shellphones | [VOICE] | un: hammertime

Type: Voice with Screencaps!
Sender ID: hammertime
To: Public
Subject: Shellphone Tech Support
Warnings: Stupidity

Okay, I admit I'm not the best when it comes to technology but I'm seriously running out of patience here! All I want to do is text someone! I was able to text them before but then I changed their name in my phone and now I can't AND IT'S BAD ENOUGH THAT I CAN'T GET NEAR CERTAIN PEOPLE BECAUSE OF THESE BRANDS BUT IF I CAN'T TEXT SOMEONE NOW EXPLODING PRISONS ARE GONNA BE THE LEAST OF THEIR WORRIES.

[Darin takes a deep, steadying breath. Normally, the person he would go to for tech support is Zelda. A person he cannot presently go anywhere near. So now he's the network's problem.]

Look. Okay. I just. I need someone to look at my contacts and tell me if I screwed something up. Because I don't know what I did. I just changed one contact. I change contact names all the time! All the time!

LOOK. HERE.

CAN ANYONE SEE THE PROBLEM BECAUSE I JUST WANT TO TEXT SOMEONE AND EVERY TEXT I [Sounds of fingers furiously tapping] TRY [More tapping] I GET [TAPPING]

... ... ...

"MESSAGE CANNOT BE DELIVERED" MY BRIGHT, BLUE ASS!!! WHO THE HELL MADE THESE PIECES OF—

[Darin is drowned out by the sound of wind because he did, in fact, throw his phone.]

[He will retrieve it shortly once it lands.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Would replacing it fix it?

Blacksmith, actually. Pretty sure I can make anything you can imagine as long as I can puzzle it out. Cut my teeth on the standard smithing faire back home but since I've been here I've been researching magitech pretty extensively.

[He laughs and admits,] Nope! But it would fix your problem of having a broken phone.

Still, that's a pretty big leap. After all, a blacksmith might specialize in making the parts, but understanding how a phone works is more about looking at how a bunch of little parts fit together. It's a lot like clockwork!

[If he gets that, maybe Tails can explain how he probably knocked an important 'gear' out of alignment. Like accidentally changing the contact's number, for example.]

See, clocks? Clocks I get. I get the precision engineering needed to make a clock work the way its supposed to. Those things are literal mechanical marvels. It's when everything gets stored in these little boards and chips that I get lost. I can visualize mechanical components working in tandem. But when everything is magic and electrical currents...

Well, that's what I want to get better with.

Also, someone should really design a system on these phones for people who come from less technologically advanced worlds. My kingdom just perfected its first steam engine.

Great! I can work with that! Here, if you'd like a visual aid...

[He pulls up the drawing application, and using some technical trickery, shares the screen through video. And on the screen, he starts drawing a flowchart.]

It's a lot like an engine: You have smaller components that perform a certain task in the larger system, each of which has its own design and considerations. And while they're interchangeable, if one of them stops working, it's going to start causing problems for everything else in the system.

[He starts getting a little more enthusiastic, talking faster:]

For example, there's one program that manages your contacts, and another which actually handles the sending and receiving of texts. The messaging system only knows how to communicate with the larger phone network, and relies on the contacts to store data on where to actually send it. If you've configured a contact incorrectly, it's going to try sending the message to someone who doesn't exist, and thus the data isn't going to go through. On the other hand, if there's a problem with the messaging configuration, no messages will be able to go through at all—

[And then he catches himself. Right, simplify. Steam engines.]

... is... this helping at all?

It's like trying to swap a screw with a rivet. Both technically do the same thing but each has its own purpose in different constructions. You'd never use a thin screw to hold together two thick pieces of metal because it would through the entire structural integrity off.

Different programs have different jobs but even then, it's not one-size fits all. They need to be properly configured and given the right information to function properly.

In other words, if I give the program a bunch of bad parts, it won't run.

Exactly! For someone who supposedly has trouble with technology, you're catching on really quick! I think I would've lost most people, somewhere in there...

[And to think, he was worried that this was going to be another Knuckles situation. Maybe this guy just has a short temper?]

And just like trying to use mismatched parts, sometimes one might cause the whole thing to crash... but sometimes not. It might not be working well, but it won't lock up and explode just because you've corrupted someone's contact information. So it takes a bit of detective work to figure out where it's going wrong!

So the game's about precision and accuracy. Fine tuning the instrument to accept the right data and use it properly without too much waste.

Huh...in that case, if the person I can't message is the only person I can't message, then that means the data it's been given is wrong. Or calibrated improperly.

That's the most likely problem. And I mean, I know you said you only changed their name in your contacts, but...

Are you sure you didn't change anything else by mistake? Especially if you were already having trouble. [He might have made things worse trying to fix some other problem, if he was getting so fed up with it.]

Why don't you walk me through all the steps you took?

Well, I generally only mess with the photos in the contact list. I don't really mess with the names because I'm worried I'll...mess something up. This is the first time I've ever changed a contact name in the device.

But these things are pretty small and I've got big hands. Maybe I did hit something I wasn't supposed to.

...Honestly, I kinda wanna pick the whole process apart now.

[VOICE] | un: hammertime

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