A photo’s secret tale

The office project has been turning up a lot of unexpected things, and one of those led to a something I haven’t mentioned before: My post yesterday had an unannounced extra, hidden feature: The photo.

That photo was taken with the macro lens of the Ztylus lens kit that Nigel and I got for our phones back in 2018, around ten months before he died. The journey to get to that point was a bit of a twisting road, though.

The first problem was that, quite frankly, I misplaced my lens kit at the old house and didn’t find it again until I began unpacking boxes this past week. Actually, I think it may have been the same day I found that formerly “missing” knife.

Another problem was that it requires a special case on the phone, and I didn’t have one for my current phone. That’s because last year the battery on my iPhone 6 suddenly died, and I needed a phone with my phone number. I went to the technology store I’ve mentioned several times and found the cheapest new iPhone model they had, which at that time was the 7. I planned on upgrading my phone, and I didn’t want to invest in an expensive phone right then. The bigger issue was that at that time I was still having trouble with my patience and tolerance for frustration, and back then I just couldn’t deal with working out what the best newer phone model would be, not when I had no phone (this was before my Internet was connected, so I relied on my phone for Internet connection).

So, I bought an iPhone 7 and got it all set up the same day—something I’d never done before because Nigel always took care of that for me. I had to learn how to put my SIM into it, transfer my data, and so on (fortunately, I had a recent back-up on my MacBook, so I didn’t really lose any data.

Nigel had an iPhone 6 that he replaced with an iPhone 8 when his phone’s battery died (the 6 was notorious for its terrible battery longevity). It was after that when we got our Ztylus lens kits and the specific covers for our phones. When I changed phones, my old cover no longer fit my phone.

This wasn’t a huge problem because I didn’t know where my either of our lens kits were, so I couldn’t use one, anyway. However, I still have Nigel’s phone, so I thought maybe I’d just use that one for photos, because I didn’t want to buy a cover for my phone when I didn’t plan on keeping it forever.

While I was moving stuff out of my office wardrobe, I came across the box for Nigel’s phone cover and found out it was for an iPhone 7 or 8. In other words, I could put his phone cover on my phone, and that meant I could use the lens kit again for the first time in a couple years. The photo with yesterday’s post was that first photo, and doing that made me happy.

I guess the question, though, is what to do with Nigel’s phone. I kept his phone number active, at first in case anyone tried to reach him who hadn’t heard he’d died (like, say, a former colleague he didn’t talk to very often). Later, I planned on using that as my personal phone and using mine for “work”, including podcasting. It turned out that I didn’t need to do that, though it’s still an option.

The plan was to buy an iPhone 12, which allows dual SIMs, meaning I could have one phone with two numbers, but, again, the question is, why? I assume that both SIMs have to be on the same network, which isn’t a big deal, though they aren’t at the moment. It’s really that having two monthly plans is expensive, particularly because I don’t need two sets of mobile data (not the least because the vast majority of my data usage is over wifi, anyway). I could probably put one of them on a prepay plan instead, because that’s much cheaper.

I’m nearly at the point where I could seriously consider just disconnecting Nigel’s phone, or, take it over as my phone—though mine is actually newer/used for less time (but a lower model). This decision would be easier if I knew what it is I want to do with the rest of my life, but I’m nowhere near doing that yet, so this decision is probably a way off, too.

There’s one other thing that strikes me about this tale: As near as I can tell, I never blogged about getting that iPhone 7 or getting the Internet connected. Both of those happened within the first six weeks of my moving in, a time when I wasn’t blogging much. I know I mentioned it on my personal Facebook, just not here, and that makes posts like this a bit more complicated than they’d be if I’d blogged more often back then—yeah, right, as if that was even possible!

In any case, I can again use the lens kit we bought for my phone (I still haven’t found Nigel’s lenses). Like I said in yesterday’s post, baby steps. But now I can at least take some better photos along the journey.