"Hold fast, sir!" You might be exclaiming right now. You might be saying this because you contend that my several driving mishaps are due NOT to what the Americans call "bad luck," but rather to my own what Dr. Phil calls "unresolved issues" as a driver, i.e. I drive like I'm Helen Keller trying to cram for an exam via brail while at the same time talking with my hips to the passenger in the back seat, all while steering with my knees.
I say, "po-tay-to", you say "po-tah-to." (you also probably say "to-mah-to", which I'm actually amenable to). But let's put a pin in that discussion for now.
Anyway, the bad luck (as I contend) I experience while driving also extends unfortunately to my several and ever-being-replaced electronic possessions--phone, laptop, television, dvd player, and, most frustratingly, iPod.
Why is it so frustrating with the iPod? Because iPod mishaps extrapolate into an entire life. When an iPod freezes, or gets ruined, or goes missing, everything is thrown into total disarray.
A) My whole daily routine is screwed up--when I ride the bus, I can no longer drown out the old lady screaming matches, or the overly loud phone conversations, or the fellow passengers' crazy mutterings.
B) I have to go back and recreate my old playlists, re-star every song so that the right ones appear on the "My Top Rated" list, re-name songs that had weird filenames when I downloaded them, and, when it comes to songs that I got from other peoples' computers, either go back to every one of those computers (some of which are in other states), or download all of those songs for myself (which costs moola).
C) Then there is the issue of repairing the iPod or obtaining a new one, which is perhaps the most irritating, and more than perhaps the most expensive aspect of the process. That is, unless, of course, your iPod magically reappears (that's called foreshadowing, homes).
Now, I'm sure most iPod owners have experienced the situation where the pesky device freezes, and the single-pixel frowny face appears, indicating that there is a "problem." This has happened to me many times, on account of one of a gaggle of potential causes hypothesized by the various "geniuses" I have consulted in the Apple store. That situation is not out of the ordinary. However, I have had other, more unusual iPod-busting experiences as well.
One of the most notable occurred back when I guarded lives at the neighborhood pool, as I have alluded to in past posts (refer to post entitled: "No Work Is Good Work").
One of the most notable occurred back when I guarded lives at the neighborhood pool, as I have alluded to in past posts (refer to post entitled: "No Work Is Good Work").
For those of you who haven't had to experience the indentured servitude of lifeguarding, besides the grueling duties of getting a tan and ensuring that young kids and old ladies swimming laps don't drown, I had to vacuum the pool bottom before opening. You see, pools have to be vacuumed because they accumulate leaves, dirt, and yes, human hair (sorry to those of you with weak stomachs) in clumps (sorry again) on the bottom, especially near the drains. If you don't vacuum this stuff up, the drains "clog," and the pool tends to get what we in the biz call "eewwie."
So, to vacuum these leaf-dirt-hair balls up, we would have to hook a hose up to this suction hole in the wall that led to the pump, and more specifically, to this tube, aptly named the "Hair/Lint Pot." (Isn't this post making you hungry?) On the other end of this hose we would attach this roller-vacuum head, which would suck the clumps from the pool floor into the hose and onto their magical journey to the Hair/Lint Pot.
Now, the hose is pretty long, probably somewhere between 20 and 30 feet, but remember it is constantly attached to a hole in one section of the pool wall that leads to the pump, so you have a limited range of motion. "How do you vacuum the pool floor at the deep end?" you might ask. Well, I'll tell you. We would attach a long pole to the vacuum head, with which to manipulate it along the pool floor, which is not as easy as it sounds.
You are probably wondering why I am going into this painstakingly great of detail of pool vacuuming for an iPod story. The reason is, I need to tell you how the whole vacuum system works in order to explain my panic and subsequent behavior which led to this story turning from a lifeguarding story into an iPod story.
So, when vacuuming, you had to move the vacuum head along the pool floor very slowly for 2 reasons.
1) Because if you moved the vacuum too quickly over the leaf-dirt-hair balls, it would kick up the clumps rather than suck them up. This is, as we said in the pool industry, "no bueno," because then later that day, some kid dives into the deep end and comes up to the surface with a wad of strangers' hair stuck to his face, and the mom comes over and yells at you for not cleaning the pool properly and threatens to tell your supervisor, which is another example of what I call a "yoink" situation, where you have no choice but to simply say "yoink!" and run away (refer to post: "Sucks to Be White and Love Dancing").
2) Also because, if you moved the vacuum too quickly, the hose would detach from the vacuum head and slowly rise to the surface. If it reached the surface, it would begin sucking air into the hose and eventually into the pool pump. This is also "no bueno" because it would cause the pump to overheat and, and forgive my technical terminology, "blow the fuck up", which as you know from Die Hard, has the potential to cause considerable physical and economic damage to people and buildings, also often resulting in a "yoink" situation, assuming you survive the blast.
The latter scenario was generally more of a concern, although you shouldn't underestimate the awkwardness of the former.
But I digress. So, I would have to vacuum slowly to avoid awkwardness and mass death and destruction. This meant, that for a pool that was 25 meters long, 5 meters wide, and ranging from 3-10ft deep (which according to math, is "big"), it would take up to an hour to vacuum. And it should be obvious that the vacuuming had to occur when no one else was around to kick up the leaf-dirt-hair wads. Again, everyone with a rudimentary knowledge of arithmatic knows the formula that 1 hour + vacuuming + being alone = boring. To combat this inevitable boredom, I would (and here comes the elaborate circumnavigation back to my original storyline) LISTEN TO MY IPOD! I told you I would make it back.
So, one particular morning, I was vacuuming the pool and listening to my iPod, happily humming along to "America, Fuck Ya!" from Team America: World Police, and a code-red situation happened. I was probably getting a little too riled up from the song I was listening to, and thus vacuuming too fast, and, without my awareness, the hose detached from the vacuum head and began slowly rising to the surface of the pool. It wasn't until I was singing the line, "McDonald's . . . . FUCK YA!" when I noticed in horror out of the corner of my eye that the hose was about an inch below the the water line.
Before my eyes I had a vision of a massive explosion of the pump room and flaming debris flying everywhere and starting a wildfire in my neighborhood, and a simultaneous flash flood caused by the water shooting like a geyser from the pool (yet curiously not extinguishing the conflagration caused by the exploding pump).
So, I panicked. I knew what I had to do--catch the hose before it breached the surface and sucked up any air, and reattach it to the vacuum head. However, I was in the middle of vacuuming the middle of the deep end, so the hose was in the center of the pool. I had precious little time, so I yanked the sunglasses from my face and hurled them into the bushes. I ripped my lifeguarding T-shirt from my torso like the Hulk. I kicked my flip flops from my feet and ran up the diving board, took a single bounce, and dove into the pool, catching the hose in my left hand literally milliseconds before the it broke through the meniscus of the pool water.
All of this happened in slow motion, by the way, if my memory serves me correctly. Also I had huge muscles.
Anyway, without even coming up for another breath, I dove down the 10 feet to the vacuum head and reattached the hose without even so much as one molecule of air entering the pump or 1 strand of hair on the pool floor being disturbed. I swam back to the surface a hero in my own mind (no small feat). I had single-handedly saved the pool, and no one would ever know how close they came to a tragic firey death. I was as cool as James Bond, if not cooler.
It was then, and only then that I realized my earbuds were still in my ears, and my iPod was still in my bathing suit pocket. I heard the last few measures of "America, Fuck Ya!" sputter out in that slowed-down, dying voice that song always do in cartoons before the iPod died, presumably by drowning.
It wasn't until even later that I found out that it wasn't as "no bueno" as I had thought for the pumps to suck in a little bit of air--it was really just "not that good for the pumps" for air to get in, but basically the hose could suck straight air for like an hour before it even came close to breaking the pumps. Also, they don't explode.
So, that is the story of my iPod. As per usual with these posts, the story got a little longer than I originally intended--I had wanted to tell the story about my most recent iPod incident, in which I lost it in a cab and had all but given up hope until 2 weeks later the cab-driver called me out of the blue to tell me he had found my iPod and my phone number on my contacts app, and decided that he had to call me and return my iPod once he realized who it belonged to because he was bound by his religion. Hey, I guess I just did tell you that story! Cool!
In conclusion, please live in harmony with your electronic gadgets--they are more delicate than they seem. You may end up a silent hero and prevent an entire neighborhood from being engulfed in flames, but your entire daily routine will be irritatingly throw askew for a good couple of weeks.
MikeeP
So, to vacuum these leaf-dirt-hair balls up, we would have to hook a hose up to this suction hole in the wall that led to the pump, and more specifically, to this tube, aptly named the "Hair/Lint Pot." (Isn't this post making you hungry?) On the other end of this hose we would attach this roller-vacuum head, which would suck the clumps from the pool floor into the hose and onto their magical journey to the Hair/Lint Pot.
Now, the hose is pretty long, probably somewhere between 20 and 30 feet, but remember it is constantly attached to a hole in one section of the pool wall that leads to the pump, so you have a limited range of motion. "How do you vacuum the pool floor at the deep end?" you might ask. Well, I'll tell you. We would attach a long pole to the vacuum head, with which to manipulate it along the pool floor, which is not as easy as it sounds.
You are probably wondering why I am going into this painstakingly great of detail of pool vacuuming for an iPod story. The reason is, I need to tell you how the whole vacuum system works in order to explain my panic and subsequent behavior which led to this story turning from a lifeguarding story into an iPod story.
So, when vacuuming, you had to move the vacuum head along the pool floor very slowly for 2 reasons.
1) Because if you moved the vacuum too quickly over the leaf-dirt-hair balls, it would kick up the clumps rather than suck them up. This is, as we said in the pool industry, "no bueno," because then later that day, some kid dives into the deep end and comes up to the surface with a wad of strangers' hair stuck to his face, and the mom comes over and yells at you for not cleaning the pool properly and threatens to tell your supervisor, which is another example of what I call a "yoink" situation, where you have no choice but to simply say "yoink!" and run away (refer to post: "Sucks to Be White and Love Dancing").
2) Also because, if you moved the vacuum too quickly, the hose would detach from the vacuum head and slowly rise to the surface. If it reached the surface, it would begin sucking air into the hose and eventually into the pool pump. This is also "no bueno" because it would cause the pump to overheat and, and forgive my technical terminology, "blow the fuck up", which as you know from Die Hard, has the potential to cause considerable physical and economic damage to people and buildings, also often resulting in a "yoink" situation, assuming you survive the blast.
The latter scenario was generally more of a concern, although you shouldn't underestimate the awkwardness of the former.
But I digress. So, I would have to vacuum slowly to avoid awkwardness and mass death and destruction. This meant, that for a pool that was 25 meters long, 5 meters wide, and ranging from 3-10ft deep (which according to math, is "big"), it would take up to an hour to vacuum. And it should be obvious that the vacuuming had to occur when no one else was around to kick up the leaf-dirt-hair wads. Again, everyone with a rudimentary knowledge of arithmatic knows the formula that 1 hour + vacuuming + being alone = boring. To combat this inevitable boredom, I would (and here comes the elaborate circumnavigation back to my original storyline) LISTEN TO MY IPOD! I told you I would make it back.
So, one particular morning, I was vacuuming the pool and listening to my iPod, happily humming along to "America, Fuck Ya!" from Team America: World Police, and a code-red situation happened. I was probably getting a little too riled up from the song I was listening to, and thus vacuuming too fast, and, without my awareness, the hose detached from the vacuum head and began slowly rising to the surface of the pool. It wasn't until I was singing the line, "McDonald's . . . . FUCK YA!" when I noticed in horror out of the corner of my eye that the hose was about an inch below the the water line.
Before my eyes I had a vision of a massive explosion of the pump room and flaming debris flying everywhere and starting a wildfire in my neighborhood, and a simultaneous flash flood caused by the water shooting like a geyser from the pool (yet curiously not extinguishing the conflagration caused by the exploding pump).
So, I panicked. I knew what I had to do--catch the hose before it breached the surface and sucked up any air, and reattach it to the vacuum head. However, I was in the middle of vacuuming the middle of the deep end, so the hose was in the center of the pool. I had precious little time, so I yanked the sunglasses from my face and hurled them into the bushes. I ripped my lifeguarding T-shirt from my torso like the Hulk. I kicked my flip flops from my feet and ran up the diving board, took a single bounce, and dove into the pool, catching the hose in my left hand literally milliseconds before the it broke through the meniscus of the pool water.
All of this happened in slow motion, by the way, if my memory serves me correctly. Also I had huge muscles.
Anyway, without even coming up for another breath, I dove down the 10 feet to the vacuum head and reattached the hose without even so much as one molecule of air entering the pump or 1 strand of hair on the pool floor being disturbed. I swam back to the surface a hero in my own mind (no small feat). I had single-handedly saved the pool, and no one would ever know how close they came to a tragic firey death. I was as cool as James Bond, if not cooler.
It was then, and only then that I realized my earbuds were still in my ears, and my iPod was still in my bathing suit pocket. I heard the last few measures of "America, Fuck Ya!" sputter out in that slowed-down, dying voice that song always do in cartoons before the iPod died, presumably by drowning.
It wasn't until even later that I found out that it wasn't as "no bueno" as I had thought for the pumps to suck in a little bit of air--it was really just "not that good for the pumps" for air to get in, but basically the hose could suck straight air for like an hour before it even came close to breaking the pumps. Also, they don't explode.
So, that is the story of my iPod. As per usual with these posts, the story got a little longer than I originally intended--I had wanted to tell the story about my most recent iPod incident, in which I lost it in a cab and had all but given up hope until 2 weeks later the cab-driver called me out of the blue to tell me he had found my iPod and my phone number on my contacts app, and decided that he had to call me and return my iPod once he realized who it belonged to because he was bound by his religion. Hey, I guess I just did tell you that story! Cool!
In conclusion, please live in harmony with your electronic gadgets--they are more delicate than they seem. You may end up a silent hero and prevent an entire neighborhood from being engulfed in flames, but your entire daily routine will be irritatingly throw askew for a good couple of weeks.
MikeeP
