Just gotta have protection

I'd been hunting around for an affordable silicon protective case for the O2 Mini, since as soon as the phone comes out of its faux-leather case, the back of the phone is exposed to scratchy stuff like table tops, fingernails and my wedding band (ouch). Keith mentioned that he'd purchased his own Mini's silicon protector (casing only) for $25 at a shop in Sim Lim, so off I went to hunt for one.

After a few rounds of searching and rejecting prices in excess of $30, I was about to give up when Gadgetboy spotted a shop on the top floor that I had missed previously. Even better - they had the version to which you could attach a clear plastic screen flap! The salesperson was friendly, and after some jovial haggling I picked up two silicon cases ($33 each) and two plastic screen guards ($15 each) for $88. Not as cheap as I'd have liked, but not as expensive as the other shops, either.


Protected!

The whole thing fits snugly into the faux-leather casing too, quite the bonus.

Maybe I'll finally end up using a PDA-type device for more than two weeks this time. :)

Frustration in a silver shell

Everything about the O2 XDA II Mini screams sophistication, class and usability. It's got a comfortable heft, just about the right size without feeling clunky. It's so hot that the stores have been out of stock for weeks, and forums are filled with blissful, happy owners.

It's a Windows-based Pocket PC phone.

So it should come as no surprise that I've been having no end of trouble trying to sync this damn thing with my Mac.

Round one - hang on startup
I'd connected the XDA to the Mac via USB, fired up PocketMac and was fiddling with its preferences when the USB connection was lost. Thinking it might have been a connector issue, I pulled out and re-seated the plug with the phone, but the USB connection wouldn't resurface. As with most Windows platforms, I did a soft reset (ie. reboot) on the phone. And then it wouldn't start up.

More accurately, it got stuck at the O2 splash screen. Even pulling out the battery didn't help - the splash screen would just kept staring at me after it powered on again.

I must have been bereft of my senses when I wiped the SIM after transferring all my contacts to the XDA - I'd lose them for good if I did a hard reset. But a hard reset was the only option left. What choice did I have?

The hard reset wiped the device, and I lost all my contacts. I managed to pull some over from J's phone, but some hard-to-contact-people's numbers were gone for good.

Round two - xBackup
Yesterday, J managed to get her XDA Mini to sync with the Mac, but it involved some complicated and convoluted steps that she couldn't describe over the phone. So I installed ActiveSync on my work machine, did a data backup, and brought my XDA home for her to work her magic.

Since the procedure involved another hard reset, J saved my contact info to a 256MB SD card using the xBackup utility on the XDA. Plucking it out after, she then proceeded to reset the phone and fiddle with the config. Once that was done, we put the SD card back into the slot and fired up xBackup again to restore the contacts data.

But it couldn't find any contact data.

The backup was there - we verified the presence of the file with the File Explorer utility - but we could retrieve no data from it. None whatsoever.

Feeling mighty frustrated at this point, I took comfort in the following facts:
1. I had a backup at work,
2. I'd copied some essential numbers back to the SIM card (good thinking, Robin),
3. I could finally sync with the Mac (but no contacts yet), and
4. Bejewelled 2 is really addictive.

Round three - ActiveSync restore
I still had that backup at work, right?

So I rushed to the office today, connected the XDA Mini to my work machine, got ActiveSync going and started the restore process from the backup file. It seemed to want to rewrite -everything- on the phone, but that would be fine as long as I could get my contact list back.

As the progress bar concluded its activity, I fired up the contact list on my phone to find - nothing.

What!?

The ActiveSync error window claimed that some processes still running on the XDA were preventing it from restoring some backup files, would I like to Retry All? I tried stopping everything else (nothing was running under Running Tasks), even doing another soft reset, but it refused to restore the most important file - the contacts database.

I am soooo annoyed!

K.O.! You lose
Lesson 1: Core lesson - always make multiple copies (hardcopy is best) before doing silly things like wiping your SIM card contacts.

Lesson 2: Reinforcement lesson - Windows sucks! I've screwed up this phone more times than I could ever have screwed up a PC in this short timeframe.

J wants to try the restore process herself, so I'll bring the backup home tonight. But.. urrgh. I'm so disgusted.

Crash test misery

By some amazing feat of technical Murphy, I've lost my entire list of telephone contacts. If by chance you do have me on your phone list, I'd be grateful if you could update me with your contact numbers.

Cripes, this is awfully painful.

Editing photos

.. is a tiring task. Unfortunately, post-production is as much a part of digital photography as the wet lab is to film photography, the major difference being that I don't have a digital lab to just throw the work to.

I finished uploading all of the wedding photos that I cared to update on Pbase, you can view them by clicking on the photo below:

Erf.

Last week in brief:

Sickness - mostly recovered, I think. Still cough-ish.

Work - hectic week, made up for resting on Mon-Tue during the rest of the week. And there was a lot of it.

Food - went Kazu on Wednesday, Chez La Mamy Friday, The Canteen Sunday. All good.

Stuff - did double duty as bridal car driver and backup photographer on Saturday. I am so whacked now. Here's my favourite shot from Sat's wedding, clicking on the pic will bring you to the gallery (not fully uploaded yet):


a light touch

Quick change

A couple of weeks ago, Ducky and I both found ourselves in need of an external harddisk enclosure. We headed to Sim Lim with the intention of getting the Sarotech Hard Box with its innovative screwless design, but their swanky new aluminium Hard Box [M] with its fan-less heatsink-ish design looked way cool so we picked that up instead.

A couple of days later, I discovered that the unit had mysteriously turned itself off. Some investigation led to the conclusion that the aluminium-cased Hard Box [M]'s power supply had overheated and died, and no amount of switch-flicking or cable-switching would make it power up.

The next day I swapped it for a new piece at the shop.

After two more days of running-in, the power supply on the new piece blew as well. So much for passive cooling.

Feeling extremely annoyed, I had it changed to the screwless Hard Box that I'd originally wanted to get, and it's been fine ever since.

A good start to the new year

It's been fairly annoying over the last two weeks, apparent recovery followed by bouts of body weakness and general discomfort in the gut. But the last traces of diarrhoea have vanished, and for that I'm glad.

My family is, as far as I know, unaffected by the tsunami disaster, and for that I'm thankful.

I managed to clear most of the heavy lifting at work in the last two weeks as well, despite being sick and on MC almost half the time, so for that I'm relieved.

Over the past month I've lost five kilograms in weight; two before the ordeal started and three during, so I've got some catching up to do now that my stomach has recovered. Easy does it, though.

I stopped updating my PaD and blog for the last couple of days while trying to get complete rest. It's time to catch up on those too, hence today's post. Omataseitashimashita! (Sorry to keep you waiting!)

(By the way, Vetinari was definitely the Patrician in Guards! Guards!. This comment is for d.)

Time to go. Ja ne.