News: November 13, 2005 - November 19, 2005

My hands hurt

Three hours of practice + 1 hr lesson + 2 hours of rehearsal ... all doing heavy marimba stuff. My poor hands. :-(

Hopefully either the blisters callous over or I have plenty of bandages for next Monday's concert. :s

I guess I don't have much choice though with all the work I still have to do to prepare for this concert. I can't wait; it's going to be awesome! :D

Phone problems

So I was rehearsing last night and had my phone resting on the marimba frame so I could keep an eye on the time. At one point it fell. I didn't think much of it, because it had sustained similar falls two or three other times without anything coming of it. And sure enough after we were done rehearsing, I checked and the phone seemed to work fine. Then this morning prior to performance class I tried to turn it off, but it wouldn't turn off. I could feel there was something different about the power button. Everything was fine except for that button which must have broke in the fall. Later I took the faceplate and back cover off the phone to see if it was something minor I could deal with myself. Unfortunately the only thing I achieved was permanently turning it off when the battery disconnected.

I was left wondering what to do...try and open it up and fix it myself...blow some cash on a new phone, check the warranty. Either way I would be without it for at least a few days which was not a pleasant thought. I'm not one to talk on the phone much, but it's reassuring to have it in my pocket if I need it or if someone needs to get a hold of me. I checked the warranty status at nokia.com and it appeared to be under warranty. I checked when I got home, and the purchase was made one year and one week prior, thus after the standard 1 year manufacturer's warranty expires. So I called Nokia to check to make sure, and I was lucky. Indeed I had purchased the phone more than a year ago, but I learned that if the phone was made less than 13 months ago it is still under warranty which mine was. So I was happy until I realized the processing time is generally 10-15 days after they receive it. So I was looking at a couple weeks without my phone..not really acceptable. :-/

I looked around hoping to find an inexpensive GSM phone I could use in the meantime. The cheapest new ones were over $100 so that certainly wasn't an option (and I didn't want to sign a contract unless I was going all out on a new phone; my contract expired earlier this month I suppose as it was for one year). Next stop was eBay. I tried to narrow down my search to unlocked gsm phones and auctions which were ending soon (because I needed a phone asap). Plus I set a hard limit of $50 for this replacement/temporary phone. Some of the deals were good and some not so good. Some of the auctions which looked good at first took a bad turn when I saw shipping and handling charges over $30! That's not a good way to win my business. So those with either low/reasonable fixed shipping or calculated shipping caught my attention.

I finally decided on an auction for a Nokia 3595. It's an older phone without the bells and whistles of my 6230, but it would surely be an acceptable replacement until I get my repaired 6230. The bid was around $10 when I started watching it with a little over an hour to go, so I kept my eye on it. In the last five minutes it was up to $15 and I put my bid in, setting a maximum of $26.54. I ended up winning it for around $24 but with shipping the total was just over $35. I wanted to spend under $30, but it's still a reasonable deal. Plus, I will have the phone in the future if something like this happens again. (I found myself wishing I had a backup today. Though that's also a good thing about GSM, that I can swap my SIM and use another phone provided it's unlocked) The place I got this phone from was interesting as well. It's PRoject RE-cell, an organization that collects phones that people don't want, sells them, and then donates proceeds to worthy causes. So everybody wins: I get a replacement phone and some worthy cause benefits. :-)

I have my phone in an envelope ready to go and will be dropping it off at the post office first thing in the morning. The replacement is shipping via priority mail so I'm hoping to have it by the weekend. I'll just have to do without until then I guess. :-/