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Saturday, March 20, 2010

Phone's good!

I have a great track record with phones.  I have never needed a new one when my contract was up because I've never broken or lost one during that time.  I did break my phone last summer in the accident, but it was already over four years old and it was time to go.  That being said, last weekend I dropped my phone in water.  It was a really stupid mistake...

The phone was only in the water for about 2.5 seconds, but it was done.  None of the keys would work and so I got a couple text messages that I wasn't capable of reading.  I don't have a memory card in my phone and since there was no way to get to my contact list, I couldn't even write down peoples' numbers!

Thankfully I went to visit some friends in Richmond the day after the water incident and a friend's boyfriend had an old phone.  He let me take it until I could find a more permanent replacement but every time I texted or called someone this week, I had to call Chris first to get their phone number.  And everytime I answered a phone call, I had to answer it blindly because I had no idea who was calling (except for immediate family, of course).

I have heard it said that if you leave your phone submerged in rice for 24 hours it will dry it out and the phone will work again.  Apparently it's better than using a hairdryer or exposing it to some other form of heat to dry it out.  So I put my phone in rice.

And 24 hours later, the buttons were still broken.  The phone turned on fine, but I couldn't get to my messages or contact list, and if someone called I could flip it open to answer but the screen would start flashing and otherwise freaking out.  I was pretty annoyed.

But then I thought maybe it was the rice I used... I put the phone in brown rice because that's what we had, but since brown rice takes longer to cook, I thought maybe it absorbs water slower.  So I held out hope and bought some white rice.  I left it in another while and now my phone is good as new...

...buut it smells unmistakably like grains. :)

So thanks Dave for lending me your old phone, I'll get it back to you!  And sorry to anyone whose call I screened this week because I didn't know who you were!

7 comments:

LA-jan said...

Amazing, I never heard the rice remedy!

Catherine McPherson said...

Man! I wish I had known that this summer! Of course my phone was submerged for over 30minutes without me knowing...yikes! glad it worked!

jennie said...

wow good problem solving! i'm so glad that the rice pulled through in the end!

Dorothy said...

This is the second time I heard about the rice trick and I am still amazed it worked! Glad you have your phone back!

Elizabeth said...

good thinking with the white rice! i'm glad you have a phone again :)

Paul said...

Since you are on Verizon you can backup your contacts to the web for free. You can modify/add/delete contacts online, etc. I do it for Mary Ellen's phone. If you create a login id it is all free...

If you go to this site, it should lead you to the promise land:
https://www.getbackupnow.com/

Erika said...

i totally did this, and it worked. but it took a couple days in rice for me. i also didn't tell my roommates that i used the rice for that purpose, and just put it back in the pantry...whoops!