I can't speak without an interception

I went back to the Verizon store today. I figured whatever issue there had been recording that my new used iPhone had been carrier-unlocked, the other day, had surely had time to clear up and I could finally move off my venerable old cell phone, one that I've been using since George W Bush was president. Nope!

While I don't understand the precise issue, neither do they. Apparently the current state of things is my phone things it's unlocked, but some system somewhere that handles phone serial numbers doesn't think it is. Or something baffling because neither the store clerk nor the shift manager was precisely sure what was wrong here. They both agreed they had seen something like this worked out by someone who'd, of course, just left for the day. But they thought they knew what she had done so could do it themselves? And they could not. They also tried doing factory resets and trying it out with a different SIM card, one from one of the display-model phones that they knew would work with their network. Finally the manager recommended taking down my phone's information and filling out a form that my clerk had never even heard of, that should set the process in place to clear this up. They promised to call when this was cleared up so I could come in and do the account transition. I gave them the land line's number to call.

While waiting, I saw a toddler in a onesie toddling around, trying their best to touch every object in the store not more than two feet ten inches off the ground. Their mother (I assume) would take moments out from trying to talk with the clerk to catch them and bring them back to somewhere under control, and lose them pretty quickly. I sympathize with the kid because, I mean, what else are you going to do when you're a kid and your folks have taken you to a Boring Grown-up Store? Also it struck me that this could be the base for a silly little casual Pac-Man-style video game, where you're a toddler trying to touch everything in the Boring Store before Parent can catch you, with Store Clerks slowing you down and Other Customers just blocking random paths. For the extra challenge level there's a checkerboard floor and the black squares are, of course, portals to falling into infinite space. This is abnormally viable, as a video game idea, for my mind, so it's probably for the best I will never do anything beyond lay out that idea for it.

I didn't obsessively photograph everything we looked at at Cedar Point the Saturday of Halloweekends. But something drew special attention from me and you're going to see it, so there.

Windseeker's entrance to Cedar Point. We assume this is going to be demolished and renovated into something else, as part of The Boardwalk area to be opened next season, although we don't actually know that for sure. But it is the entrance we've seen the least, so, we used this chance to get some farewell(?) snaps.

And here's what it looks like on the inside, respectable enough if still styled to the 80s-ish era when it was last updated.

And a view of that little shed to the side that I think is actually Windseeker's station. Oh, also, you don't need to get your hand stamped anymore; instead, you just reuse your season pass if you have one, or get a reentry ticket if you don't have a season pass. Sure, they're giving up on the ease of use that a hand stamp offers but on the bright side this lets them capture and store much more data about how often people leave the park and spend outside it before re-entering.

Looking up at Windseeker in one of those rare moments when the wind didn't stop it from riding.

Used my zoom lens to see people on the ride.

And here's the construction fences and promise of The Boardwalk. They've pulled out the name 'G A Boeckling Company' as part of making this hearken back to the 1950s, a time when, historically, Cedar Point was doing miserably and was one stiff breeze away from closing for good. They're playing it up as a happier time than it really was, the way pop culture has always viewed the 1950s.

Trivia: Apollo 17's transearth coast lasted 67 hours, 34 minutes, 5 seconds. Source: Apollo By The Numbers, Richard W Orloff. NASA SP-4029.

Currently Reading: King of All Balloons: The Adventurous Life of James Sadler, the First English Aeronaut, Mark Davies.