Tag Archives: technology

Apple IOS 18.3.1 Update

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There’s a lot of commotion surround this update and I just completed a session with my favorite son, Jeff, in an attempt to correct the issue he’s having with his phone .He has an iPhone 13 pro max which should have tolerated the update, but he’s been plagued with power issues since the install. As a consequence, his phone deteriorated until it was useless. So, he took a chance and allowed me to see what I could do.

Not having a clue about what I was doing, I pushed a bunch of buttons and cycled the phone on and off until it wouldn’t stay on for more than 5-10 seconds. That’s worse than it was originally. Though it’s worse, it was progress, kind of. After all that, I left the phone alone for a little bit and we talked about alternatives. I do not remember if anything useful that came from that discussion but at the end I decided to try one more time.

I’ve discovered over my copious free time on this planet that if you think good things about an electronic device and talk nicely about them in their presence, even when they’re bad, they will eventually yield and cooperate. It just takes time.

With this knowledge fresh in my mind, I talked with the phone a little while, making eye contact at all times, and tentatively touched the on/off button to see what would happen. Magically, it started to power up! The apple logo lit up and I found myself holding my breath as time progressed because it was nearing the moment when the logo previously dimmed, then went away. Happily, it stayed on and continued to boot up and presented me with the home screen.

Then it went blank.

Thankfully, I kept my cool and didn’t say anything bad about the phone, but it stayed off. Before diving into the hole of self-pity, I touched the screen softly and was rewarded with the return of the home screen. It was alive! There was hope!

At this point, the phone was still attached to a power cord that was not plugged into a power source. It was just hanging on like an overly long umbilical cord and that only disturbed me a little bit.

With the success of attaining the home screen we thought it would be interesting to see what might happen if we removed the cord. Since it was imperative that I not jostle the phone we silently agreed that Jeff should remove the cord. I glanced at him as he tentatively gripped the cord and slowly removed it from the phone. I think at this point we were both holding our breath, waiting for a negative response.

Time passed, and nothing changed! It was still working. We looked at each other and I decided to see if it would object when I moved it. Slowly, I inched my hand down to the arm of my chair, giving my muscles a little rest, and everything remained OK.

It was like a miracle because there was no empirical evidence that we did anything close to defining a repeatable solution. Neither of us had any idea how we got to this point in our troubleshooting exploit, so we just called it a win and Jeff went happily on his way.

I learned later that Jeff’s phone failed again so he pursued a surefire solution by getting a new phone. His was obviously flawed in some way and he was part of a huge iPhone community that had troubles with this particular IOS upgrade. So, he now has a 16 pro max that is immune to failure. I know that’s true because Alibabba.com is selling them for some very reasonable prices,

With that happy ending I will end this and move along to something more interesting like, has President Trump really been a KGB agent since 1987, or was Bob Ross really a political cartoonist and all those videos of him painting happy clouds featured his reclusive twin brother Norman?

Hmmm.

Days 168 – Saturday – Still Home

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Saturday was spent fiddling with the truck, trying to make it run. I failed, but I did manage to get all the dash gauges lit up a couple of times, and made the system ring some bells. I don’t know what they signified, but I made it happen. That little bit of success gave me something to think about because all that happened when I connected my fancy battery charger and put it in “Car Start” mode. All that means is the system is jolted with 50 amps that should work to start the engine, kinda like jumping the battery from another vehicle, like we used to do when we were kids. Everyone had a set of jumper cables. I still do, but I’ve also got AAA. They’ve got longer cables.

That old charger didn’t work, but I wasn’t surprised. It has resided in the battery compartment of the RV for a few years and has been subjected to all kinds of toxic chemicals during that time. I’m sure that wasn’t good for the little buttons that makes it tick. Sometimes they would work, sometimes they wouldn’t, so I figured it was beyond my ability to fathom any other reasons for its to malfunctioning nature.

With this knowledge I took a trip to O’Reilly Auto Parts and got a new battery charger. One that has a 250 Amp kick instead of the measly 50 Amp I had. It also has wheels so I can drag it around and keep it off the ground. Also, it’s too big to fit in the battery compartment so it won’t be breathing all that bad air. It’s staying in the garage.

To make a long story short, it worked. I was able to get enough juice in the battery to the point where the system determined that it was still alive and responded to the button that starts everything. It cranked up and purred like a kitten. I was so happy.

I believe the problem about the battery going dead was caused by the automatic levelling system that lives on the back axle of the truck. There are air bags back there connected to a small compressor that only knows two things; 1) The air bags are low on air, and 2) The air bags have too much air. Actually, the compressor doesn’t know anything. It simply responds to the external stimulus supplied by a magnet, a proximity switch, and gravity. It’s that simple.

The compressor is connected to a switch that is connected to the frame in such a manner that when the air bags deflate, a magnate moves up, or down, in relation to a stable sensor that triggers the electricity to the compressor. When weight is added to the truck bed, or a trailer is attached, the compressor pumps up the bags until the rig is level. When the weight is removed, air is released to make it level. Simple system. The problem is that there’s no way to turn it off. It’s on all the time. So, when it sits idle for 5 months that bag inflation/deflation status is controlled by the weather. In this case it was mainly cold so it was constantly pumping the bags up and did so until the battery was totally drained. That’s my theory.

If I’d had a brain before we left, I should have disconnected the battery, but I didn’t. I suspect I could have installed an on/off switch on the compressor, but that would have been too easy.

The good news is that I can still install the switch, and the truck is back in action. I’ll put that on my TODO list. All I have to do is find it. I think it’s in the garage somewhere..

Our children are happy about the resurrection because they have things they want to move, and the truck is what they need. I’m happy to oblige.

Here’s proof of life for the truck:

I’m happy to report that the snow we outran to get home, has come and gone. Max thought it was fun for a while, as did we, then it went away and we’re OK with that. Here’s the new look around the house.

The creek is a little higher right now because of the melting snow in yonder hills. You can see Max getting reacquainted with the boulders that protect the stream bank. He remembers them all.

Now I’m done.

Day 154 – Saturday – It’s February!

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The Elk’s RV Park is about 4 miles from Merced and it’s very quiet out here in the country. I don’t know what used to reside on this property, but it’s surrounded by orchards of some sort and there are orange trees that are loaded and available to us to take what we want. I’ve tried a couple, and the oranges are very good. I’m saving a couple of them for Larry and Sue who led us to this park. Thanks.

Today we took a trip to the nearest Best Buy so I could get a couple of devices to solve a problem created by not closing the door on our Dish receiver. It’s pretty exciting when we do that because it falls out of the cabinet after the first bump in the road and dangles in front of my face. Driving down the highway with a Wally hanging in front of my face is tricky. You’d think seeing that open cabinet would be so easy to do, right? But, it’s escaped our view more than once. I’ll add that it hasn’t happened in a long while, but when it did, the external hard drive we use as the DVR reached the end of it’s short USB cord and broke the USB connecter on the receiver. There’s another port that still works fine, but we need two of them now. So, I purchased a USB hub to solve the problem. It’s plugged into the good port and the DVR and a Dish Wi-Fi fob is plugged into the HUB and there are two empty spots. Guess I’ll have to figure out what else I can attach, now.

Boring stuff, right? Sorry about that. I just have to report things. This one was serious because Diane had things recorded on the DVR that she wanted to watch. The Wi-Fi device is necessary for us to get NETFLIX on the Dish receiver. That’s what we’ve been using to binge watch the “White Collar” series. We’re on the last season right now. It’s been a fun trip and we’ll be sad to see it end because then we’ll have to find a new show.

The other device I got was another fob-like thing that plugs into my iPhone and iPad so I can capture all the photos on those devices. I don’t know how many photos are on my iPad, but there are over 62,000 on my phone. Ridiculous, I know, but that’s OK. I take lots of photos. Sometimes I even go back and look at some of them.

After I was done at Best Buy Diane drove us right back to the RV park without using the GPS. It was a test, and she passed it with flying colors. She’s very good at remembering routes and doesn’t get turned around like I do. That makes her the best navigator ever.

Gotta get to sleep now. Tomorrow is another grueling drive. We’re going to the Lodi Elks Lodge. It’s about 83 miles away so it’s going to take about 2 hours to get there. But we need to get fuel for the bus before we go. Should have filled up before leaving NAS Lemoore but we both forgot. With the fuel detour we should make it in 3-4 hours easy.

Just for fun, here’s an antique RV in the park.

See you tomorrow.

Day 142 – Monday – Wash Day

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The first thing I did this morning, late this morning, was bundle up and go to work on the 7-pin to 5-pin wiring that connects the car to the bus. I may have mentioned that, since we’ve only been making short little trips as we head north, we were OK with driving both rigs. So, I didn’t both with the plug. Here’s what happened …

While hooking everything up prior to leaving the Bone Yard, I must have tried plugging the 5-pin end upside down. As a consequence, all of the pins inside were pushed through the back of the plug making it impossible for any of them to make contact. Therefore, there were no lights on the car while towing. So, we didn’t tow it.

Yesterday Diane let me go to an auto parts store off base and I found exactly what was needed so I was obligated to make it work.

My main concern was pulling the old plug apart in such a manner that I could copy the proper order of how the wires were to be attached.

Then, this happened.

At this point I was a bit concerned that I’d never figure it out, but there were only 5 wires, right? Since it wasn’t plugged in to the bus, the only hot wire was red, and I had already disconnected it at the battery. So, what could go wrong if I got them mixed up a few times?

After giving it a little bit of thought I figured I should probably look at the wiring diagram that came with the new receptacle. After doing that the first thing I noticed was that the diagram matched all the colors perfectly. Originally, I thought it was different. but I’d mistaken a green wire to be blue. After studying it a little while I decided that it was definitely not blue. Believing it was green made me brave, so I just went ahead and wired it up, reconnected the red wired, and plugged it into the bus.

It worked perfectly. The first time. Amazing.

Tomorrow will be the test because I’m hooking it up to tow so my bride and ride shotgun with me. We’re only going to Barstow, a couple of hours away, so it will be a good test, both for the car, and for how well we get along with each other.

I don’t think I’m color blind.

I hope I’m not color blind.

I’ll let you know tomorrow if I am.