And today's "stupid award" goes to....

Well, if the outcome of the exercise was being able to upgrade an iPhone 3(GS) to an iPhone 4, I can't exactly agree to the 'stupid award' unless it comes with a stipulation of stupid like a fox....

 

After staying up most of the night with my girlfriend after her surgery (kidney donation), I was brushing my teeth and couldn't figure out why my toothpaste tasted like peroxide. I didn't buy a whitening toothpaste.

It was Clearasil (10% peroxide cream). :doh:

 

It's not necessarily dead. Don't turn it on and put it in a very warm spot (like a window sill) for a few days. If all the water gets baked out there's a chance it will work again.

 

Actually, rubbing alcohol is better. If you get your electronic device all wet, immediately (open it, take out battery, and then...) submerge it in rubbing alcohol.
The alcohol drives all the moisture out.

Leave it sit in an airy place to evaporate off the alcohol.

No guarantees, of course, but it MIGHT save your device.

 

The problem with submerging a phone (more than anything else, really), is that the phone is pretty much always on, and the water will short it almost immediately.

Rae's suggestion certainly will help it dry quicker, but you can never really expect to resurrect a phone after submersion. I had an old LG a number of years back that accidentally got submerged in a lake, and along with it the number of a really cute redhead i had met the week before (and haven't seen since). At least with the iPhone backing everything up to your computer, you won't lose much (if any) data!

 

You have pockets on your swimsuit?

Let's see... what was the dumbest thing I've done recently? Oh, yes... well, I guess I don't really need to share that.

 

At least it wasn't:

 

best thing i tried was dumping the phone in rice for a day. worked for me when i washed my last phone. it continued working fine until i decided to upgrade.

 

i've dumped more drinks into my laptop than i care to admit to. it goes berzerk for awhile but i turn it over and let it drain out and it always comes back after a few days.

 

Oh, dumping drinks in laptop. Yup, I have a story...

I was in college, and had (my first) laptop. I was at home, using it, when my son's girlfriend came in the door, and set a vanilla latte down next to me. I managed to knock the full drink completely into my keyboard.

I screamed, grabbed the laptop, tipped it sideways, and had latte draining out the various holes in the side... towel appears (son brought it), I pull the power cord, the Internet cable, finally think to SHUT IT OFF!!!... and immediately called the head of the IT dept at the college (it was a school laptop).

They took it, took it apart, even to the point of separating the plastic films under the keyboard and drying them off with a cloth.

It worked. The question mark was difficult to use, and after the laptop was on long enough to get warm it would smell of vanilla, but it lasted through until the start of the next term, when we all got newer, better laptops.

I did have the insurance rider to cover it, so I wasn't terribly panicky about replacing it, but I was just glad that I didn't have to.

 

You had a computer in college??? A laptop??? I didn't even have a typewriter when I was in college. I had a ball-point pen. When it ran out of ink I'd buy a new insert for it. I don't think they made disposable pens yet. I also had a slide rule and an abacus, without both of which I'd never have made it.

The college did have a computer, though. I think it was the size of a small house.

 

After a kitten dumped a drink next to my work laptop this winter, I thought no fluid went inside but still let it dry all weekend before firing it up Monday morning.

Smoked the motherboard. IT department swapped the disk to a spare within minutes, but eventually scrapped the rest.

The home machine has a spillproof keyboard. That feature has successfully prevented any spills from approaching it.

 

Yes, Daniel... of course, I was in college just 12 years ago. I actually graduated in 1999. Laptops had been invented.

I went to college when I got divorced. I had spent 21 years in a bad relationship, as a stay-at-home mom. I needed to learn something, and I discovered that I have an affinity to computers, programming, and software design.

 

When did you go to college? When I was doing my college experience (1975 - 1981), we had pretty much universal access to at a minimum, mini-computers (DEC PDP 11/70 or VAX), with a few classes accessing a CDC scientific mainframe. My slide-rule experience was in high school chemistry class.

 

I suspect a bit of hyperbole in Daniel's assertions, myself

 

Ah! That explains it.

I went to college in 1966. The one computer at the college was a mainframe that took fortran punch cards and the next morning you got back a printout of your compiler errors. (I never got a program to actually compile on that thing. ) It would have been around 1975 that I got my first typewriter, a portable manual one, because my mother and my sister insisted. It was just too hard for them to read my hand-written letters.

When I took my amateur radio exams, I owned a hand-held calculator, but I didn't think they'd let us use those, so I brought my slide rule with me instead. (Turns out they did allow calculators, but I passed my technician, general, advanced, and amateur extra exams in one long session, using my slide rule. -- For 15 minutes I was greatly admired by the local hams, a few of whom had been trying for years to pass their amateur extra exam. The joke was that every single one of them knew more about electronics than I did, but that exam was heavy on math, which I was good at back then. Also the 20 words-per-minute Morse code test might have stymied some of them.) I don't remember the year, but it was probably late 1970's. I keep the license active, but I have not owned an amateur radio since I left N.D. to study Spanish in Mexico around 1995.

My first computer was a Kaypro 2X. The IBM PC had recently come out, but the Kaypro was a better word processor with its high-resolution text display and Wordstar.

So, no, there was no hyperbole in my earlier post. Except that I don't actually know how big the mainframe at my college was.

 

Actually, you can open an iPhone... plenty of people have done it (although i personally haven't had a need to). There are two screws on the bottom that do most of the work. And all electronics are made to die if they get wet - only quick action and luck prevents it. Completely sealing away all water from a product is ridiculously difficult, and only reserved for things that are designed to be used under water.