And today yet one more twist gets added to my wonderful
life … well, not exactly “added” – more along the lines of popping up again. Let me explain…
I received a voice-mail from a buddy of mine who is
currently traveling the country. He was
checking in to see if I had heard anything more about this possible employment
opportunity that I am supposed to be getting a phone interview with sometime in
the “next 3-5 business days” as of last Tuesday (today is a Monday, in case you
were wondering…). I’ve heard nothing,
but that’s not what I’m on about today – that’s basically what I was
expecting. Nothing seems to ever work
out for me as of late; but I digress…
No, the wrinkle that has popped up again is that I received this
voice-mail without my phone ever ringing.
I was sitting here at my computer messing around with some video files
just to basically kill time – killing time is a very common activity for me
these days – when “Ping!” a notice pops up on my phone about a new voice-mail
being received. “That’s unusual,” I
thought. I don’t recall my phone
ringing. Sure enough, when I check the
voice-mail, it’s the one I mentioned above.
Now why would my buddy just leave me a voice-mail instead of just
calling me? Seems strange…
Well, it should have seemed strange because my buddy
actually did call. My phone never rang
although it did allow for him to leave a voice-mail. Good thing it did because, if it hadn’t, I
would never have discovered that my damn phone wasn’t working. You see, the first thing I did after listening
to the voice-mail was to call back my buddy.
All I heard during this attempt to actually make a phone call – with my
phone, mind you – was silence. No rings,
no voices – pure silence. I thought to
myself, “Hmm, that’s weird.” But, wouldn’t
you know it, this same exact thing happened to me before. A bit over a week ago, when I was attempting
to have a phone call with my other buddy – the one that I am flying out to LAX
so that he can ride back with me on ‘Route 66’ in a bit under a couple of weeks
from now – I also received a voice-mail sans any incoming call
notification. It, of course, was from this
other buddy who actually attempted to call me as well. Venturing down that rabbit hole lead me to
basically re-enable the “Voice-over-WiFi” feature of my phone and reboot
it. After doing this, I was then once
again able to both make and receive phone calls. I figured it must have just been weak
cell-service that was causing the issue and, as long as my WiFi connection stayed
strong, everything should be fine moving forward. Nope.
Today proved that theory incorrect…
I made exactly zero changes to the “connections” settings of
my phone – a very expensive Samsung Galaxy Note 8 that I purchased less than a
year ago through Verizon Mobile. I
thought everything was cool. I figured
if anybody called me, my phone would ring – seems like perfectly sane
expectations as it was working fine a week ago – however, at least once that I
now know of, that did not happen. What
to do … what to do…?
Ends up, this time, all I needed to do in order to get my
phone properly functioning as a phone again was to just reboot it. A simple reboot after making no changes at
all to the settings and I was able to make a return call to my buddy. That’s not good. That is, in fact, very bad. What that means is that the issue is not with
Verizon – it’s my goddamn phone! I
suppose there does exist the possibility that Verizon’s cell service in my area
was having issues that they fixed during the time that I was rebooting my
phone; however, that wouldn’t explain why the “Voice over WiFi” didn’t just
kick-in. My WiFi didn’t go down – I know
this because I was at my computer the entire time. Nope, my phone needed to be rebooted in order
to be able to once again receive calls.
There’s something wrong with my phone and I have no idea what it is.
I also have no idea how long my phone has been in the state
it was in. According to the call log,
the last call I received (or placed, for that matter) was mid-afternoon some
three days ago. That’s actually a bit reassuring
as I doubt I would have received any important calls over the weekend – and, if
I had, I’m pretty sure they would have left a voice-message. So, now that I know my phone seems to
randomly go into a state of not being a phone, I suppose I have to attempt to
deal with that. Many people never leave
voice-messages these days. That,
unfortunately, is a necessity should my phone stop being a “phone” again … and,
rest assured, it will. I suppose the
best I can do is basically reboot my phone after waking every morning. That should, I’m hoping, make it operational for
at least part of each day. Once again,
this world of ours has decided to throw a bit more difficulty into my
life. What’s gonna be next…?
bis später,
Coriolis
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