I spent the majority of yesterday afternoon stressed to the balls because of various electronic devices.

For the past week, I’ve been having charging issues with my phone – it wouldn’t charge on a dock. Yeah, I could still charge via cable, but I have a clock radio charging dock thingie and multiple Apple docks and this just will not do. I’ve never had an issue with any of my iDevices before, but this was something I needed fixed – so I made an appointment for the Genius Bar, and prepared myself for the inquisition by restoring my beloved and removing any signs that it had been jailbroken.

At least, that was the plan. There’s a bug in the Make It Mine tweak I use to change my provider from “Rogers” to “Kimli”, and it remained after restoring my phone. At this point it was close to midnight, and I was tired of caring – so I left it alone and hoped the Genius would not notice.

He did, of course, notice. I arrived early for my appointment and made use of the time trying my phone on all 8 docks they had on display – my phone would successfully charge on 2/8. Then it was time to talk to my green-hatted Genius, who was a) impressed at the number of games I had installed on my phone, b) tickled by my phone’s name of “Atomic Broccoli”, and c) admonishing because of my jailbreak. He insisted that my charging issue was likely due to my illegal software hack , and made me do a hard reset of the device, giving me a naked phone. After this long process, I tried charging the phone again – OH LOOK, IT STILL DOESN’T WORK! He made noises about insisting that it might be my dock that was the problem, but after repeatedly showing him that my phone will not charge but Ed’s will, we wore him down – and I got a new iPhone. Hooray!

Oh, but no. In my relief at getting a new phone with only an hour of (polite) arguing, I forgot to ask the most important question: was this phone unlocked? I did have the wherewithall to make sure the phone was 32GB – I need for all 240 apps, damnit – but that was it. Since there’s no real way to tell an unlocked phone from a locked one, I figured it was probably fine but I’d call in the morning just to make sure.

If you follow my Twitter stream, you already know how this gripping tale of triumph over adversity turns out: according to Apple Support who ran the serial number this morning, the phone is indeed a locked Rogers phone.

Why no, I don’t mind setting up my phone – a 4-hour process – for a fourth time in three days. It’d be an honour!

I might cry.

Or, I might not. I called the Apple Store immediately after getting off the phone with the national support center, and they swear the phone IS unlocked – their computer says so. Who to believe? Obviously I’d rather believe the option that gives me my evening back, but I’ve been burned too many times to trust again. My only option at this point is to swap SIM cards with Ed, who’s on Bell. If my phone – temporarily dubbed Subatomic Broccoli – works, then it is indeed unlocked. If not, I am back at Square One (which was an awesome math show on PBS – Math Net was so cool). FRUSTRATING!

Oh, and I also spent most of yesterday afternoon writing angry emails to the camera repair company that has my Pentax – they kind of lost my 50mm f1.4 lens. Oops! Fuckers.

Maybe the Amish are onto something.

My problems are so incredibly first world that I actually feel kind of guilty. I think I’ll go donate something today. Also, you should watch this video for MC Frontalot’s First World Problems because he is awesome and my very favouritest nerd rapper (I actually have two favourite rappers, so I must differentiate between Nerd and Indie even though both my favourites fall under both):