I can imagine a world where ants have taken over the world. It would work like this. When Eli dies, and ants have access to that giant but magnificent head of his, they will have the resources to form a super ant. If you don’t know, a super ant is a mythological being made up of several ants, most stories say 10 – 15 making up a small figure. only about 3/4 of an inch tall, but the strength gained when forming a super ant is exponential for each additional ant. The super ant could lift an 18-wheelin’ big rig above it’s head.

Anyway, after the ants eat eli’s head they will have what they need to become the most powerful being in the universe, it will roam the Earth destroying everything in it’s path. Following close behind will be billions of regular ants, not following a leader but admiring a god.

I have made a drawing.

It all started with my first (and last) craigslist Missed Connection.

October 19th, 2006 at 1:11AM
American Psycho on the 48 – m4w

I got on the bus and sat down.
You were reading American Psycho and we talked for a minute or so.
I wish I would have asked you this then:

do you want to be my friend?

eli

I never expected to hear anything back, and then…

October 21st, 2006 at 2:10 PM

I would love to be your friend. I wish we could have talked more.

-a

I was about to SHIT myself! It actually worked! I responded.

October 21st, 2006 at 8:00 PM

are you being serious? this is blowing my mind right now. you better not be fucking with me.

write back

Then she let the cat out of the bag…

October 22nd, 2006 at 4:32 PM

no. i’m not. your brother made me do it. my name is jipp. he and i are assholes.

I should have known better.

Oct 22, 2006 at 5:05 PM

ha ha! well, that’s good to know. be sure to give him a good one to the kidney for me.

There you have it, Nate, in all it’s glory. :)

But even if someone had found the phone and wanted to return it, they’d have no idea how. His phone was password protected (as it should be), so all they’d be able to do is try to guess his password and make an emergency call. That’s it. There would be no way for these hypothetical good samaritans to have any idea who’s phone they’d found and do the good deed.

Why hasn’t Apple addressed this issue?

Well, there is a very simple solution to this problem, and it starts with a piece of scrap paper and a sharpie marker.

The first step is to write your contact info on that scrap piece of paper with that sharpie marker I mentioned a second ago. I’d recommend your name, email address, and a phone number of a friend or family member. Then take a picture of it with your iPhone. Make sure you put the paper down somewhere with good lighting and hold steady when you snap the photo.

Once you’ve got a good photo, you’re ready to set that photo to your lock screen. Tap the button on the bottom left corner.

Tap “Use as Wallpaper”

Zoom and drag the photo around until it looks good and fits on the screen. Make sure that all your contact info is clearly readable and in between the lines, then tap “Set”.

Then tap “Set Lock Screen”

And that’s it! Done and done. The next time you see your lock screen it should look something like this.

Oh, and you should password protect your iPhone. Now.

[Big ups to @brke for helping me simplify this process immensely. Also, I wrote this entire post (including uploading the photos) on my Dell Mini Hackintosh while riding Amtrak Cascades from Seattle to Portland.]

* * *

About 6 months ago Flickr rolled out a new feature allowing current users to sign in with their Google ID. I was pretty excited about the idea of getting rid of an online profile/email address, so I jumped on the bandwagon: I linked my Google ID with Flickr and then promptly deleted my Yahoo ID. I only used it for signing in to Flickr and there was no reason to keep it.

Fast-forward 6 months and here I am, trying to get caught up on my photos, and getting frustrated with the fact that Flickr just can’t seem to “remember me” anymore. I had to sign in to Flickr after every time I closed my browser. Everything worked great with my old Yahoo ID, but for some reason the Google Sign In was having problems with cookies.

So this afternoon I decided I’d had enough. I decided that having a Yahoo ID was worth it if I didn’t have to sign in to Flickr 4 or 5 times a day (I’ve got A LOT of uploading to catch-up on). My first step was to create a new Yahoo ID and they hooked me up with “eliduke [at] rocketmail [dot] com.” Sounds like a pretty sweet email address to me.

Then I went searching for some instructions on how to get my switch on. It had been 6 months since I switched to my Google ID, and I was definitely a little rusty. Luckily, I found this Flickr Help page rather quickly, and on that page I found the following topic:

The subject matter wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but it certainly applied. And there were instructions right there on how to “unbind” my Google account from Flickr. I followed the steps as directed, removed my Google account, and then clicked the these instructions link.

It was there that I found instructions on how to sign in with Google or Facebook. The first question that you see there is “do you already have a Flickr account?” Yes, I do. So I proceeded. I made sure I was logged out completely and then tried to log back in with my new Yahoo ID, but Flickr thought that I wanted to create a NEW account. No no no. I want to just link my new Yahoo ID with my old Flickr account. I tried a couple more times thinking something was just off a bit, and then I realized that something was a bit more than just a bit off.

Six months ago when I linked my Google ID to Flickr, I deleted my Yahoo ID. Deleted it. Gone. My only connection to Flickr now was Google, and just a few minutes prior I “unbound” that from Flickr as well. I had unintentionally orphaned my Flickr account. It was now floating somewhere in limbo, waiting for its judgement.

And it was right about that moment that I noticed another topic on the Flickr Help page about deleting a Yahoo account.

It was there that I realized the gravity of the situation. By removing my Google account from the equation, my Flickr account no longer had an owner, and, according to Yahoo, if you do that “you will not be able to sign in to your Flickr account … this will delete your Flickr account as well, including all of your photos.”

Fuck.

I immediately wrote Flickr an email pleading for help and then sat around feeling sorry for myself. Later that night I was talking to Robin about in on the phone and she wondered if I still had access to my Flickr account through Safari on my iPhone. Like, was I still logged in there and could I go in and transfer my Flickr account over to my new Yahoo ID. I passed it off as impossible at first because the second my phone tried to use its cookie to access my Flickr account it would certainly get booted off.

Wrong.

There are two strange things going on here, and I’m still not quite sure how this worked. As you can see in the upper right corner, I was “Signed in as elisfanclub”, but just below that it says I was signed in with my “Yahoo ID e18f0f2f…” What? How did that happen?

Maybe Yahoo puts that safety mechanism in place in case someone does exactly what I did. They create a temporary Yahoo ID as a place holder until all the switching and swapping gets worked out. Whatever they do, it worked. I was able to transfer my Flickr account from the temp Yahoo ID to my new one.

Crisis averted. Memories saved.

* * * UPDATE 7.27.11 * * *

Here’s the email I sent Flickr.

Hello Flickr,

I have found myself in a bind and am worried that I won’t be able to recover. Please help me.

A few months ago I switched my flickr login from yahoo over to google and was very happy to be rid of one more profile on the internet. I only used my yahoo account for logging into flickr, so it seemed like a good move.

But recently I was getting annoyed with the fact that flickr would not remember me when logging in with google. I had to login after every time I closed my browser, and I realized that I would gladly have an extra login if I could just stay logged in. I had already deleted my old yahoo email address, so I went over to yahoo and created a new one and then went searching for instructions to switch over to that one.

I found this listing on the help page:

http://www.flickr.com/help/signin/#9538181

It gave me instructions for unbinding my flickr or google
account, which I followed, thinking that I could THEN
connect my new yahoo account. So, I clicked on the link in
Step #2, removed my google account from my flickr account,
and then tried to reconnect with my new yahoo id. But each
time I try logging in with my new yahoo id it tries to
create a NEW flickr account for me.

At this point I started searching around a bit more and then
found this listing on the help page:

http://www.flickr.com/help/signin/#102

And then I got really worried. Since I don’t have any ID
associated with my flickr account anymore, does that mean
it’s totally unrecoverable? Will my photos be deleted? Is
there ANY way around this?

Please help me. I have been an AVID flickr user for almost 5
years now with over 30,000 uploads.

Thank you,

Eli Duke
flickr.com/elisfanclub

And here was their response.

Hello Eli,

Thank you for contacting Flickr Customer Care.

As I understand, you wish to confirm if your “elisfanclub”
Flickr pro account is no longer recoverable including your 30,000 uploads. I am glad to look into this matter for you.

Eli, please know that your “elisfanclub” Flickr pro account is still active, and you may sign in to it at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elisfanclub/

You will need to use the Yahoo! ID that you used when you created or merged the account. The Yahoo! ID associated with this account is XXX.

When entering your Yahoo! ID, please enter it exactly as
shown above. If you are having trouble signing in, you can use the “Forgot your ID or password” link on the sign-in page. If you are still unable to access your account, you may need to contact Yahoo! Account Verification for help with your Yahoo! ID. You can do this using the following page:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/edit/alternate_email/general.html

If you’d like to speak to someone on the phone, the Account
Verification Department can be reached at: 866-850-4303

For users dialing from outside the United States, you can
reach us by calling: 00 + 1 408-349-1572

The Account Verification team is available between 6 a.m.
and 6 p.m. Pacific Time, Monday through Friday. Please be aware that you will be asked for all of your verification information before we can offer assistance.

Moreover, please know that it isn’t possible to switch from
signing in with a Yahoo! ID to a Google account. We appreciate your patience and understanding regarding this matter.

However, if you still need further assistance, please don’t
hesitate to reply to this email with the following additional information:

- Are you still unable to sign in to your “elisfanclub” Flickr pro account?
- A detailed description of the issue you are having
- The exact steps taken that lead up to this event
- The full and exact text of any error messages you received
- The Web address of the page you are seeing the issue on
- Flickr account Web address

Once we have this information, we’ll be more than happy to
help you in whatever way we can.

Thank you again for contacting us. If you have any other
questions, please feel free to reply to this email.

Regards,

Mika
Flickr Customer Care

It certainly does make me feel better knowing that they have an Account Verification Team, but there are definitely parts of that email that make me think they didn’t even read my email.

But, it’s all water under the bridge now.

A few weeks later I found her card sitting on my desk and thought I might as well send her an email, just letting her know that I appreciated her art. She wrote back thanking me, but also saying that she’d followed a link in my email “signature,” found a photo that I took in Tasmania, and wanted to create a painting from it. Amazing. I said, “Hell Yeah.”

Here’s the photo:

And here’s the painting:

You can see her other work at Studio Hartig.

Where we are now, to me, is the real dark time, the proverbial moment before the dawn. The depravity of our culture, Disney merchandise, cool ranch Doritos, and all, is something that people of the future will marvel at for centuries to come. The purity of our surrender will fascinate them. They will conclude that we looked into the abyss… and decided that we liked what we saw in there.

- James Howard Kunstler

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long
And wouldn’t it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong

You know its gonna make it that much better
When we can say goodnight and stay together

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could wake up
In the morning when the day is new
And after having spent the day together
Hold each other close the whole night through

The happy times together we’ve been spending
I wish that every kiss was never ending
Oh, wouldn’t it be nice

Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true
Baby then there wouldn’t be a single thing we couldn’t do
We could be married
And then we’d be happy

Wouldn’t it be nice

You know it seems the more we talk about it
It only makes it worse to live without it
But lets talk about it
Oh, wouldn’t it be nice

The pins on the map are where I am planning to spend the night(s).

[I will be updating this post as things progress]

Anyhoo, I looked up how to post to WordPress by email because I knew I could type emails in landscape mode. I configured my secret post-by-email address and then started typing up this blog post. About one paragraph in I goofed big time and sent the email prematurly. Oops!

I fired up the WordPress App again with the intention of deleting the post, finishing the email, and then reposting. But, upon revisiting the app, I found that I can, in fact, use it in landscape mode, so I went ahead and finished it…

Right back where I started.