Fuck It Friday - 13

Fuck It Friday (FIF)! Sporadic news and commentary of no interest to anyone ... FIF! Absolutely nothing is the primary focus of this edition. Yes, this is Fuck It Friday!

A few days ago, at 11pm, data and (apparently) text messaging stopped functioning on the iPhone 14 Pro device. Voice calls were still functional. The next morning, a quick check revealed that all features of Visible service were functional. Fuck it!

Oddly, the mind was not able to make a connection with the various posts appearing on the Visible sub-reddit about an SMS outage affecting a huge swath of customers across empire. The outage had apparently lasted at least three days until the fix arrived sometime on Thursday.

Some of the iPhone anti-theft mitigations outlined in the previous Notes post have been rolled back. The reliable pseudonym has been restored to the AppleID profile. Location services has been shut off. The Find My utility is essentially useless against sophisticated thieves anyway. The best protection is a long alphanumeric passcode and vigilance to insure that the lock screen is activated immediately when the device is idle. Screen Time is still an option to lock AppleID and iCloud in case the passcode is compromised.

The iPhone passcode is the single, most important first-line of defense. If the device is snatched in an unlocked state, the thief will not be able to find any personal or confidential information on the device or iCloud, not even a real name. There are no installed third-party “apps,” so all important transactions are accomplished through the Web browser only. The only listing of personal accounts is locked in the Keychain password manager. Fuck it!

The showers in the downtown gym were available on Wednesday. So, the tedious daily afternoon trek to the Kapi’olani gym is no longer necessary. Going back to the old routine is a welcome relief.

Expenses last month only amounted to $630 in total, which is not much more than the mendicant level that was maintained for decades. In short, there’s just no way to spend more money. Fuck it!

Addendum: The iPhone passcode was returned to the dangerous 4-digit option. The device is ready to be stolen.

Miscellany: The day ended with severe throat irritation. “COVID,” you think? To add to the misery, heart palpitations came “back with a vengeance” for about two hours. Surprised to still be alive.