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Sunday, January 24, 2010

My luck continued-It is not the luck it is how you deal with it...

If you have all been following the saga of the international truck and my bad luck you are all probably anxiously waiting with bated breath for the next installment. (What is bated breath anyway)
Let me recap.
I back the truck out of the shop and the transmission fails.
I drop the cell phone in the bathtub.
The fellow working on my ferd pickup ran over his foot with the Ivy Highlift and is probably dying of cancer. Oops-that is another topic.
How I fixed the phone.
First I removed the battery.
Then I said, "oh fiddle!' That helped quite a bit.
I figured it was dead anyway and why not just go ahead and enjoy a nice bath while the water is still hot. So I did.
What I should have done next was to use the vacuum cleaner on it. You should suck out all the water right away. Using heat can damage the electronic circuitry.
Instead I finished my bath and then wiped it down real well with paper towels. Then i stuck it in a jar of rice. That desiccant stuff that comes with cell phones and electronic stuff also works. But, I don't really save the stuff one pack at a time. I know it says do not eat of the package. Because has this warning somehow it worries me that someone actually will eat it, so I throw it away.
The rice will absorb the water but not as well as a bowl full of desiccant.
Anyway-the next morning I pulled the phone out of the rice. I put the battery back in the phone and pushed the "on" button.
The little chimes sounded and there was my phone, as good as new.
Another little success story...
In conclusion-what to do if you drop your phone in water. Say, "oh fiddle!" Take the battery out right away. Suck the water out of it with a shop vac. Then stick the phone into a bag of rice and leave it overnight. There you go.
As to the International truck. I have found another transmission. I don't know if it is in perfect shape, but then I have no reason to think it is dead. It is in a truck that a neighbor wants to get rid of. I think we will try and get it Monday. If it doesn't rain in buckets...

4 comments:

  1. But what do you do with the leftover rice. Can you send it the the starving Haitians or make a nice verizon flavoured pilaf? Aparently the shop vac trick also works on laptop computers although a stronger incantation than "oh fiddle" may be required since the rice would foul the key board.:)

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  2. Glad you got your phone working, especially since you had pictures of your daughter on it. I'll try to remember the rice trick!

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  3. It's all we have left of an AD 1500's word 'bate' having to do with restraint, holding back. Excitement involved as in 'Bate thy scurvy hounds thou fool impudent blackguard lest they wrest from our hand the surprise of yon fallow deer'.

    Elizabethans had a fine appreciation of epithetical expression. Will Shakespeare owed his livelihood to the art of creative cursing. Reliable draw for the stinkards who filled the front rows.

    I prefer a Walt Kellyish interpretation as in 'the breath of one who has had his head in the catfish bait'. "As long as you got that bait sack over your head, would you mind standing a little to leeward?"

    Spoken as a one-time English major, long since reformed.

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  4. Mr. G706-we make the rice into rice pilaf that way you can't tell what is part of the phone and dirt or anything. Then we invite people over for dinner.
    Gorge-I lose my phone photos all the time. I kinda of have it figured out how to post the photos to the phone website. Anyway, all's well that end's well.
    Collieguy-If I am the main person who baits slugs at our farm. If I am the person in charge, like kind of the master at it... what does that make me? Um that was a bit grade-schoolish wasn't it?

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