Started up the pond this week. It was about half full anyway, and crawling with mosquito larvae. Matter of fact, I’m pretty sure if malaria makes a comeback in Minnesota my backyard might be ground zero for it.
Nuth’n a bag of goldfish wouldn’t take care of. They eat the mosquitos.
Good ones do anyway.
So, I went out and bought a bag of the things.
“Red, go out and check the pond”
I hadn’t done much a damned thing with it this year. There were probably some leaves in there and maybe a few other things, hopefully none of those bizarre brain worms that were in there last fall. Those things were scary as hell. Whiptailed worm or something like that.
The kid came back in the house. “Uh Dad, you uh aren’t going to put fish in that pond.. the uh water.. smells like.. um like uh…” searching for the word, “smells like ass.”
We’re dumping the fish in anyway. Remembering that I spent $1.75 on 18 goldfish I wasn’t going to be all that worried about it. We could replace them should something go horribly wrong.
I know what he’s talking about. Water with rotting leaves and crap gets kinda stinky after a while. When I got home from work I decided to a low tech water change in the pond. One way to do this is to put in a siphon, run the hose down to the drain, or get the pump and do it that way.. or just put the hose in, turn it up and flood the thing, let the water run until it overflows.
As I was doing this, the filter came undone and as I was reaching down to fix it something made a “ploop”.
Sickening sound ploop. I instantly knew what it was.
My iPhone, tired of being used for endless useless games and applications, sick of being left in hot cars, tired of having no case, tired of being tossed into a pocket with keys and change, sick of it’s scratched screen..well she jumped. She saw the opportunity and she went for it. Into the drink. Saw her sitting on the bottom of the pond. Grabbed her out.
“Golly that was sure dumb.” I said to no one in particular. “goodness I’ll have to be more careful.” and finally, “dang it”.
I put the thing in a bag of rice and started trying to figure what next. Probably back to a flip phone. Looking in the headphone jack the evil red eye was staring back at me, that was the moisture indicator, it’s also the “you’re screwed” indicator. And I was. No more warranty.
After an hour in rice I took a look. Screen seemed to work fine, you could call on it, but it had no sound. Sort of looked like the headphone jack had shorted as the thing thought the headphone was in all the time.
Well, my Apple Care was dead now and Verizon was out. Wondering if I could get it fixed I found a place in Edina, Don’t Ditch It, Fix It. According to their website their professionals were onsite and.. thought they could fix it, and they could do it for about $20.00.
Wow. I was there in 2o minutes. The office was in a building on York, across from the Wendy’s. Going in the directory sent me to the back staircase and down into the basement. I found the office, a small little glass door, inside was a sofa, a 48” tv, couple video consoles, and some games. And a counter. Young dude took my order. Very young dude.
He looked it over, took in the back.. “Still quite a bit of water in here” he said. Came out a few minutes later. “I dried out the inside, soldered the headphone jack.. I’d let it dry out a day and see where it is. If it’s still not working bring in back Monday and I’ll look at it again. Oh.. no charge. I didn’t do much.”
As we talked I learned that Don’t Ditch it Fix It is his business, he’s a company of one downthere.. “been doing this for a couple years, had to move out the house.. so I’ve been down here for a year.” “How did you get first listing on Google?” I asked. Ah.. some metadata, it’s been working pretty good, gets me a ton of business. Kid couldn’t have been more that about 20 years old.
By the time I got home the phone was fully functional again. Kids my hero now.
So, endorsement from Old and the Way, the new official repair shop for electronics Don’t Ditch it Fix It… check it out and support a young entrepreneur.
