EMMANUEL KANT, BUT DESICCANT CAN

" Your phone fell in the water, quick, put it in rice!"  So goes the popular belief.  The rice would absorb all the moisture overnight and the next day the phone would work again.  Recently, my son's Android phone showed the water droplet icon and would no longer charge.  He tried vacuuming and blowing air into the power port but nothing worked.  Before going the rice route, I read a bit about it and there were actual articles saying that it does not work.  Little bits of stuff in the rice may get into phone's port(s) and make things worse.  But packets of desiccant would make a good alternative.  I've been working in the computer industry for a while now.  New computers and computer equipments normally come with little bags of desiccant, to absorb moisture and what not during transit.  At one job, someone told me he wanted them, since we were throwing the packets away after unpacking the computers.  Ever since then, I started to save them, too.  Yeah, I save too much crap to use some rainy day.  But recently that day came!  I put a few of those desiccant bags in a rectangular food takeout container - two instances of re-use! - and then the "wet" phone.  Placed a heavy book atop the container, waited overnight.  I am not 100% sure if that did the trick, but next day my son's phone worked again.  It's been more than a week now, so far so good.  My mother had a similar problem a few weeks earlier.  I did the same for her recently but when I asked her if it helped, she just rambled on about something else and I couldn't get a word in edgewise.  I will have to see it for myself this weekend, sigh.

STAPLES REWARDS - CASHED IN

 I am proud of my knowledge about recycling but there is so much info out there it's good to have connections.  Electronics-recycling is not as easy as it should be.  I used to take stuff to the Best Buy store near me, in Caesar's Bay.  What I don't really like is they lump Recycling Desk with their Customer Service Desk and there's almost always a long line at the Customer Service Desk.  It's kinda silly, because they only do that to make sure the stuff people try to drop off are acceptable to them.  They charge for recycling TVs and computer monitors of certain sizes.  It's a good thing that a friend from my local Buy Nothing group told me about Staples' recycling program.  It takes more than just electronics stuff!  Pens and writing instruments, alkaline and recyclable batteries, inks and toners, and even TVs and computer monitors, free of charge.  Once a month, I visit the Staples store in Linden Commons to recycle whatever I gathered that time of the month.  You do have to register with Staples, so your recycled items can be tallied and points earned.  I used the points to buy a ream of paper here and there, a few times to buy pens, not stuff that I really want but hey the points may expire so why not just use them.  This past week I splurged for a webcam.  Recall that a few weeks back I thought Camo Studio was such a cool thing?  Free software to connect an old iPhone to use as a webcam, that is cool, right?  It still is, it is just that my old iPhone is, well, just too old.  The battery doesn't last and the connection to the computer, via Camo Studio, doesn't seem to last that long as well.  I still need a webcam after all, something to mount above one of the two monitors connected to the Lenovo laptop.  The laptop has a built-in webcam, but in its closed state sitting on the side, the webcam is unusable.  I got the cheapest webcam available, some LogiTech 720p/30fps model.  All the other models are priced from $100 and up.  Yike, is that the effect of tariffs or what?  Already?  Anyway, if you have a Staples store near you and you are as passionate as I am about recycling, register with them.  I am old-fashioned and still enjoy walking into a store and look around.  Maybe you are too.  If you don't want to bother with the points, i.e. you buy all your stuff on-line, then just let the points expire.  It's good to recycle.  Staples is trying to be a good corporate citizen, or maybe there is money to be made, we should support them either way.