Factory Settings

Back in November I got my very first smart phone. I confess that I think I love my smart phone. It's a Droid X2 and I'm fairly certain that it does a lot more than I'm even aware of. Thus far, I pretty much use it to send text messages, check my e-mail, and keep up with the Twitter and the Facebook. I mean, there are a few other things I've discovered, but those are the most common uses.

Up until yesterday, things had been going great for me and my Droid X2, which I have officially named Artoo.

I'm glad you asked. Things just stopped working yesterday with no apparent explanation. It was working just fine, and then just before lunch, I went to check it to see if I'd gotten any messages and the power button wouldn't turn the phone on. Generally, I'm able to just press it and it'll come on and show me that it's locked. But at this point, even holding the button down did nothing.

So I removed the battery. This is the correct answer to most problems in life. Remote not working? Remove the battery. Smoke detector beeping incessantly? Remove the battery. Got a headache? Remove the... wait... maybe it doesn't solve all problems. But it seemed to work for the phone. I took out the battery, waited a minute or so, then put it back in. And voila, it turned back on.

But it wasn't long before it started having the same issue. I hadn't been doing anything out of the ordinary with it, and the battery had a full charge. It just didn't seem to want to turn on when the power button was pressed. Confusion and frustration set in.

What would I do without my cell phone? It's the only way anyone has to get in touch with me. Well, there's email, but if I'm not at home and my phone isn't working, even that becomes a moo point. Also, my phone is my alarm clock. If I don't have my phone when morning comes, how will I know when to wake up? The correct answer is: I won't.

So I took a trip to my local Verizon store when I got off work last night. In the car, I kept checking the phone to make sure it wasn't coming on. I just knew that once I got to the store, the guy would have no problem getting everything to work and then he'd just look at me like I was crazy. Sure, the phone wouldn't come on when you hit the power button. We're busy here, sir. Come back when you have a real problem and not just the ones that you make up to get attention.

Luckily, the phone was still exhibiting the same problem. My sanity remained intact in the Verizon guy's eyes. He couldn't figure it out. He said that the issue was probably a software problem. His suggestion: restore the phone to the original factory settings. I had no problem with that. I've only had the phone for two months and there really wasn't anything that I couldn't afford to lose. After all, my contacts were all backed up on the internet, so I wasn't losing any phone numbers.

The only problem was, he couldn't get the phone to power up so he could perform the necessary steps to restore the phone. So we very nearly had to have a replacement phone sent to me. I wasn't too keen on that idea though. That meant I'd have to go a couple days without a phone. I think I would have a serious breakdown if I had to go a day without being connected. Though, now that I've said that out loud, maybe it would be something that would be good for me.

Miraculously, he was able to get the phone turned on and he did finally restore everything to its original settings. It was a little inconvenient to have to go through and change my settings again. Oh, and I had to re-download the Twitter and Facebook apps. But I've got it back to what I'm comfortable with.

The biggest issue I now have is that I lost all my progress on Angry Birds. I was doing good too. And I had three stars on a lot of those levels.