Car Camper

Find Your iPhone, A Fable By Apple, Inc.

Once upon a time, my iPhone was stolen. I went to my mobile me account, tried to locate and was told the phone was off. Looked at the page, saw a couple other options, one to put a message on the phone–what would I say to the thief that would be useful–one to delete my personal information. At this point everything seemed logical and the minor warning was easily overlooked, I mean, after all, why would deleting files on the iPhone stop it from being locatable? Like many users, I failed to read carefully enough, the headlines were all I needed. This was an Apple product and an Apple web site. How much safer could one be?

 This is the ad that made me so brave

Would deleting my private info keep me from finding my iPhone? What a silly notion. Programmatically, there is nothing stopping it from being locatable even if Apple does a complete wipe of the phone. Just write a small stub of code that will restore the ability of the phone to be found. Trivial, really, I know, I’m a programmer; I can clearly see how to do so simple a thing. Surely Apple can too. So yes, as with so many other people, I did not read as thoroughly as I might have, and after all, Apple has always been wise enough to hand hold its customers, sometimes to distraction. Who would have believed that a single click of the mouse would wipe away any chance of retrieving the iPhone? Only after it was too late to do anything does the website make a big and bold statement letting you know you are you will no longer be able to locate or place a message on your iPhone. What every happened to, “This will stop your being able to find your iPhone, are you sure?

Now, understand something here: I was laid off without warning or severance on the day before Thanksgiving of last year. I had gotten that job in March of last year after being on unemployment from my previous job going out of business – it was a mortgage company, remember the banking/mortgage collapse that started this huge mess we are all in? So I did not qualify for unemployment so soon again. I am a Software Engineer with thirty-five years of experience. This means employers see a fifty-one year old man who will cost them more than three fresh young faces with no skill, straight from school. And business is about money, not about getting the job done in the best way, and this fifty-one year old has health problems.

I have a shattered ankle that I should not be walking on. I have a necrotic ulcer on the heel of that foot. I need treatment which I cannot get; I’m in California where healthcare takes the form of filling out endless paperwork, but not doing anything. I am now homeless, living in my car. What little chance I have of getting a new job in no small part relies on my ability to communicate. Thanks to this negligent programming and fuzzy thinking in both software design and web page design, my phone is now gone and with it my link to the world and my chances of getting work. Apple has, with one button press, destroyed my life.

Super! And I had thought AT&T was the bad part of this partnership.

And he lived unhappily ever after.

iPhone Stolen – A Tragedy

I made myself a promise over a month ago that I would stop going to the various non-medical homeless services offered here in San Diego. These places are insidious. Wait here, wait there, sing hymns here, even though you are not of that faith and don’t want to be, wait a week for this, three weeks for that, first Thursdays from 1-1:15 for that, seventeenth Tuesdays of Octember for that, breakfast from 8 AM to 11 AM, no, not a range, that’s how long you will loose in order to eat, you must get your chair at 8 AM and by the time the religious service ends and you are served food and can leave it’s 11 AM. Diner is the same but from 3 PM to 6 PM. Lunch I cannot eat as it requires standing in line for an hour or more, and is not a possibility for me. 

So I gave up on all this. I’m not out here to see what nifty (crappy) services for the homeless I can get. I’m all about e-mailing and mailing resumes, setting and keeping job appointments and getting off the street as fast as I can. Taking part in the homeless services keeps me from that, it all takes far too much time, just eating two meals a days cuts my job hunting time down to between 11 AM and 3 PM. And let us not forget, most places have lunch between 11 AM and 1 PM, so that leaves me what, 1 PM to 3 PM less travel time if I want to eat? Forget it.

So, yesterday, a friend who had gotten off the street for a month or so ended up getting back on the street. He asked me for help and I said sure, I’d help him. He wanted help moving his stuff to storage. Well, my car is packed to the gills. So, I broke my promise to myself and went to the Neil Good Day Center on 299 17th St., in San Diego. Among other things, they offer short term storage space to the homeless there. I got a space, packed out all the stuff from the back seat of my car which just fit the space. I then headed off to pick up my friend and his stuff. I reached for my phone to call and let him know I was on the way.

NO PHONE.

Long story short, it must have fallen from my shirt pocket when I was bending down to put my stuff into the floor level space. It was the only bending I was doing. While another friend had lugged my stuff in, as I cannot carry anything due to an extreme lack of stomach muscles – which had been mostly removed during my treatment for The Flesh Eating Bacteria. But I had to bend down, which alone is painful and difficult, to get things organized in the space. The pain and difficulty caused me to be inatentive and I didn’t notice my phone pop out.

But someone else did, as when I returned, the iPhone was gone and had not been turned in.

Seventy-five percent of my resume activity and one hundred percent of my emailing is done on my iPhone. My job interviews are most often set on my iPhone. My life is on my iPhone. This crappy laptop is much slower and harder to use than my iPhone. I even do…did most of my Blogging from the iPhone. And I keep in touch with friends all over the country and my family in Hungary (Mother) and Australia (Sister, Niece and B-in-law) by iPhone. And I have to pay $77.38 a month for iPhone service on an iPhone I don’t have for another fourteen months. Thanks to Apple and AT&T, to replace my iPhone now, would be a mere $300.

I am destroyed.

BACKGROUND: Health Problems Leading to My Homelessness

Unlike, I admit, the vast majority of the homeless on the streets of San Diego, I am something of a rarity. Besides myself, I only know of two others among the hundreds of homeless I’ve come to meet and in some cases know, who are looking actively and continuously for work. Being homeless with health problems at fifty-one years of age in this depressed economy makes the job hunt a bit of a problem.

Health problems, you ask?

I am handicapped. I suffer from horrible Neuropathy that affects both my legs and hands. My legs are numb to the touch but horribly painful from the knees down. My fingers are the same way. My balance is badly effected and since I cannot feel if I am stepping or standing in a way that is painful, even damaging to my feet, I frequently end up with horrific diabetic ulcers which quickly become infected. 

In 2003, I came down with The Flesh Eating Bacteria in my abdomen and right groin. During a five week period, I had twenty-five major abdominal surgeries, radical debridements where they carved off over one hundred and fifty pounds of flesh and where I had to relearn how to walk after four months of total bed rest, relearn to breath without a ventilator after two months on one, etc. Got my liver and kidney function back after having had both fail during the infection.

I’ve had ten hospitalizations of ten days to three weeks duration since then for major infections of ulcers on my feet and an eleventh to amputate my left big toe and part of the foot. Last year, I fell and shattered my ankle. They did two surgeries to repair it, put in two steel plates and nineteen screws to fix things, then gave me permission to start walking too soon and one of the two leg bones re-broke and shattered the steel plate on that side. My final orders from my Orthopedic Surgeon , who would do no further work in my ankle as I had run out of insurance (and who was not the Orthopedic surgeon who gave me permission to walk before all had healed well) was absolutely no weight bearing on that foot until it was fixed.

Amusing.

I have no wheelchair, and really need but don’t have an electric wheelchair. I don’t have medicare or medicaid, been turned down for one reason or another, don’t qualify for Disability though I am apealing that. I should not, must not walk on the foot. I cannot get a wheelchair let alone the scooter/electric wheelchair I need – I’ve even made pleas on Craig’s list, but the folks that have them and no longer need them want huge sums of money for them. Given that these things cost thousands of dollars, but are usually gotten for no cost to the individual through insurance or medicare, this seems a bit excessive. I could be wrong. So I walk. On a busted and deteriorating ankle. With a broken down bledsoe conformer boot I cannot afford to get replaced and which the hospitals I’ve been to won’t replace (I mean you, UCSD San Diego Medical Center and Scripps Mercy, San Diego and Scripps La Jolla.)

Now, during the few times when I’ve had insurance, the cost of my medications was a mere three hundred and sixty-seven dollars a month. Most of the time, however, it runs around eleven hundred a month. Bandages and the special, high tech bandages used to promote healing run another three to four hundred a month far too many months out of every year since 2003. When I’ve not been insured, I’ve been careful to pay the bills that came from Doctors and not from hospitals. At over two and a half millions in bills, I gave up on hospitals.

I’ve had three jobs since 2003, all three laid me off with no notice and no severance pay, all three were make-do jobs that paid me well under my usually six figure paycheck. One of the three had no insurance, one had it only for my last month there.

In general, these jobs paid enough to keep me in a cheap apartment, pay utility, gas and food bills, pay for a junker car and keep the junker running and pay my medical bills. By selling my old Macintosh computers which have high resale values, I was able to keep a current Macintosh computer on hand until I became homeless. End of possibilities. All else went to bills.

Today I have an old and crappy Compaq PC that barely works. I would give my right arm, and I’m right handed, for a Mac Laptop so I could write iPhone/Touch Apps and make some money, I have so many great ideas, but I had to sell the Macs. And when I come limping into a job interview with that horrible looking and smelling boot on my foot, there’s not much chance of a new Mac in my future. Or a new car. Or an apartment. Or insulin.  Or anything else.

‘Scuse me, I get depressed at times. Writing this has become one of those times.

Lagging behind

I’ve been to a lot of new coffee shops lately and am in the process of writing my thoughts up. My up coming visit to the San Diego Zoo and my problems with the wound on my left foot have taken up so much of my time lately, that I’ve been remiss in posting here. Never fear, I have a ton of material and I will but putting it up this week as fast as I can!

I’m Off To The Zoo, San Diego, CA

I was given a free pass to go to the San Diego Zoo or Wild Animal Park. I’m thinking zoo, it’s world famous and as long as I’m here, I definitely want to see it! It would be beyond a shame to be in San Diego all this time and not visit the world famous San Diego Zoo, frequently talked up as the best zoo in the country.

And being a photo bug, I’ve managed to borrow a friends camera to do the photography, as you know I will have to make a photo record of this marvel of a zoo. I can hardly wait, all I need is nice clear weather. So watch this space and my gallery for the forthcoming photo stream, this should be good!