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Pwah, I’ll talk about the move (which has been completed) some other time. Right now, I feel I must lament the ignoble passing of my phone.

As of yesterday, the ‘fix’ for the T720c has been released. I downloaded it (actually, I’m a distributor, so it was sent to me early… I just didn’t know it because I didn’t have internet access until last night), and ran it. Once I found my data cable, it worked perfectly. I had a lovely picture of Iowa State as my background (which was soon replaced with a picture of Megan… aww…), an animated gif as my screen saver (a dancing hula doll… lol), and a dozen or so new ringtones uploaded, including (among others) “Hard Knock Life,” “Ain’t Nuttin But a G Thang,” and VOICE ringtones of Strongbad and Homer Simpson.

I was about ready to wrap it up and call it a night, when I decided my voice ringtones wouldn’t be complete without Homestar Runner. I found a nice wave file of him saying, “I know! Can you buh-weeve it?!” converted it to ringtone format, and uploaded it. It sounded great. I named the file “Believe It,” and started to shut stuff down to go to bed. Then, I decided that the name wasn’t very accurate, so I renamed the ringtone “Can You Believe It.” But that still didn’t look right. I renamed the file a final time, this time to “Can You Believe It?”

I couldn’t believe it. An error popped up on the screen, letting me know I’d chosen an invalid filename. I guess the phone didn’t like my question mark. I hit okay, figuring a question mark wasn’t the end of the world, and that I could live without it.

My phone, however, couldn’t live -with- it. It had already changed the filename to incorporate the question mark, even though it was an invalid filename. I tried to change it, but the phone locked up. Frustrated, I restarted my phone.

And now it won’t come back on. I press the power button, and the backlight lights up, waits five or so seconds, and powers back off. Five seconds later, the backlight is on again. It continues in this pattern no matter what… even if the phone is closed (meaning backlighting should be impossible). Even if I press the power button to turn the phone off. I ended up having to pull the battery out last night to stop it from flickering.

So now, I have to try and get a new phone (or at least this phone flashed with a new, clean copy of the software), because mine is totally hosed. Not because of the hack, mind you. The hack works wonderfully. The phone is hosed because I stuck a question mark at the end of a sentence, and the phone didn’t know what to do with it. Nothing more, nothing less. And for those of you counting, this will be my third T720c, assuming they choose to replace it. I know of people who have made it through six or seven copies of the phone, simply because the software is so buggy in some places. So buggy, a simple question mark can render the phone useless.

I know! Can you buh-weeve it?!