I was going to make an interesting post tonight. About the death of the Celtic Tiger. Or about the Tall Ships Festival, which was a real blast last weekend. Or perhaps something else. But I haven’t pulled all the needed photos onto my computer yet, and I currently can’t get my too-wide CF adapter plugged into my USB port because my backup drive is plugged in. And it will be for a while, because I’ve been trying to troubleshoot a slow-Time-Machine-backup problem all day, and I apparently still haven’t succeeded. (By the way, this site has some excellent information about Time Machine, especially the Troubleshooting page. Even if it hasn’t solved my problem. Yet.)

So. You get this instead. And maybe a couple of other musings. We’ll see.

When last we left the Smartphone saga on the blog, I was going to stick to my Smartphone-free plan for a month, until August 1, and then reconnect with my old iPhone 3GS. I did that, but within 24 hours the iPhone 3GS started rebooting itself constantly. So, I put it away.

A couple weeks later, I thought I might know what the problem was and how to solve it. So, I got it out again. Within 24 hours, same deal—although now it was rebooting at irregular intervals (though every few minutes) rather than constantly. An iPhone 3GS with a cracked back and a difficult to push home button that reboots constantly is not much use. (The battery life wasn’t that great, either, come to think of it.) I could probably have it “repaired” for the out-of-warranty service fee ($149), but that would still leave me with a need for a new Verizon phone upon return to the U.S.

Thus, I think I’m going to spring for an unlocked iPhone when the new models come out in a few weeks. Not that I’ll necessarily get the new model—we’ll see what that entails—but at minimum the price should come down on the current models.