I have had several previous rants about Apple products. In summary of the previous rants: I don't like Apple products and I especially don't like the holier than thou employees at the Apple store, even if they are actually geniuses, which they are not.

So my iPad got stuck in portrait mode. I tried all sorts of things. Changing this and that, twisting it in a diagonal orientation, threatening it with a hammer, etc. I even went to the user's manual. All this to no avail. OK, it is Bing search time. My inquiry netted millions of hits, of course. I found nothing in the apple sites, so as a last resort I started seeing what is in the forums. It was the usual drivel of ways to fix a problem by appropriate use of incantations, arcane setting changes and just plain cussing the darned thing out. I tried the latter quite a bit but found the device impervious to my harangues. Even SIRI thought I was a bit off the edge. Then, at the end of a long thread full of the above, some gnome, obviously not a dyed in the wool Apple pundit, had a one word response: reboot.

In the Apple world, reboot is sacrilege. Everybody knows that Apple products are perfect, just ask the geniuses at the store or the millions of minions who are Apple owners. Once Bloke started with an Apple laptop he became insufferable on the subject of computers. He would joke that the Microsoft answer to everything is to reboot. He felt the devices were perfect in every respect. They required no maintenance. What is an intelligent person like myself doing with Windows based products?

Back to the story. I knew the gnome had to be right. It is Occams razor. It does not take a genius (which is good for me). I tried it and it worked. REBOOT HAH