The title of this post is an overly dramatic reference to the fact that I got a new phone! Anyone who’s spent time with me over the last few months has heard me complain about the grief my old one was giving me.

It all began in March 2016, at Cousin Palooza. I was so hyped up for a hike with Hayden that I went up in my pajamas. My phone bashed against a rock, giving it a nice hairline fracture in the screen. Barely visible with the screen on, I decided to hold off on shelling out the $80 to activate my insurance policy and get a replacement device, in case I incurred worse damage later.

Over the last year and a half the phone started exhibiting spotty GPS reception and all-around lag. The worst issue was battery life; I’d leave home at 9am with a full charge, and return home with 30%, having barely used it. Unless I got it on the charger right away, it’d go from 30% to 20% in twenty minutes, and from 20% to 0% in five seconds. Cost me a number of good camera shots when they counted.

The tipping point came last week, when I dropped the phone like I had countless times. The thing’s solid, full-metal body, it comes out just fine. Except this time it landed funny and got a nice dent right where the power button is.

The button’s mechanics were pretty shot. If I didn’t handle it ever so carefully, the slightest brush of the power button would push it permanently in, triggering a boot loop. On more than one occasion I had to use the taser barbs I keep on my desk to pry the button out from the body.

It was near the two-year expiration date for my insurance policy, so I figured what the hey, let’s shell out and replace the phone, at least the screen won’t be cracked anymore. The replacement comes, and they must not stock my model anymore because they decided to upgrade me to the newer model. This new model doesn’t come in the storage capacity I had, so they bumped that up too. I’ll just say, it’s a strange feeling, going to bed with ~40% battery remaining. This model also supports VR, so that’ll be fun to try out when I come home for Thanksgiving.

It was a tender moment when I sent my old phone off gently into that good night. Insurance stipulated that I return the phone or face a $1000 fee, so after a few days of keeping the old one around to ensure I got all the data I needed off of it, it was time to issue a factory reset and ship it off to a facility in Texas.

I’ve been handling the new model gingerly until I get a case for it, but so far I’m very happy with it. Though, its model name doesn’t lend itself as well to a clever device name. The old phone, a Nexus, I dubbed “Jeffs’sNexus”. The new one, a Pixel, is tentatively called “AnderPix”, but I dunno if I’m sold on it. Open to ideas.

And I realize that the last eight paragraphs could be condensed into “In minor news, I got a new phone, it’s pretty sweet,” but it’s the most interesting thing that’s happened over the last two weeks; I really don’t have much else to write about. Driving is still annoying, as is sitting for much longer than half an hour at a time. This really precludes most activities beyond driving home from work and lying in bed.

I did go over to a friend’s house to help introduce her roommates to About Time, and I did have a few other friends over to play Betrayal at House on the Hill, so my solitude is punctuated with social stuff, but for the most part the last couple weeks have been pretty blurry.

Oh and I got some fillings yesterday, so that was fun. All y’all going to Dr. Larsen, know that my dentist gave him some praise: speaking of work done years ago, she said, “These fillings are solid!” She said this as she worked to destroy them unfortunately; had to replace them, new and old fillings don’t mix.

One other highlight this week was the launch of Star Trek Discovery. Watched the first couple episodes and I have high hopes for the show. This is definitely no Voyager or Next Generation, but neither is it entirely a child of J. J. Abrams’ school of storytelling. I’ll leave it to Dad to judge whether it’s true Trek or just new hotness.

I’ll leave you with this little fellow I assembled from a kit I snagged from our pile of swag on the recruiting trip. I dubbed it Steve in an offhand joke to a coworker, but—unlike AnderPix—I think the name’s suits ‘im.