Alleluia!

Finally, I'm after getting my phone back! At least, I think it's my phone. There are a few images & sounds on it that I'm pretty sure don't come with a "vanilla" factory-clean phone, and I'm not 100% sure that the dent in the camera cover is exactly the same as on the one I sent in for repair, but at this stage I'm perfectly willing to take the shop's word for it that it's mine. So, third (or fourth?) time lucky! Now all I have to do is copy all of my stuff back onto it. It's going to be a bit of a pain in the hole moving the phone book back - the SIM card only holds ne number/field per entry so the entries I have on my Sharp which have more than one field are going to be fun to reproduce, but I'll manage. I've lost a good few pics, and a few numbers and stuff, but at least I still have all of the apps, themes, sounds etc on the computer. At least it givs me something to do over the weekend.....

James Bond's poor choice of phones

You know, I feel sorry for James Bond. Sure, he gets the girl every time and all, and he has cool gadgets most of the time (altho invisible cars are a bit silly), but in his latest adventure he has the misfortune to be stuck with Sony Ericsson gear. Now I'm sure that they work very well for him and all, but god help him if he has any problems with them that Q can't fix and he has to send it back to Sony Ericsson to get repaired.

Finally, after 7 weeks of being dicked around by Sony Ericsson with my phone, I got the call on friday to say that the phone was back from the factory and it was repaired. So, I went in yesterday to get it. I handed over my docket, and the guy took out my phone. Or was it?

I took one look at it, and said "that's not my phone" - the dent in the camera lens cover where I dropped it a good while back wasn't there, and the quickshare logo from the front was missing as well. Sure enough, when yer man went to check the IMEI numbers, it was a different phone that SE had sent back. So, seeing as it wasn't mine, naturally I couldn't take it - I have ot wait until tomorrow to find out what's happened to my phone.

So, to recap all the fun and games I've had with my phone:

• I tried the Sony Ericsson Online Firmware Upgrade of the phone, which screwed it up so badly it wouldn't turn on any more.


• I brought it into the shop, where they said it'd take 2 weeks to repair, as they had to send it back to SE.


• Two weeks later, they called me up and said that SE had said that yes, they could repair my phone, it'll take two weeks. Did I want to go ahead? I stifled my urge to say "well duh!" and said "yes" instead.


• Two weeks later, I get a call from the shop - SE hadn't apparently gotten the confirmation to fix the phone and had sent it back unfixed. Did I want to send it back to get done again?


• Two weeks later again, I went into ths hop to find out what had happened. Again, apparently they hadn't got the confirmation to fix it, so it still wasn't done. Yer man promised to light a fire under them and see what he could do.


• A week later (this week), they had supposedly fixed my phone, but sent the wrong one back to the shop. Now I have to wait to see will I actually get my one back, or have they sent it to 007 by mistake.

Licence to Kill - I wish!

things of a hardware nature

Well, I finally managed to get a spare battery for my iPod! After trying loads of shops, and each one telling me to tr somewhere else, and then being told the best solution was to send it to AppleCare to get done for €150, I finally spotted it in Maplin on the 3rd attempt (seems they'd just got them delivered in) for €32. So much for AppleCare! Now my only problem is that I left the bloody iPod in waterford last weekend so I cna't replace the batt yet! :-( Looking at the instructions it's not goign to be easy either - they use the word "prise" a bit too much in the booklet for my liking.......

And if only that were all my hardware problems sorted. The phone saga is still going on. I went into them on sat, 2 weeks after I last heard from them and 4 weeks afte rthey told me it'd take 2 weeks to fix. Last time I was told that seeing as I couldn't prve it was under warranty, I'd have to pay €90 to get it fixed and it'd take 2 weeks. So, I go back in expecting to pay out my €90 (or half what I paid for my phone) and get my phone back. Nope! Apparently Ericsson had lost the confirmation order to actually fix the damn thing and sent it back unfixed - a common problem with them apparently. So the guy asked me did I want to send it back and get it fixed again, which would take another week. I bit back my reply of "well, duh, what the f**k good is a broken phone" and said yeah. Think just to be on the safe side I might see who wants to get me a new mobile for Xmas.

Just to top things off, along a similar note, the strap on my fake rolex broke a few weeks back, and I need ot get it fixed. I thought I had some spare links for it but couldn't find them, so I brought the broken links and the watch into the shop to see oculd they do anything for me. Nope, will need a new strap. This of course will probably cost me more than the watch cost originally. Have one last chance, I got another guy a fake rolex of the same model too, will have to see if he has spare links still.....

And on teh last hard-ware related issue of the day, the gfx card on my laptop is acting up again. It seems that whatever they did in firefox 1.0.5/6 to fix the prob where firefox crashes ATI cards & OpenGL, it's back again in firefix 2.0. I upgraded a few days ago and now am lucky to go 5mins of using forefox without the fecking screen freezing or goign black. Sometimes I just get a screen flash and get told "hardware rendeing is fucked, we're gone back to software rendering" which is grand for me when I'm not laying games, but I don't want to be stuck like that for good

It deffo seems to be a firefox issue as well, as I'm using IE7 here for the last few hours and nary a crash have I seen. Thing is, after using firefox, IE7 sucks! It has tabs now which is handy, but you sort of get used to all them nifty little extrensions and stuff, and the font rendering on some of the pages I go to a lot is absolutely brutal (probably the page rather than the browser, but still looks sucky).

phone upgrades :-(

Well, I decided a few weeks ago to upgrade the firmware on my phone using the instructions at this site, and I think I may have killed my phone. I followed the instructions, downloaded the app and went to run it. It dind't work the first few times as every time I plugged in the phone, as bloody windows autorun kept interrupting and trying to download pics from the memory card! Got it to shut up eventually, and the firmware install semed to go ok.

After I put the SIM card back in tho, nada. The phone wouldn't turn on any more. I tried to do the "recommended" way of a soft boot by holding down the 'c' key and plugging it into the USB port, but nothing. Decided to leave the battery drain down for afew days and try it again, nothing. Looked on the web for the solution, and all anyone could come up with was "send it back to sony ericsson". So, thinking that seeing as it's half the name of the phone so they might have something to do with it, I went into the Sony shop. Nope, they don't do phones apparently (never mind the fact that as the sales guy was saying this I was looking over his shoulder at the w800i in the display cabinet. Muppet.).

Finally found a shop to do it, and the second I mentioned "sony ericsson" and "online firmware update" the guy winced. Apparenlty that thing rarely ever works, and he doens't know why they even have it up there. So, now my phone has ot go back to Ericsson (as sony apparenly don't want anything to do with it) and I'll get it back with all data wiped in about 2 weeks.

Then another problem arose. I had the IMEI number so they could check to see was the phone reported stolen, but the guy then said that I'd probably ned proof of purchase before tehy;d fix it for me. Problem is, I got it off ebay so I don't actually have a real proof of purchase for it! Sent it off anyway, said I might get away with it.

So, here's hoping I have my phone back in 2 weeks time!