A Note in a Bowl of Rice

After weeks, maybe even a month, of debating how to start this blog, life has given me the perfect first entry.

My alarm wakes me up a 4:00 am this morning as it does every morning. I do not know about other geeks, and some people, out there but I use my cell phone as my alarm clock. I tell people I use my cell because I am cheap and I can find other more worthwhile things to spend my money on but in truth it is a guilty pleasure of mine to wake my wife up to the screaming chorus of Faintby Linkin Park.

Before you think I am a horrible geek of the human species consider this.

First. Know that she sleeps with ear plugs in, mainly due to my nightly snoring. So she rarely wakes up.

B. Having your wife extremely pissed off at you in the early morning is better than a triple shot mocha latte for waking you up.

This morning she pretty much stays asleep. I grab my phone and head to the bathroom for my morning shower. I set my phone on the tank part of the toilet. I jump in the scalding water to work out the nightly kinks and to wake up from an extremely sound sleep. As I finish my shower, washing my hair, I hear my phone ring and vibrate, evidently I did not turn off my alarm I just snoozed it. After about a few seconds I hear the phone drop and then I no longer hear the alarm. Yes you guessed it, it vibrated into the the bottom of the toilet bowl.

After I toweled off I grabbed my phone that was still ringing from the alarm, each ring would send up bubbles.

Now here is where being a geek pays off, I hope. Knowing that if I allow my phone to stay on while being soaked in water it will short out. I grabbed my phone, thank goodness my wife keeps the toilets clean. Now, I did not try to power it off because it meant it be on longer from the power down sequence that Sony Ericsson put in the Z310a. So I opened the back and removed the battery. Then I removed the SIM and used the hand towel to dry off as much surface water as I could.

Now I had to dry off my phone in the driest place I could find. Then I remembered a few months back in an issue of Popular Mechanics that the best way to dry off a phone is to place it in a bowl of silica gel, however the next best thing is to put it in a bowl full of rice. Being half Korean, I always have rice on hand.

Now I leave for work with my phone in a bowl of rice and a note on top that says "Cell fell in toilet. Now in rice to dry". Hopefully my 4 year old does not take the note out of the bowl before my wife wakes up.

Tomorrow I will let you know how well the rice worked.

Here is a link to my phone if you are interested.
Sony Ericsson Z310a Unlocked Cell Phone--U.S. Version with Warranty (Jetset Black)