User Error

Last night, on my way from LAX into Los Angeles for IndieCade, I snapped some touristy pictures of the neon and palm trees and general LA glamour. I know that bookish girls who majored in Latin are supposed to eschew the glitz and see through the phoniness of LA, but I don’t. I kind of love it.

So I leaned out the window of the airport and snapped some pictures in different directions. It was getting late at night by this time. See, I missed my connecting flight in Philly because someone had just repainted a strip on the runway and we weren’t allowed to taxi in until it dried. (Yes, really. This isn’t blog hyperbole because it would never occur to me to paint stripes on an active runway.) I started giggling at the thought of being stuck while we watched paint dry. You know when you shouldn’t giggle? On a plane full of angry people. I’m just saying.

I unlocked my phone to take another picture. It unlocked and faded to black. I tried again. It went black. I tried a couple more times, because if something doesn’t work the first six times, it might on the seventh try. I was starting to panic. OH NO! MY PHONE! HOW AM I GOING TO CALL OR TEXT MY INDIE FRIENDS? HOW AM I GOING TO GET TO INDIECADE WITHOUT MY LA METRO APP? AND MY EVENT SCHEDULE!

Then I realized that that black screen wasn’t a broken phone, but a flashless picture of an LA night.

From this point on, everything I ever write about usability can easily be countered with YOU TOOK A PICTURE AND THOUGHT YOU KILLED YOUR PHONE.