Did you miss me?

 

Here's a word to the wise: Before changing your cell phone number, be sure that every single account that uses the old one is updated to the new one so that you can do whatever two-step verification hoop-jumping is required while you still have it.

With all of the other places and contacts that needed update and notifying with the switch, I forgot my Google account's recovery settings.

At some point long after, Google's algorithms decided I was hacking my account with my valid login and demanded verification via text. Using my old cell number. Which I no longer had. Which I couldn't update without logging in... 

Google, in particular, provides no help in this situation. Bafflingly, it doesn't allow you to use your recovery email to, um, recover your account. Despite the "More ways to verify" link, text to the old number was the only way provided. There's no way that I could find to contact a human being to try and sort this out. 

Google's solution is to simply open a new account if you can't recover the old one.

Genius! Why didn't I think of that? Oh - wait - because then I'd lose access to everything associated with it, like this blog, that's why!

Thankfully, the new owner of my old number was amenable to relaying the recovery text's security code, and I've since been able to update the account to my new one. No thanks to Google.

So you will soon be seeing new content on this blog for the first time in mmummbble-mmmmuumble years. Yes, it's about time.