Scott doesn’t usually MSN me, unless he wants something. On Wednesday I gave up on my old iPhone 3G, and converted to a Samsung Galaxy S running Android.

As soon as school finished, Scott logged on to MSN. I assumed he was after my phone. Here’s the transcript of our online conversation, poor spelling/grammar and all.

It actually did happen that way. Scott’s in year 8, but the day before, a kid in his year had stuck something on his back. Scott chased him, and then the year 9 kid joined in. There was pushing.
The next day the year 9 kid decided to take it further, came up to Scott and punched him.
Amazingly Scott thought first and decided not to punch back (he tends to attract trouble), and simply got behind the year 9 kid’s knee and pinned him to the ground, basically as self-defence.
I have to say that I’m proud he stood up for himself, and even more proud that he thought first, and decided to stay out of trouble.
On ya!

Ye olde iPhone 3G has had troubles syncing. For months it wouldn’t. This afternoon was the final crunch – hotmail continually resynching the latest 100 emails from my hotmail account, no matter how many I deleted, and Solitaire not opening on the bus home. Time for action.

Connect iPhone to laptop. A few error messages resulted:

The iPhone cannot be synced. The device has timed out.
The iphone cannot be synced. A folder was specified instead of a file.
iTunes could not back up the iPhone because the backup sessions failed.
Add as new iPhone.
Restored it to factory settings. Resync ….. the iPhone cannot be synced. The device has timed out.
Unplugged iphone. Try again. The iPhone cannot be synced. A duplicate file name was specified.
Hm. According to iTunes, my 16GB iPhone has 2GB used and 2GB free. Unplug.
iTunes cannot read the contents of the iPhone. Go to the Summary tab in iPhone preferences and click Restore to restore this iPhone to factory settings.
Hm. Go to IPhone, no preferences, so reset all Settings.
Try to restore from late June… iTunes could not restore the iPhone because the backup session failed.
Try to restore from early June… iTunes could not restore the iPhone because the backup session failed.
Try to restore from April .. iTunes could not restore the iPhone because the backup session failed.
Add as new iPhone. Good grief. It worked. I now have an uptodate empty iPhone.

The suspense builds… will it add everything back.
Apps = yes
Movies = yes
Music = in progress.

For real suspense, I’ll try to sync it again tomorrow.
Anyone want to lay bets on whether it will work?

I had a bunch of reports I would regularly run in AdWords for clients. In particular, reporting by month for a campaign or ad group. It was really handy for seeing trends in campaigns and ad groups over time, comparing August this year with August in 2009 and 2008 and even 2007.

Can’t do that no more, after the latest AdWords “upgrade”.

Theoretically to make it easier for us, AdWords moved Campaign, Ad Group and Account reporting, out of Reports, and into the Campaign tab. They’ve actually disabled the Campaign/Account/Ad Group report types in the report menu, so you can’t create any more new reports there. So instead of grabbing one of my old custom report templates and changing the month, I now have to go to Campaigns, select Control Panel, Select the report, change the month and run the report. If it lets me.

If you try to segment the data on the Campaigns tab by month for more than 14 months, it tells you you can’t do that – it’s too big a time frame. Not nicely, either. Let’s say I have a date range of 14 months, and I click on Segment, then month, to get a monthly break down. That’s fine. Change it to 13 months. That’s fine – it redisplays with fresh data. Change it to 15 months – uh oh – back to the default view, no error message, no warning, no nothing. Disgraceful degradation.

That’s not upgrading, that regression. Taking away useful functionality.

My old report template was still there from when I ran it last month, for the period Jan-2007 through to July-2010. I clicked on the report name, and the template appears. Select the month from the dropdown so that it’s now August. Run the report. And get the following message:

We’re sorry, but we’re unable to process this request. Some of the possible reasons for this include:
- Trying to view a report that no longer exists.
- Trying to view a report that doesn’t belong to you.
- Trying to download a report that has not finished running.
If you believe you have reached this page in error, please double-check your report parameters and resubmit your information. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Balderdash. It’s my report, I own it, and you didn’t let it even start running.

For inconsistency, if I click on run report, using last months July date, it runs happily.
But no, I can’t change the date to August and run it.
And I can’t produce the report from the Campaigns tab, as it’s more than 14 months.

Shame, Google, Shame.