iPad Odyssey - The Final Showdown

When last we left our intrepid, techno-challenged heroine (aka me)...

I just completed my second run to Best Buy in the same day, I now have 3G service and I have to fly like the wind to get home before my mom arrives to drop Ryan off.

I make it home and race upstairs to get the iPad docked back up to the computer, re-synced with iTunes and ready to enter my cellular data plan info again. I get the online form filled out and am just about to press "send" when the 3G icon disappears from the status bar and I get the "no SIM card" message again.

AAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

Except...now I know what to do, right? Because one of the TG's (I can't keep straight which one at this point) showed me that neat trick with the paper clip and while I don't have compressed air, I'm certainly capable of blowing on the SIM card myself. It did take me a few minutes to find the right gauge of paper clip (have to use one of the small ones) but I get it unbent and into the hole and am just exerting a tiny bit of pressure to pop the card out when my son bursts into the room behind me, yells "hey, mom, whatcha doin'?" and scares the crap outta me. Which means I put too much pressure on the card and it goes flying and disappears.

Did I mention it's TEENY TINY?

Cuz it is.

I also realize that I was concentrating on fixing the iPad so hard that I didn't hear my mom and son come in the house. Hence the shock when he snuck up behind me.

Now I have to go be polite to my mom while simultaneously trying to speed her departure because all I can think about is that SIM card that is now lost somewhere in my rat's nest of an office.

"Hi, mom. Thanks for taking care of Ryan. What? You have to leave already? Oh darn. Okay, well, bye then. Don't let the door hit you, etc."

Yeah, I am a stellar daughter.

Then it's back upstairs to spend a torturous amount of time on my hands and knees looking for the effing SIM card all the while muttering "oh, please let me find it...please...please."

Fortunately, God finds me vastly amusing or completely pathetic, but either way he decided to help me find the darn thing. I get it re-installed, boot the iPad up, fill out the cellular data page again and...

Now, does ANYBODY think it actually worked this time? Because if you do, you are crazy.

I went several more rounds with this thing and the 3G service would cut out every time I got ready to send the sign up data. And yet, I had this terrible feeling that if I took it back to Best Buy, they would find some ridiculously obvious thing that I was doing wrong and I'd look like a complete idiot.

That feeling was at war with my determination that this thing WOULD NOT defeat me. I WILL own an iPad and it WILL function as designed and I don't care how many TG's I have to verbally abuse to get it done.

It's at about this time that I glance at my watch and realize that hey, Best Buy doesn't close for another 20 minutes. But I'll have to bring the kid with me so I holler for him to get his shoes back on so we can go (I am assuming he's still dressed because I haven't had time to tell him to put his PJ's on and he NEVER does anything unless I tell him to first) and he comes running in.

In his pajamas.

His Spongebob Squarepants pajamas.

That are bright neon yellow.

Now, it's 8:40 at night on a school night. Your son is wearing bright yellow pajamas and you have a non-functioning iPad. Does the Mom Manual cover this situation? Because I'm pretty sure it doesn't. Or if it does, it probably says to do the exact opposite of what I did.

Which was to throw a jacket on over the kid's obnoxious pajamas as camouflage and then toss him and the iPad into the car and make a break for it.

Although, to be fair, I did hesitate for at least 15 seconds over whether or not this was a good idea. And my common sense lost that argument big time.

So, off we went to BB for the THIRD time in one day.

Upon arrival, I informed the TG on duty that this iPad was defective and I wanted a replacement. Now you know I was totally prepared to hear that they had no more of this model in stock, but...miracle of miracles, they still had one.

I also demanded that this time, THEY set it up and verify the 3G before I left the store. I may have also muttered something about taking up a position on the local clock tower and mowing them all down if it didn't work, but that part of the conversation is kinda fuzzy. TG could have just been scared into compliance by the sight of Ryan's pajamas.

Okay, new iPad is officially tested and working except...now it needs the invisi-shield applied to it.

I may have developed an uncontrollable twitch at this point...especially when they tried to charge me for a new shield AND the application service fee.

Yeah, um, TG? SOOOOOO not happening. After two previous misapplications AND the broken iPad AND my THREE trips to your lame ass store...lemmee 'splain to you that I AM NOT PAYING FOR SHIT!

TG wisely saw my point. But after his knees stopped knocking together (and he may have pee'd himself a little bit, but I didn't want to totally humiliate him by pointing that out) he mentioned that the only person left in the store who knows how to put the shield on is in the cell phone department and she's only ever put shields on phones and never on an iPad.

I figure she can't do any worse than the idiot from lunch time so I give them the go-ahead and the kid and I wandered around the store amusing ourselves for the next 30 minutes.

Which is how Ryan and I ended up playing X-Box Kinect in a closed Best Buy store at 9:30 on a school night while he was wearing neon yellow pajamas, a jacket and flip flops.

I am the best Mommy EVER!

But I have a working iPad.

KJ

P.S. The girl in the cell phone department did a FABULOUS job putting the shield on. It is PERFECT. Why on earth they have some ham-handed guy in the tech department doing it crappily when this girl does it so well, I don't know, but I made sure the manager knew about it...and about everything else.