Some background

I am an almost complete newbie in cryptocurrencies. I lazily followed the news about them somewhere back in 2009-2010, but my life changed a bit during those years, and I mostly left my IT interests to play bass in a band, as well as do some more interesting stuff. I quit my last IT related job in the spring of 2011, studied journalism for a year and a bit, and to become better musician, which is somewhat a weird choice, right?
Anyhow, with joining Steemit, I become immersed into this whole lake of information about crypto currencies, blockchain technologies and the like. Several posts on the matter indicate that it is also a good place to start poking around other crypro tokens, as well other techs.
For example this post by @goose about some other kind of curation for the minnows. That is picking out articles by experts on the matter of cryptos and educationg yourself about them, as well as trading.

"Probably a great time to buy Bitshares (before Sept. 1)"

Okay. BitShares! And they are 2.0! Isn't everything that is 2.0 great? (Okay, thar is sooo several years ago, sorry). But they are by the people who made Steemit, and I like Steemit, so they were naturally something that I wanted to investigate. I asked around for a bit, if it is possible to by BitShares directly for fiat, but there was no easy way for me as with bying Steem. We Russians have it easy thanks to the service provided by @on0tole. Another thing of note is that I am far away from civilization. My mobile company recently shafted me for a huge pile of money, so even if it was possible to do through @on0tole, I wouldn't be able to send him fiat, due to no access to the 2nd step of authorization. That means I would have to somehow manage on my own!

MyQuest for BitShares

But I just have to get some BitShares! It will be a learning experience! But first, I need to check out that OpenLedger, and set up a wallet there. This is the first place where I encounter a problem.
You see, I am in the backwoods village on border between Russia and Mongolia, and my only means of communication with outside world is an iPad, which is unrooted. It is great in the travels, IF you do conventional stuff, like taking potos, reading ebooks, chatting with people online, or doodling with a ton of music making apps that I have, but no finished music to show for it. But as soon as you start trying to do something techy, you encounter problems.

Problem #1, "Your Google Chrome browser is unsupported, try Google Chrome".

Okay, I am using Google Chrome, for iOS though, perhaps it isn't good enough. Checking some message boards I discover that as late as in 2016 it should be supported. But maybe there is some other browser, that can help me? I poke around google and find Brave. An OpenSpurce browser, that actually allowed me to go farther than this screen:

So, after some fiddling & and poking I had my own wallet on OpenLedger. Now, I had to find some assets that I could use to buy BitShares. I had some DASH from the free giveaway by @sovereignbtc some days ago. But since it is something I'd rather keep for now, I started to think further. Oh, I have some $1.2 SBD lying around, cool! I think I could send them to my OpenLedger wallet. And so I did!

What is this? Now I have some Open.SBD in my wallet? But I can exchange them into BTS, right? This whole OpenLedger thing is an exchange as well, isn't it?

Problem #2, "The Exchange!"

Okay. How much does the BTS cost in SBD? Lets see what The Exchange tell me. Okay. It seems that there are no Open.SBD listed for trade as BTS. It is offering me to change them on 1/1 basis, is it any good? Hmm, where can I check? Oh, right there is poloniex, and others.
But they are listing vs BTC:

Means that I had to do some math, and so I did:

Okay, so I'll use this number to set up the exchange offer. Apparently SBD aren't of much use on OpenLedger, but converting via BTC would eat through them via a transaction fee twice, so I set up an offer for direct conversion.

Will have to just wait and see, if anyone would take me up on it. And so I went to bed, only to discover in the morning:

Problem #3, "Nope, your clock isn't synced!"

So far I am left staring at this message and it doesn't matter which browser I use. Hopefully I'll be able to check my wallet later today, and if so, I will update this post with further adventures!

As my experience stands right now this is "This is THE year of Linux on desktop!" all over again with widespread adoption stiffled by lots of roadblocks. It is actually the way I like it. This way I get to participate with the development community and write bug reports. I'll go on and write actual bug reps once I am back to civilization, which is hopefully going to be any day now. Just as true as "This is THE year of crypto in your wallet!" ;-) I mean the tech is great and all that, but perhaps they need to read "The inmates arerunning the asylum" by Alan Cooper, and invest some of those coins into an UX department. I have technical background and some years running a Gentoo linux rig as my main computer, so it was some fun for me. Still, the sync thing is frustrating.

If you want to help me advance in this story, go on and accept my exchange of Open.SBD for some BTS!
Or perhaps offer some advice? You can even send some BTS, the wallet is xnrrn (edit: I've lost that wallet), but I'd prefer to do it via the market.

Update:

Your browser is your wallet, make a backup!

Thing is I was unable to make a backup, and now that I found a browser that doesn't show me the Sync screen (thanks @vato), I can't use the wallet, since it is in another browser. Oooops! Well, I was finaly made it to work. Or rather confirm that I've lost that wallet, with the inability to make a backup with iOS browser that I had. Double oops, but that just means I'll have to do more testing, and do another post soon. Maybe will find an access to a computer, as tomorrow I am hitting the road, to get back to civilization.

As my shout outs for spread the power initiative I'd like to mention
Why EURO is a scam coin? by @alexgr
Free or reduced nutritional diet analysis service by @virtualgrowth, because we need more people offering their services for SBD/STEEM. Promote them if you see them!
Have faith in Steemit? Power Up! by @krnel & Don't Panic and Power Down by @unrealisback, I generally find that advice not to Panic is best, since reading Douglas Addams. "Praise Pan but don't Panic!" is my motto. (It isn't.)