Is your mobile carrier T-Mobile like me? Then be sure to read to the end.

Live in the USA and have any phone at all... even if you don't use T-Mobile? Then keep reading.

FIRST OF ALL you should check to see if you now have to dial all ten numbers starting October 24th for local calls (the usual seven plus area code). This has to do with implementing the "988 Crisis Line" for people contemplating suicide or emotional distress. To see the area codes affected, you can check the list on a PDF file here.

AND WOULDN'T YOU KNOW IT, out of all the area codes in Washington State, mine is the only area code that requires all ten numbers to be dialed for local calls. I can only hope that my iPhone will figure out how to handle this on its own so I don't have to manually dial everything. I already added the area code to local peeps in my address book, so hopefully I'm good to go. What a pain in the ass.

But, hey... having a 988 number to help people who are struggling is good. So yay!

SECOND OF ALL if you got T-Mobile then you should know that you get a FREE year of AppleTV+... and can watch all episodes of Ted Lasso at no charge!

The instructions were kinda confusing, but ultimately I just went to https://promotions.t-mobile.com to submit this code: 2021APPLETVP1... then when you redeem it, AppleTV will open and you'll be asked if you want to redeem the code. When you accept you'll be told that the offer was accepted (I also got a new window which said that "This offer was already applied" but the confirmation was there underneath)...

Apple makes it rough to figure out what in the hell is going on with your billing and offers and stuff but, fortunately, I got an email which verified my free year of free AppleTV+...

The nice thing is that, unlike the free Netflix offer, T-Mobile is giving this to everybody and not just people with two or more lines on their account.

I can only guess that this is an "Oops! Our bad!" apology for their massive data leak that may have compromised everybody's private data. And it's nice and all... but what they should do is give everybody free credit fraud monitoring for ten years. Of course, I got free credit fraud monitoring from another settlement, and never got it. These huge companies own our politicians, so there are zero consequences for their neglegence. And less than zero consequences for ignoring a court settlement.

I don't know why all big companies who hold sensitive customer data don't have to pay into a pool of credit fraud monitoring for every American citizen. That way, when their inevitable data leak happens, it's already dealt with instead of being lost in the courts and shitting on the people who trust them with their data. It's gotten to the point where credit fraud monitoring should just be something that everybody living in the "wealthiest country in the world" should get by default.

But, hey... free Ted Lasso, I guess. So yay?

AND THIRD OF ALL not a great day for Samsung. Another one of their phones exploded... this time on an Alaska Airlines flight from New Orleans to Seattle (a route I have flown more than a few times). Upon landing the phone had to be put in a battery flame bag and extinguished after it caught fire. And so... if you're a Galaxy A21 owner... might want to keep tabs on what Samsung is going to do about this. Hopefully it happened because the phone was damaged or something. If not? Well, maybe you'll get free AppleTV+ too!

Because, hey... free Ted Lasso, I guess. So yay?