Chicken-Fried SIM

Appliance versus Device

In Austin, I had trouble with my iPad logging into the LTE, FGS network. I was not happy. Later in the evening, I settled into a conversation with AT&T tech support.

In the past, I’ve had mixed results, but usually the support is good, especially with the cellular 3G iPad support. Billing mix-up? Fixed in hurry. The last hardware swap, I managed about half of the transition, the window dressing, from a beach house with only AT&T 4G access. Worked well enough.

Symptoms? A dialog box that said, “Could not activate cellular data network.” Amused me, at first, as the AT&T logo, along with the letters, “LTE,” were up in the corner. Signal not getting through?

I tried various resets. I asked the tech on the other end to ping the SIM card in the tablet. No luck. After several steps, basically nothing more than resets, tech told me I had to go get a new SIM chip at an AT&T store. However, in so doing, I could also add my iPad to my phone account, and instead of paying $25, now up to $30 for 2 or 3 gig of traffic, I can have it for ten bucks on the phone account.

45 minutes with another Sagittarius, we shared some laughs, but even with the new SIM card, the iPad was non-functional. WiFi worked, but the point of tablet is to be independent of the WiFi, et cetera.

Picture is the fried SIM chip. I was sorely disappointed with AT&T, they did fry the chip when the account was discontinued, but I can’t see any evidence that it is “fried.” I wanted to see a burn mark, a wisp of smoke, something.

From back-ups, I thought I could replace everything, and that was to no avail. All the apps, and the movies, Duck Soup, The Scottish Play, The Tempest, wonder what I was thinking.

Books and PDF-book files? All of them are there.

Toasted all the settings. Have to reset everything. Lost all of the word processor files I had, which had nothing of value, just scraps of stuff.

The tablet is an appliance. I use it to interact with the data, but I don’t store important, sensitive, or otherwise useful data on it.

Even though I back-up religiously, I lost some fragments of work.

Good reminder for me.

You got a reading from me before.

Now’s the time to get caught up on what next year will be like, and do this before Mercury is Retrograde…

Raw Speed

Connection Type: Mobile
Server: Phoenix, AZ
Download: 10.01 Mbps
Upload: 5.68 Mbps
Ping Time: 488 ms

Connection Type: WiFi
Server: Phoenix, AZ
Download: 15.01 Mbps
Upload: 1.84 Mbps
Ping Time: 66 ms

Connection Type: WiFi
Server: Los Angeles, CA
Download: 15.63 Mbps
Upload: 1.84 Mbps
Ping Time: 70 ms

Connection Type: Mobile
Server: Los Angeles, CA
Download: 11.90 Mbps
Upload: 9.29 Mbps
Ping Time: 64 ms