(image from sxc.hu)

WM’s iPhone decided to kill itself on Monday.

Its case flipped off of his belt and plummeted into the dogs’ water dish.

Ugh.

It was in there for less than 10 seconds, but it was enough for the water (and dog spit) to damage the external speaker. Which, you know, is where the RING comes from. Your phone can run a million apps, but if you don’t hear it ring, it’s just a PDA.

Bad, bad timing.

Panicked, I searched online for what to do and found this strange article on cnet: What to do if your iPhone gets wet. It suggested putting your iPhone in a plastic container with some packets of silica gel (that “DO NOT EAT” packet in your shoe boxes) or uncooked rice.

I was initially skeptical, but there were four pages of comments on how this really worked!

So I filled a small container with rice, buried the phone in it and covered it with plastic wrap. The container went in the oven with the oven light on, following one of the suggestions I read. That provides a dry environment.

Because I’m a brainless ninny, I taped big signs that said NO on the oven door and the oven’s temperature knob. I didn’t want to accidentally cremate the thing.

We left the phone in for about 6 hours. When we took it out (and blew off the rice dust) the speaker was back to normal!!

Obviously, the longer your iPhone’s been in the drink, the longer you need to leave it buried. Some of the comments on cNet detail leaving the phone in its ricey coffin for a week and the phone coming out perfect!

We also got rid of almost half a bag of the generic brand uncooked rice that we hated. So, win-win!

You should really read What to do if your iPhone gets wet just for the stories of how people have accidentally soaked their phones.

Flash looks wonderful, but it’s always been a bear for me to learn. I’ve bought quite a few books and even took online classes. Coworker S is awesome – she can slap videos into ads, she can make games, she makes movie clips and all sorts of cool stuff.

Me? I’ve always been stuck on crap like morphing my first name into my last name and making balls bounce. So over the last few months (the layoffs in August, actually) I’ve been trying harder to incorporate Flash into my work. I’m forcing myself to make more Flash banners and play with it when I have spare time.

And you know what I found? I’m even more frustrated with it than ever! Apparently, ignorance WAS bliss. Having an inkling of what Flash can do drives me insane because I know what I want the end result to be, and I don’t know how to get there.

Take the lights, for example. I wanted them to not alternate colors. I wanted a dim colored bulb, then a colored bulb that was lit and “glowed” from the inside. There should have been some sort of outer glow of light around the bulb. There should be some sort of glare on the bulb to show that it’s round. There should be a light shadow underneath to make them look like they’re over the page. I know it needs to be done, but I don’t know how to manipulate the tools I’m given to do it.

I’m the same with coding. I can read code and understand it. I can speak code…that is, I can talk out what I need it to do, I can talk out the loops. It’s just the vocabulary – the LANGUAGE that I have problems with.

I know I’m getting older and that I’m not going to learn this all as quickly as the ones in college and tech schools. But if I’m going to be booted out into the real world (and even if I’m not) I need to be as sharp as I can.

I just hope I don’t pull my hair out in the process. It’s just growing back.

I’m using the WordPress iPhone app to blog this from the comfort of my own bed. It was a breeze to set up. Note: if you have a linksys wireless router, take the time to change the default password. Otherwise, you’re enabling lazy people like me to blog from the comfort of their own beds

From September 26:

Somebody here in my building never changed their default wireless router settings. So the network name is linksys and the password is admin. So I use their wireless connection from time to time.

Ya wanna know whose router that was? C’mon…you know the answer!

Ours.

I didn’t think we had the wireless portion of the router activated.

Wrong!

This is why I keep a blog. It makes for great history.