown me how to do the factory reset, and I set about doing it. The hitch came because Samsung required that I log in to my Samsung account before I could implement the delete function. Well, I didn’t even know that I had a Samsung account and none of the usual old passwords I tried were working. And when I tried the email recovery option, the emails from Samsung were in Hanguel–making them virtually unreadable to an ignoramus like me. So, I’m going back between my new and old phones–trying to respond to the emails on the one, and trying to implement the delete function on the other. And then somehow I finally got the delete function to work! And almost instantly noticed that I had mixed up the phones, both being the same size and feel, and had started the delete process on my new phone. And there was no way to stop it. Yeah, I’m that stupid. Probably karma for my mocking our demented President.

I was able to re-initiate the data transfer process from the old phone to the new one, just like I had done the day before. But alas, all those photos I had taken on the new phone were lost forever. This morning I successfully completed the deletion of data from the old phone and hopefully, that marks the end of the transition trauma.

You’ll have to Relive the hike without photos.

https://www.relive.cc/view/v8qkBjPek36

Going through all that crap with my phone put me behind schedule, so I didn’t bother with darts last evening. Instead, I went to It Doesn’t Matter and had a few cold ones to help me forget about my recent ordeal with the phone. My friend “Jenny” is heading down to Manila for her new job and I had promised her dinner before she departs. We agreed to meet at John Kim’s new place, so I moved my ass up the highway, climbed to the third floor, and waited for her there.

And here it is, the first picture from my new phone camera to be shared here at LTG:

Jenny and I had a nice meal (can’t remember what she ate now, I had fish and chips), shared some banter (she gets my sense of humor!), and had a pleasant evening together. I drank beer, she had soju. I was crushing on her when we first met, but she has convinced me to back off, at least for now. I’m back in my living for the moment mode, so I’m comfortable saying we have no future. Still, nothing wrong with sharing some platonic time and a few laughs when circumstances allow.

Jenny and I left John’s place together and went home and went to bed. Well, she went to her home and I went to mine, but you know what I mean.

Up this morning and took care of the usual business. I did a street hike through Barretto and listened to music on my headphones. Not much worthy of a photograph anyway. Well, I did take a leaving the neighborhood shot:

I had ordered some stuff on Lazada (the Philippines version of Amazon) and for some reason had the foresight to leave some money with the helper “just in case”. And sure enough, when I got back from my hike, two of the items had arrived:

Best of all, I was able to set it up, sync it to my phone, and get it fully functioning without incident. Hey, let’s see Joe Biden do that!

And that’s pretty much all there is to say for now. Let me leave you with these important facts of life I came across on the internet (so you know they must be true!)

Until tomorrow then. Assuming tomorrow comes.