Saturday, February 8, 2020

Best $5 Ever

I just spent the best five dollars of my life at Kobey's Swap Meet. Let me explain. For the last, two or three months my phone has been giving me trouble charging. I would plug in, and the phone would poop out the USB cable, for lack of a better term. After it first started, I googled it, and someone suggested that the problem might be dust in the charging port, so I got a floss pick and used the toothpick end to clean it. That fixed it for about two charges.

It got so bad, that the only way I could get it to charge was to use a right angle USB charger and plug it in, with the USB pushed into something like the side of a bookshelf, so the weight of the phone would keep it from unplugging itself. Even that stopped working, so I had to power down the phone, plug it in, so it wouldn't poop out. Then I had to look at it make sure it was charging. Even then, about half the time it wouldn't charge.

So I'm at Kobey's Swap Meet, and I see this guy, who fixes broken phone screens. I walk up to him and explain what's going on. He takes out a dental pick, not a plastic floss pick, but the metal thing the dentist uses on your teeth. He proceeds to pull out just a buttload of dust, lint, and God knows what. After about three minutes, he says, "Now, I can see the bottom." He works for another two or three minutes, still pulling out big glops of crap. He plugs it in. "There, 37% and charging."

"Cool, what do I owe you," I say.

"Don't worry about it," he says.

"Let me give you five bucks."

"I'll take it."