Do NOT let that shit stay in your ear. Lake water is especially disgusting, and I have gotten infections from leaving it in my ear too long. As someone who has had a multitude of ear infections through his life, let me offer some advice.
Some remedies include:
1. Jumping and swirling your head like a retard: I'm guessing you've already tried this. Sometimes if you're lucky, you can just get the water to fall back out after navigating the four dimensional space that is the inside of your ear.
2. Swimmer's ear solution: It has alcohol or some other thing in it that breaks up the water and maybe your earwax too. This has worked for me on several occasions. You can pick it up from any pharmacy. You put the solution in your ear and leave your head tilted so it can do its magic. Then you tilt your head back over and try to get the solution to come out. Some packages also have a little rubber squeezie to flush your ear with. While it feels weird to combat swimmer's ear with more water, sometimes it can help break up massive clumps of ear wax. I've had unholy abominations of wax fall out of my ear after using it before. Cleared my ears up pretty well. Rinse and repeat if necessary.
3. Hair dryer to the ear: I've never had this work for me, but I've known other people to try it. Stick a hair dryer towards your ear, close enough to warm it but far enough away so you don't burn it, and try to evaporate it.
4. Ear doctor: I did this once after the swimmer's ear solution had no effect. They used the rubber squeezie bottle on me anyway, but it took like an hour. I must have had it bad.
5. Japanese ear doctor: I add this here because of how awesome it was. When I was in Japan I got swimmer's ear from lake Biwako, which was not by any definition clean. I went to a specialized doctor in downtown Osaka to look at my ear. He then produced a very long and narrow pole that could best be described as a mini vacuum. It sounded very quiet and innocent by itself, but at a millimeter from your eardrum it sounds like a jet plane. The doctor stuck it in my ear much further than I knew you could stick things, but he pulled out giant nuggets of ear gold from each side. My swimmer's ear cleared, and my hearing was very noticeably improved for many days afterwards.
I am currently typing with my head turned sideways with ear wax removal stuff in my ear. I used it once last night and I've used the swimmers ear solution twice yesterday, I'm going to use it again right after this. I, too, have had a BUNCH of problems with swimmers ear before, and I've often explained to people that the risk of swimmers ear is a big reason I don't like swimming so much. I used to get it when I was a kid almost every time I went in a pool.
I've also gone to the doctor twice just to get earwax removed from my ear for swimmers ear....... and yes, it felt amazing. They pulled out several massive chunks of earwax, and I remember thinking "Oh my god I can hear so well right now."
Alright, status update after 2 uses of the earwax removal stuff and three uses of the swimmers ear medication: nope, I still can't hear anything in my left ear. In fact, I think it may be worse right now. One time when I was using the earwax stuff though, my earwax kind of dissolved into a massive blog of disgusting, and I REALLY couldn't hear out of my ear; I thought I had gone deaf so I made my mom take me to the doctor, and that was one of the times I had the earwax removed. It was really goopy and we came to the conclusion that the medicine was working, it's just that I had such massive amounts of earwax that it was taking a long time to fully dissolve.
So, I think I'm just going to use the earwax stuff and swimmers ear stuff for a few days, until it hurts too much. We'll see how long this takes
Arrrgh... I'm giving a paper in like 2 hours at the largest gathering of medieval scholars in the nation. There may be 10 people at my session... there may be 50. Who knows? Urrgh. And all I keep thinking is that someone's going to get up during the Q&A session and make me look like a retard. Wharrgarbl. Pressure. I'm nervous. I hope this goes okay.
If anyone asks you a question you can't answer, just reply, "That sounds like something a commie would say." and them just glare at then until they retract it.
Are there any bad memories from past presentations you can reflect on? That actually helps me quite a lot.
When I was first working here, my boss was trying to groom me into developing marketing and sales skills at a conference in town. We made a few rounds going to different potential clients and talking with them. Each round my boss kept asking me if I had anything to add, but I kept saying no, because I didn't know what to say.
Then at the last meeting, I told myself I had to say something, or else my boss may not bring me out in the future. So in the last meeting, when I was asked, I rambled about something. I was nervous, but I was forcing myself to talk. Then at the end, the dude just looked me and told me that what I said was irrelevant. His words.
I was incredibly embarrassed and pissed off. But, in hindsight, it worked out pretty well for me. It's pretty hard to do worse than someone dismissing everything you said in front of your boss. Since then, I haven't had a single bad experience as bad as that. If I could handle that, I can handle whatever else gets thrown at me.
If anyone asks you a question you can't answer, just reply, "That sounds like something a commie would say." and them just glare at then until they retract it.
But what if the person asking the question is a commie and proud of it? What then, Mr. Edward G. Smartypants?
Actually it went REALLY well. The questions were good, several people commented on my paper, and I got to legitimately network for the first time in my career. The department chair organized the panel, and he was very impressed. My future is looking brighter and brighter. =D
As a late response, my headphones are over-the-ear. They don't solve the problem.
For today I found a bug in my cereal. It was alive and well. And I didn't want to finish my breakfast anymore. Now I'm still hungry but don't want to eat.
I found a street vendor selling barbecued bugs on kebobs late one night in Beijing. I did not eat them at the time, as I was afraid I'd get sick. I regret it. Now my gastrointestinal fortitude should be more than adequate to handle it I believe, so the next time I'm there, I'm chowing on some bugs. And maybe some duck penis too, that guy was right next to the bug vendor. The penis vendor.
I remember seeing something on National Geographic about a restaurant in China that has a penis buffet, which includes stewed snake's penis. It's supposed to be an aphrodisiac since it has two heads.
I would try to find out more about it, but I'm afraid to Google anything with the term "penis buffet" in it.
I put my lappy on my bedside table last night to listen to a podcast because my iPod was dead. I woke up this morning to find that I installed the Ask toolbar in my sleep.
I've never minded it myself. You lie there in the chair a bit, they poke around for a while, maybe they drill something in or glue something down, then they send you on your way. Then again, I have a high pain tolerance and have never been the one paying. I'm sure now that I'm leaving the nest, things will change drastically.
Normally it's not that bad, but I think it's a bit unreasonable when they're supposed to be taking out your wisdom teeth and they decide that they are just going to spend an hour deciding if they're going to take your wisdom teeth out, and THEN tell you to go on your way. After making you pay for the visit in which they did nothing except till you to come back a month later with some thousand bucks in hand.
I fucking hate my job. And I need to get out of there.
It's ironic, because I work at a video game store, what is supposed to be a great job.
But it fucking sucks, and I need to get out of there.
The owner of this store is 99% of the reason why I need to get out. His policies are stupid; absolutely no cash refunds, no matter what. This is extremely problematic when someone buys, say, an NES, it doesn't work, and we don't have any other working NESes in the store. That person is out of luck, and I can't help them how they SHOULD be helped.
Of course, we do REPAIR consoles for free if someone bought them from us in the past 30 days. But I had at least 10 people today complaining about how their 360s have red ringed 3-4 times, and our store has been the one to "fix" them each time. And they keep breaking. Granted, these people don't have to pay extra for these repairs... but what the fuck good is a 360 that won't stay alive for a week and spends half its life in a repair room?
The worst part is the owner's blatant disregard for his customers. He never seems to actually work in the store, so he never seems to have to deal with all the people who are getting fucked over by his policies. When I tell him about the issues I've had, he just shrugs them off and assumes that those people are assholes. I'm left with nothing to say except empty apologies to the person whose PS3 has been sitting in the repair room for over a month because we're "waiting on a part".
And finally, he doesn't make a schedule. He just decides the day before who will work on a given day and might tell you the night before (if you're working) or he'll call you the morning of. I've gotten calls from him wondering where I am when he never told me I was supposed to work.
This shit has got to fucking stop. But I can't just leave because I need money and the Michigan economy is so god damned fucked up that I can barely find any other employment.
Fucking teaching. Why the fuck do you have a summer break?
Working shit jobs is integral to ensuring that you yourself don't turn into a douchebag later in life. I worked in food service for so long in high school that I never get mad about slow service, incorrect orders, other mistakes, etc, because no matter what shit they're going through there at the moment, I've probably gone through it too.
(Not to say that you were on track to becoming a douchebag later in life, but you know.)
Shit like this sucks, but sometimes you're effectively stuck without much recourse. I don't know how computerized your store is and how easy it is to get away with breaking policies (I know from my time working at EB one summer that it was impossible there), but you can always try to find holes in the system and manipulate them to help the customer.
Your manager himself needs to learn how to be a good manager, how to listen to his customers and to information coming from his employees who are down at the front lines, so to speak. If he isn't going to be a good manager, then he has to learn to pay for it. That's the nature of business.
After all, if you aren't willing to help the customers out, then your store is going to lose business anyway.
Comments
Some remedies include:
1. Jumping and swirling your head like a retard: I'm guessing you've already tried this. Sometimes if you're lucky, you can just get the water to fall back out after navigating the four dimensional space that is the inside of your ear.
2. Swimmer's ear solution: It has alcohol or some other thing in it that breaks up the water and maybe your earwax too. This has worked for me on several occasions. You can pick it up from any pharmacy. You put the solution in your ear and leave your head tilted so it can do its magic. Then you tilt your head back over and try to get the solution to come out. Some packages also have a little rubber squeezie to flush your ear with. While it feels weird to combat swimmer's ear with more water, sometimes it can help break up massive clumps of ear wax. I've had unholy abominations of wax fall out of my ear after using it before. Cleared my ears up pretty well. Rinse and repeat if necessary.
3. Hair dryer to the ear: I've never had this work for me, but I've known other people to try it. Stick a hair dryer towards your ear, close enough to warm it but far enough away so you don't burn it, and try to evaporate it.
4. Ear doctor: I did this once after the swimmer's ear solution had no effect. They used the rubber squeezie bottle on me anyway, but it took like an hour. I must have had it bad.
5. Japanese ear doctor: I add this here because of how awesome it was. When I was in Japan I got swimmer's ear from lake Biwako, which was not by any definition clean. I went to a specialized doctor in downtown Osaka to look at my ear. He then produced a very long and narrow pole that could best be described as a mini vacuum. It sounded very quiet and innocent by itself, but at a millimeter from your eardrum it sounds like a jet plane. The doctor stuck it in my ear much further than I knew you could stick things, but he pulled out giant nuggets of ear gold from each side. My swimmer's ear cleared, and my hearing was very noticeably improved for many days afterwards.
I've also gone to the doctor twice just to get earwax removed from my ear for swimmers ear....... and yes, it felt amazing. They pulled out several massive chunks of earwax, and I remember thinking "Oh my god I can hear so well right now."
Alright, status update after 2 uses of the earwax removal stuff and three uses of the swimmers ear medication: nope, I still can't hear anything in my left ear. In fact, I think it may be worse right now. One time when I was using the earwax stuff though, my earwax kind of dissolved into a massive blog of disgusting, and I REALLY couldn't hear out of my ear; I thought I had gone deaf so I made my mom take me to the doctor, and that was one of the times I had the earwax removed. It was really goopy and we came to the conclusion that the medicine was working, it's just that I had such massive amounts of earwax that it was taking a long time to fully dissolve.
So, I think I'm just going to use the earwax stuff and swimmers ear stuff for a few days, until it hurts too much. We'll see how long this takes
When I was first working here, my boss was trying to groom me into developing marketing and sales skills at a conference in town. We made a few rounds going to different potential clients and talking with them. Each round my boss kept asking me if I had anything to add, but I kept saying no, because I didn't know what to say.
Then at the last meeting, I told myself I had to say something, or else my boss may not bring me out in the future. So in the last meeting, when I was asked, I rambled about something. I was nervous, but I was forcing myself to talk. Then at the end, the dude just looked me and told me that what I said was irrelevant. His words.
I was incredibly embarrassed and pissed off. But, in hindsight, it worked out pretty well for me. It's pretty hard to do worse than someone dismissing everything you said in front of your boss. Since then, I haven't had a single bad experience as bad as that. If I could handle that, I can handle whatever else gets thrown at me.
Not sure if that helps, but that's my two cents.
Actually it went REALLY well. The questions were good, several people commented on my paper, and I got to legitimately network for the first time in my career. The department chair organized the panel, and he was very impressed. My future is looking brighter and brighter. =D
The haedphones that go over your ears are much nicer.
For today I found a bug in my cereal. It was alive and well. And I didn't want to finish my breakfast anymore. Now I'm still hungry but don't want to eat.
Stays crunchy, even in milk!
Or do you get a whole bowl of them?
It's so hard to know duck penis etiquette these days.
I would try to find out more about it, but I'm afraid to Google anything with the term "penis buffet" in it.
I fucking hate my job. And I need to get out of there.
It's ironic, because I work at a video game store, what is supposed to be a great job.
But it fucking sucks, and I need to get out of there.
The owner of this store is 99% of the reason why I need to get out. His policies are stupid; absolutely no cash refunds, no matter what. This is extremely problematic when someone buys, say, an NES, it doesn't work, and we don't have any other working NESes in the store. That person is out of luck, and I can't help them how they SHOULD be helped.
Of course, we do REPAIR consoles for free if someone bought them from us in the past 30 days. But I had at least 10 people today complaining about how their 360s have red ringed 3-4 times, and our store has been the one to "fix" them each time. And they keep breaking. Granted, these people don't have to pay extra for these repairs... but what the fuck good is a 360 that won't stay alive for a week and spends half its life in a repair room?
The worst part is the owner's blatant disregard for his customers. He never seems to actually work in the store, so he never seems to have to deal with all the people who are getting fucked over by his policies. When I tell him about the issues I've had, he just shrugs them off and assumes that those people are assholes. I'm left with nothing to say except empty apologies to the person whose PS3 has been sitting in the repair room for over a month because we're "waiting on a part".
And finally, he doesn't make a schedule. He just decides the day before who will work on a given day and might tell you the night before (if you're working) or he'll call you the morning of. I've gotten calls from him wondering where I am when he never told me I was supposed to work.
This shit has got to fucking stop. But I can't just leave because I need money and the Michigan economy is so god damned fucked up that I can barely find any other employment.
Fucking teaching. Why the fuck do you have a summer break?
(Not to say that you were on track to becoming a douchebag later in life, but you know.)
Shit like this sucks, but sometimes you're effectively stuck without much recourse. I don't know how computerized your store is and how easy it is to get away with breaking policies (I know from my time working at EB one summer that it was impossible there), but you can always try to find holes in the system and manipulate them to help the customer.
Your manager himself needs to learn how to be a good manager, how to listen to his customers and to information coming from his employees who are down at the front lines, so to speak. If he isn't going to be a good manager, then he has to learn to pay for it. That's the nature of business.
After all, if you aren't willing to help the customers out, then your store is going to lose business anyway.