#6 Musings

Hi Everyone,

As I've said in a previous Musings post (located here -> #1 Musings), I recently subscribed to Shudder a horror dedicated streaming service and I came across a series of horror films based on a variation of the "found footage" genre, the movie trilogy Hell House LLC. Now the first film in the series was quite tight in terms of storytelling and visuals but the subsequent films got a bit messy as sequels have a tendency to become. I enjoyed them as some filler movies, with really only the second movie actually getting me with the traditional jump scare. Everything else goes exactly how you would imagine with the scares telelgraphed quite obviously. If you are a "found footage" horror film I think you'd enjoy them though I certainly wouldn't count them as cult classics. That is to say that these films to do not to anything new with the genre but nonetheless do a serviceable job of drawing within the lines.

I love my phone, it is an extension of me and my connection to the internet. I consume lots of media, have both positive and negative interactions online. I ran into a problem with my Pixel 4XL where the glass back plate started to become unglued. Just starting coming off the frame. Now this obviously poses a problem with by NFC payments as well as water resistance. I jumped straight onto Google Pixel support and started a ticket. After the usual questions and sending of photos to prove that the phone wasn't dropped they authorised an exchange. Fantastic. They send me a new refurbished phone and then I send back my broken one. Finished.

I get the refurbished phone within two days and I'm thinking that this is fantastic service. Unfortunately, I day after I got it, I figure out that the phone they have sent me has a faulty rear camera system. Usually, I use my cameras very infrequently. Unluckily, due to the pandemic here in Sydney restaurants and cafes are required to collect personal details for contact tracing. This is most easily done by having a QR code that you scan with your phone. This makes it really annoying to have a phone with a broken camera. Anyway, considering I got this phone within a couple of days I figure that we can just do the same thing. Get onto Google support and start a new ticket. Unfortunately, It turns out that due to my outstanding RMA I cannot start another until the last one is complete. Double annoying considering I need to send the old phone back to Hong Kong to be inspected. Anyway, first world problems and all that but still highly frustrating. I would take a bet that my refurbished phone was returned due to an intermittent fault within the rear camera unit and Google's quality control missed it.

As I said before, first world problems and if that's the worst thing that happens I'll consider myself lucky.

Anyway, thanks for reading my rant and I'll see you in the next one,

B