Avast, Ye Buccaneers!

I think I won my battle with the Phone Pirates, or maybe they won. It’s a bloody tale of disruption, disorder, and misery!

If you’ve missed my previous exciting chapter in the Battle with the Phone Pirates, my cell phone was invaded by buccaneers intent on enslaving my poor little Galaxy Note. Sad, it was. Sad.

My little phone received messages like “ir7keid8&@club.com”, and the occasional “STOP!” And then my wife asked me if I was getting up at 2:30 in the morning and streaming tons of porn or something. What? What?!? Of the three phones on our program, mine was using easily ten times the data of the other two. There was only one answer: Pirates!!!

It took awhile to convince my service provider that my phone had, in fact, been invaded. They wanted me to report the source of the various Stop messages. No, no, I told them, I am the one SENDING stuff on my phone! “Oh, well, you’ve got to stop doing that!”

Anyway, eventually, we all agreed that someone other than I had control over my phone, and that it must stop. It took a simple throw of a switch (which of these two new phone numbers would you like?) and that was it.

BLAMMO! Take THAT, Pirate Pete, or Buccaneer Bob, or Filibustier Phil! Privateer Pete wasn’t included because privateers operated under a Letter of Marque granted by their king or queen and were therefore roving in a legal fashion. No blammo for the privateers.

Just like that, my phone lay silent, joyfully napping in message-free mellowness.

However.

However, anybody who knows me and tries to call? Bzzzt, no answer. Text me? Bzzzt, no answer. And all those programs, like WordPress, that want to send you a text message to verify that it is really you logging in? Bzzzt, that’s a no-go, Houston.

However.

I don’t know how the pirates got into my phone. Was it a downloaded game? Did they sneak in through my solitaire? Did they come in through one of my contacts? How did ye get aboard, lad?

No program on my phone, no shred of data, was without suspicion. Backing the thing up was out of the question, for fear I’d backup the pirate’s entry port.

A single answer, and not a good one: factory reset. No, Cap’n! Ye’ll lose everything! Yer contacts! Yer pitchers! Yer solitaire scores!

Push RESET to return the phone to it’s factory settings. Are you SURE you want to push RESET? Resetting your phone loses ALL your data… Even the phone didn’t want me to do it.

Push.

Yes, I beat the bloody buccaneers at their own game. Took away from them the one thing they desired – my phone. Resetting my phone pushed the putrid pirates into posterity. Ah HARRRR! I won!

But it was a costly victory. One that led to a week of changing this and emailing that and reloading solitaire. It’s been a painful week, although now I’m through it. Sadly, the pirates never knew they’d been whupped. Nope. Their phone-stealing robot simply stopped using my number. That’d be the tragedy of the tale, lad.

So, that’s my tale of the Phone Pirates. It be a true tale. Now let’s have us a pint and I’ll tell ye about me battle with Adobe…