My Cellphone's Very Good Week

One week ago today my cellphone dropped into a toilet.

With that one little dunking, my morning and a couple hundred bucks were shot. I tried to dry it out. But it's easier for the water to get in than it is for you to get it out.

I tried a stupid plan I read about on the internet, which is to soak it in rubbing alcohol, then that's supposed to somehow evaporate and the water with it. It sounded reasonable but was completely worthless. The weird thing about the plan at that website is that if it doesn't work the first time to keep trying it. Right. I tried it once and it was worthless.

So I had to go get a different phone. And my contract isn't nearly done, so this meant buying a new one at full price.

The good news now is that I've gone a whole week without the new phone falling in. I'm trying to be extra, extra careful.

P.S. - As for phone technology, the phone I got is a newer model of the old one. But they've taken a couple steps back. The old one had a video function, the new one doesn't. The old one told you how many characters you'd typed (helpful for Twitter) but the new one doesn't.

And of course they felt the need to change the plug so my old phone's USB cable doesn't work on this one. I guess we know why, sell more cables.

Intensive Care Toilets

There's all kinds of ways to start this. I'm tempted to use the tried and true, "Wouldn't you think?" approach, as in "Wouldn't you think that modern technology and medical practice would have come to some obvious intersection where it would be not only feasible but demanded that the intensive care unit of your local hospital would have actual toilets by now?"

I was at the intensive care unit and it's like an outhouse there without the house! It's insane. They have one of those loan closet manual jobbies in the room, basically a bucket with a lid. There's no lining that goes in before you go. No water to soften the blow. Just a plastic bucket. Then what? Someone has to scrape it out and sanitize it? Give me a break.

I asked the nurse if that was common, why they didn't have toilets. She gave me a story about another place she worked where they also didn't have them. She seemed on the verge of making me think that was common practice, till I said I needed to go home and study that on the internet and see if it could be. At that point she backed up a little and made it clearer that it was a space issue, that they would have to have less rooms if they had actual toilets.

The whole subject nauseated me, and I was already nauseated for other reasons. I grew up going out to an outhouse and those were better than this, where they charge you thousands of dollars a day to stay.

And you can't tell me they're able to sanitize it so well that no residue and smell remains. Here's why there's so much staph infection in hospitals. They haven't yet discovered the modern toilet.