Yesterday afternoon I had a quick video call with someone using Signal and then I went to pick up my child from an afternoon summer program.

When I got home I realized that my phone wasn't receiving any new messages on Signal... but my computer was. Signal on my phone was completely frozen.

I followed a prompt and sent the most recent log to their support email. Then carried on with my life.

At some point, 2 hours later, I had a eureka moment: the last thing that worked was a call. Let's try the same thing.

So I called my mom and hung up (she was in the same room as me). After the call, all the Signal messages that had accumulated during the afternoon magically synched. Everything worked again! And then I found a new message by Signal saying "Welcome to the official Signal release chat!" Ok.

Glad I was distracted by my child and dinner because when I checked my email, I found a response from Signal support: "It appears the database is irrecoverably damaged. Unfortunately you will need to completely uninstall and then reinstall Signal. This will delete your message history. It cannot be recovered."

Say what? ​

So I wrote back to Signal that I had fixed my issue by simply starting a call and then all the messages started synching again. I thanked them for their speedy reply and said everything was ok.

I did the bedtime routine for my child and before bed I checked my email again.

Two identical emails from Signal:

"Hello. We understand your frustration. We feel it too" HUH?

"There is no specific timeline for a resolution at this moment." WHAT RESOLUTION, I SAID I FIXED THE PROBLEM?

"Please keep in mind we are a small team and have limitations as a non-profit organization. Uninstalling and reinstalling is the only action available."

I feel for you Signal and I'm super grateful for all you do, but maybe your LLM support system needs some tweaking. Because this has got to be some LLM that misunderstood my reply.

Thank goodness I didn't wipe 6 years' worth of messages, gaaah.

Signal has been working perfectly ever since. Still, I'm now compiling a list of people I message on there as a contingency plan, should thing go awry again.

I've been using #DeltaChat more lately and more and really love it.

one more tale for #MySoCalledSudoLife

#NoAI #LLM