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I stab at the screen with my thumb in a quick fluid motion. It's mostly muscle memory at this point. Swipe down, tap, swipe up, tap, tap, tap. Nothing. Wait for a few minutes and try again. Go to take a leak, try again. Sit down to eat, try again.

Several times a day I’m hitting the google servers, checking for the latest update to android. My Nexus 4 works great. I have never had any problems with it. Most of the features that are getting an update are useless to me anyway. I barely leave the house and I have so few appointments to keep track of, that any reason to venture out is a celebrated event. I don’t typically need any reminding, scheduling, or instant communication with "the office". I'll just check one more time before I finish this paragraph.

The proposition of a new update to any device in the house makes me salivate. There is no good reason for it. Most of the time these things are in the house because they currently do the job we want them to do. I just want them to do that job a tiny bit better. I'm jonesing for a firmware upgrade.

From time to time one these 'upgrades'  will actually break something that was previously working. I've been at this a while and I'm fairly confident in my ability to fix the problem, or at least work around it. For anyone who has to deal with my upgrading, it must be like watching someone dance around pulling levers and turning valves while a rickety steam engine shakes itself apart. I'm deeply sorry but I need my fix.

I went ahead and manually updated the Nexus 7. That involved a multi pronged attack of driver installation, Linux terminal commands, and hardware recovery modes. I think it's worth mentioning that the Nexus 7 was functioning just fine before the update, and there are no new features that anyone here will ever use. I could do the same to the Nexus 4, but I thought it would be okay to wait for the Google sanctioned over the air update to arrive. The phone is, after all, my primary means of communication if and when I do leave the house.

For now I will keep checking to see if the update is available every half hour or so, even though it will make little to no difference once it actually is installed. I might have a problem.

I think the PS4 came out this week too.