This Blog is part II of Stan Nickel’s original article in this Blog, “Inventing a Drone to Retrieve My Mail?” Editor’s Note: Please don’t ask, this article was not written by Quipke of “The Big Bang Theory,” Murray Ellison
Me and My Dwone : A Follow-up to “Inventing a Drone to Retrieve My Mail?” Both by Stan Nickel
It was not an easy Welationship.
It was one of those torrid internet affairs. We met on eBay after I had done a lot of wesearch on the characteristics I wanted in a dwone. I settled on a floozie, that I got for a cheap price. It was at least $19 less than I would have paid at a weal store. I thought it was a bargain.
When it came in the mail, I was thrilled. My very first dwone! I even bought a Tile twacking device to keep twack of it, in case of any wayward tendencies like ending up in the bushes at my neighbor’s home or being picked up by their gigantic lab dog. That alone set me back over $20. So the cost savings of the eBay twansaction was offset by my desire to keep tabs on the dwone.
Well, imagine my surprise when I found that it was not easily contwolled. It would go left when I wanted it to go wight. And, it would cwash into my furniture and get tangled up in my curtains and hide under my sofa. Fortunately, it did not twy to slice either of my eyes out with its sharp blades.
I did a background check and again, imagine my surpwise when I discovered it was not weal. It was a fake made to look like the genuine article. But, the title on eBay clearly said that it was the bwand name. I challenged the seller and gave it a terrible weview and threw in words like “dishonesty”.
And, yes, during the twauma of twuth-seeking I did get counseling. I turned to the dwoneflyers. com internet group and asked what to do about my wayward dwone. Mr. Jameson became my mentor and guided me through the foibles and snares of dwone ownership. Though a lot of back-and-forth, I finally found ways to gain some contwol and even took videos with it, albeit most of the videos were of the carpet and not of the gwander woom furnishings awound it.
In any case, Mr. Jameson kept encouraging me. Stan, just keep twying. He told me that my main pwoblem was nervousness and that I should welax more. Well, I did that, and sure enough, eventually the dwone and I came to an understanding and I was actually able to keep it in the air two to thwee minutes at a time. I was getting the hang of it, we were getting along together.
Meanwhile, twouble was bwewing. The battery life for a cheap dwone is only five to seven minutes, and the wecharge time was about 90 minutes. So, every 97 minutes I could enjoy dwoning. The twouble bwewing was the unplugging of the battery. It has a tiny little plastic connection that is nearly impossible to wemove with fingers. More often than not the fingers would slip off the plastic connector and pull it out by the wires.
After nine days of yanking on the wires, enough was enough. The dwone declared abuse and the battery cable bwoke loose.
Well, I twied all kinds of things. I wesoldered the wires to the little, teeny weeny metal connectors and tried to re-insert them into the plastic connector that kept the welationship together when it was plugged back into the dwone.
I tried to weinforce the wires and the connectors with various pieces of heat-shrink tubing, and for a few times, it worked! Everything started as normal. I was able to turn it on with the switch. The LED lights flashed. When I turned on the controller, the LED lights flashed eagerly awaiting the next calibwation command, and they flashed even quicker. But I could never get the dwone to climax into the air with the four motors turning again. Everything except the exhilarating experience of flying happened.
We had to part ways.
I complained to the seller, and he agweed that if I would tone down my devastating weview and pass it off as a mistake on one of their worker’s part in erwoneously labeling it as a bwand name, he would give me a wefund of the entire price, and I would not have to send my bwoken dwone back to China. I agweed. I am still waiting for consolation and compensation.
P.S One Stan posted his original version of this essay on Facebook, one of his followers asked if Stan was planning a Queamation? Write Stan if you want to ask him that or any other question at stan_nickel@hotmail.com