Land of the lost

He was a suspect early in the investigation.

After my Jewish community day outing I head back to hotel for a nap. Then back out for some food. I get to pizza place -- went there mainly to sample the Lithuanian beer everyone said I need to try -- and realize I don't have my phone. I double-check pockets, jacket, the area just outside the restaurant -- nothing. I figure I must have left it in the room. No biggie. So I eat, have the beer (it was good -- and if I remember name I'll add it here), head to grocery for some Coke Zero, head back to hotel.

Look for phone. It's not there. What the ...

I look all around room, under bed covers, nothing. I think about my routine leaving the room -- "wallet, phone, keys." I always have all of them. Wait, this time something was different. I interrupted that regularly scheduled program to grab the gloves I had bought on last day in Latvia. So in reaching to pick up gloves, maybe I dropped phone? But it's still not there.

OK, retrace. I leave hotel and follow same exact path to restaurant (it wasn't very far at all). It occurs to me that halfway through this stroll I reached into jacket pockets to remove said gloves and put them on. Maybe phone fell out then? I look around -- no phone. I go to restaurant and back, varying return trip slightly to cover more ground. No phone. Good news is this plaza (platz!) is relatively well lit. Bad news is that would also make it easier for anyone not being me to find/grab the phone.

Back to hotel. Back to room. Look all around again. It's not there. It would be a Jon move to think I lost it, only for it to be in the room. But I can't find it. Go back out, retrace steps again. Ask in restaurant if anyone has found it. Nothing. Craaaaaaap.

Back to hotel. Fire up iPad. Load the "find my iPhone" app, which also was loaded on the iPhone. iPad starts searching. Immediately finds itself -- which is nice. Some of us go through life searching for... oh, never mind. So it's looking for the iPhone -- can't find it. Says it is offline.

Which it is.

I've been keeping it on wifi-only mode for most of the trip so as not to blow up my limited international data allowance and $8.26 per minute calling plan. So it's only on wifi. Meaning for the iPad to find it, whoever has it would have to either activate cell service or bring it into a wifi zone. This if they found the thing before the hourly auto-lock kicked in. If not, they would have no way to unlock the phone and use it (for now -- they could erase the whole thing later), therefore I would have no way to find it.

But in case they do find/use it, I use the find iPhone app to a) lock the phone if it comes online, b) send a message to the phone saying it is lost and to call a number (deciding on number was a pain, as ... well ... they have my phone! finally choose Kathryn's in Berlin), and c) have iPhone and iPad beep like crazy if it is found.

But it's not finding it.

I go to front desk, as reception person if she has any ideas. She doesn't. She says that if a Lithuanian found it, it's probably long gone. Crap. Later I ask her where the police station is (I had passed it earlier, and then Yuri said POLICE in that creepy deep voice) so I could go in morning to see if anyone had turned it in. She offers to call for me. And does. And police say same thing -- Lithuanians dig technology. Dude, it's gone.

(Remember that Jack Handy quote? "If you drop your keys into a river of flowing lava, let 'em go. Because man, they're gone.")

At this point I'm almost ready to give up. I call Verizon and ask whether I should suspend service. They say I should, and do. I ask whether this would prevent the app from finding the phone, or whether it still could find it if connected to wifi. They don't know.

I go to Apple community forums and find all sorts of messages about how you can't install the find your iPhone app AFTER losing your phone. This gets community members pissy. I post a question, very clearly explaining that app already was installed and set up correctly, but the issue now is whether suspending service would allow me to still find phone over wifi.

No. No it won't.

Crap.

I reenable service. If someone starts making calls, at least I'll know someone has the phone. Meantime, I use iPad to change just about every password I can think of -- my 37 mail accounts, bank/credit cards, insurance, anything with an app on the iphone. Painfully long process.

So I go out one more time, retrace route. Still no phone. And I'm pretty sure it's not in the room because a) I've looked twice, and b) the phone would have beeped like crazy when the iPad pinged it.

Unless...

The one scenario in which it could be in the room but offline is if it locked itself after an hour. Sometimes the phone also will disconnect itself from the wifi network when locked/sleeping. If it did that, it could be in the room, but the iPad wouldn't be able to find it.

I look one more time. I completely empty luggage, looking in places that the phone absolutely could not be based on the rules of this space-time continuum as we know them. And it's not there. I have to pack for next day's trip anyway, so I go through everything in/around luggage. And in bathroom. And all of hotel room. I check under the covers for the third time. Surprise, still not there.

I imagine myself reaching for the gloves, figure maybe somehow the phone magically lodged itself between the mattresses. I lift up the mattress. Of course it's not there. I drop mattress back down and turn...

Something. Peripheral vision. Black and shiny.

No, not Sammy Davis Jr.

Lodged in tiny space between mattress and headboard.

Hello, iPhone.

It's locked. And not on wifi.

Ha.

It would be a total Jon thing to think he lost the phone ...

Can also do a remote wipe. Toilet joke?

I unlock it. It reconnects to wifi. And starts beeping like crazy. And displays "phone is lost -- call this number" message. Then the iPad starts beeping, like "I found it, I found it!" Dude, it was like two feet away from you the whole damn time! Nice work on that, iPad.

Mega-relieved. Of course, now I have to update all of my passwords on the iPhone to match the ones on the iPad. Each time I do, the iPad informs me that "the iPhone has now accessed X account." Kind of funny/creepy. After four or five of these, I finally shut the app down.

Then I go to lobby to tell reception that I found the phone. She's not there (it's like 1:30 a.m. at this point), so I turn around and head back to room. Then I hear a voice say, "hello?!" I freakin' jump. Scared the heck out of me. Pretty funny. Then I tell her about fines for doing stupid things, tell her I owe a quarter, hold up phone. She's happy I found it. And sorry for the coronary.

I can blame all this on losing my Cubs glove. I wouldn't have bought new gloves, meaning Cubs gloves already would have been in my jacket pocket rather than bag like new ones were, meaning I wouldn't have interrupted my routine and dropped the phone.

Curse of the Cubbies. Damn Bartman.