Broken and Alone

 I have been working with recoverin' old blog posts and other old fodder from the Chronicles of a 21st Century Coal Miner blog, and it has been... difficult.

Luckily there's a book now, right? 

The biggest problem I have found has been how elusive archives were for the blog. I wouldn't be a sucker and back-up data stored safely on Google's server, now, would I? 

Besides the fact I am forever locked out of my old Google account. Why? Well because it wants to verify my identity by sending an email to my Samsung Galaxy S5 which was signed in "a long time ago."

Well, no shit. 

One of the caviats of bein' blue collar, and especially in the 2010s as phone manufacturers struggled to make decent screens, was how fun it was to shatter my phone screen. And I didn't blame it on any one brand. You see, I went through them all. 

Here's a hefty list of phones I used over the years, and their eventual demise: 

Brand	Model	Fate
Motorola	Razr Ultra 2025	Current Victim
Motorola	Razr 2023	Sacrificed to AT&T via trade-in.
Motorola	Razr 2023	Broke screen - with a needle in my pocket.
Motorola	Razr 2020	Broke screen – fell out of my gym locker.
Nokia	Somethin-or-rather	Resold on eBay bc lame.
Lenovo	Somethin-or-rather	Broke screen – dropped it on a job site
Motorola	Z3	Broke screen – grain of sand at the beach cracked the screen
Motorola	Z1	Broke screen – dropped it at a gas station
Blackberry	Priv	Broke screen – smashed while working on my truck.
Samsung	Galaxy S5	Broke screen – accidentally crushed when closing my tool box.
Apple	iPhone 4S	Broke screen – fell out of my pocket.
Samsung	Galaxy S2	Still in Possession
Samsung	Galaxy S	Broke screen – ran over by truck.
Samsung	Captivate	Still in Possession
Blackberry	Storm	Still in Possession
Samsung	Something-or-rather	Still in Possession

 

...As you can see, different brands, different results, but dag-nabbit I can break a screen if you leave me alone with a phone for a minute or three. 

I should probably buy that insurance they try to up-sell on me, but I ain't no sucker and won't be duped by some kid's commission check. Ha! Take that, AT&T kid!

Anyway, so this leaves my old Google account awaiting the return of my S5 which is somewhere in a landfill in West Virginia, buried under god-only-knows-what, probably with the Mossy Oak Camo OtterBox still clasped on clinging for dear-life. Remember those? That's vintage 2015, baby. 

Aside from that, Google's account recovery team is absolutely atrocious. If you do manage to get ahold of someone (I did once) no amount of pleading and begging would work. Aside from the fact they can see that nobody has logged into the account for over a decade - they absolutely won't let me log in even though I know the password and explain that my Samsung S5 is long since out of my possession.

All for account security, of course. 

That leaves me on the outside looking in. So when I found a trove of photos on the Internet Archive from the old blog, I couldn't help but laugh as this one is exactly how Google makes me feel: 

Wanting and wishing I still had that Galaxy S5. But hey, at least I can enhance the photo resolutions with AI now, I suppose. What is old is new again.