What's messing with your Groove?

[Nessus]

But but

They're adorable

[Catgrrl]

I'll admit, though I'm still somewhat afraid of spiders, at this point I welcome seeing them as opposed to what I've been finding in the house....roaches. I hate those fuckers I've been trying everything to make sure my house is "clean"; not keeping food out, sealing up potential places for them to come in from outside. Things will be peachy-keen for a few weeks/months and then BAM! One of them runs out across the bathroom floor. I just want to barf.

[Loki]

I just threaten to mail them to Lewk. No roaches in years.

[Flixy]

You know, I never saw a cockroach until my first night in the USA. Or wild city rats.

[Loki]

What do you eat for dinner then?

[Flixy]

I knew US food was bad, but I did not realize cockroaches and rats were a staple there.

[Loki]

As Jesus once said, freedom isn't free.

[Hazir]

You know, I never saw a cockroach until my first night in the USA. Or wild city rats.

My first cockroach was in Gran Canaria, it took me like a minute to figure out something THAT FREKKING HUGE could be a cockroach. Rats, well, I live in Amsterdam, we have them. And sometimes you see them. Thank god not in or near my building.

[GGT]

Those tiny ones look more like lice than spiders.

I'll admit, though I'm still somewhat afraid of spiders, at this point I welcome seeing them as opposed to what I've been finding in the house....roaches. I hate those fuckers I've been trying everything to make sure my house is "clean"; not keeping food out, sealing up potential places for them to come in from outside. Things will be peachy-keen for a few weeks/months and then BAM! One of them runs out across the bathroom floor. I just want to barf.

Tip: Don't use or keep the brown paper bags or boxes from any store or restaurant. The roach eggs can hide in there for a free ride into your house. And use a good vacuum cleaner with a crevice tool to get the eggs any adult roach leaves behind, especially in carpets. Remove the vac bag after each use, wrap and tie it in plastic before going to the trash can, and keep trash can outside (not in your garage).

Cockroaches *shudders*

[Flixy]

My first cockroach was in Gran Canaria, it took me like a minute to figure out something THAT FREKKING HUGE could be a cockroach. Rats, well, I live in Amsterdam, we have them. And sometimes you see them. Thank god not in or near my building.

I've only seen rats in the countryside here, but I do know they are around. Wasn't until I visited the US that I saw vermin of all kinds roaming the streets at night Mice, rats, cockroaches. Then again, IIRC in at least New York, trash was put out on the street in plastic bags at night, in a hot summer, instead of in containers, so it's not very surprising I suppose.



I'm at work right now, operating the cyclotron, and it suddenly went from standby to, well, a stop, which is not a good thing. A few cool water errors pooped up red, so that's not a good thing either and not something I can fix, so I had to wake two people up by phone and have one of them come over. Went into the cyclotron vault together, checked the water gauges and valves that gave the error, saw nothing out of the ordinary. Went back, and while we had changed nothing at all, the errors were gone and now it is running smoothly. Still don't know what the hell the problem is, boss says we can't reproduce the error unless it occurs again, so that's quite annoying. Hope it won't happen again.

On the bright side, going into the cyclotron vault is always fun The machine is quite an impressive sight too, and closing it involves turning giant keys, which you have to do with two people simultaneously, alarms going off and a two meter thick concrete door closing, which always gives me a nice cold war film nuclear silo feeling

[Catgrrl]

Those tiny ones look more like lice than spiders.




Tip: Don't use or keep the brown paper bags or boxes from any store or restaurant. The roach eggs can hide in there for a free ride into your house. And use a good vacuum cleaner with a crevice tool to get the eggs any adult roach leaves behind, especially in carpets. Remove the vac bag after each use, wrap and tie it in plastic before going to the trash can, and keep trash can outside (not in your garage).

Cockroaches *shudders*

Yes, every time I see one it takes a year off my life. I think they are getting in either via the garage (we need to fix some of the door gaskets) or maybe like you say, from the boxes we get from Sam's Club. I've even heard that plastic grocery bags can sometimes have the eggs in them. We also live not too far from the river, and the house behind ours isn't exactly the cleanest thing ever, so I wonder if they are part of the problem. Plus there is a ton of ivy on my back fence and we were bad and have a pile of branches and leaves decomposing behind our shed. So we've got our work cut out for us, I guess.

Hubby doused the perimeter of the house with bug killer before he left on his work trip today. If things don't improve I guess I'll have to get a professional. We've only seen two or three of the giant American cockroaches (my parents call them palmetto bugs, but dammit they are roaches). The several that I have found in the bathroom have been a smaller species. They gross me out nonetheless. I hate very few things, but I HATE roaches with a passion.

I'll probably jinx myself, but since seeing the giant one on Sunday in the garage, I haven't come across another yet.

[Timbuk2]

I hate very few things, but I HATE roaches with a passion.

Same here.

Worst roaches I ever saw were in the Philippines. Monstrous things, used to come out of the drains en masse.

Glad we don't have 'em in the UK.

[Hazir]

In Istanbul they can be a problem but we've sort of got it under control with enforcing very strict food rules (never leave anything out for them to get at) and spraying whenever the weather heats up, especially around any place we suspect they could use for entry. When we bought the house it was infested with them, but we solved that by simply stripping the place down to the bricks.

[GGT]

Yes, every time I see one it takes a year off my life. I think they are getting in either via the garage (we need to fix some of the door gaskets) or maybe like you say, from the boxes we get from Sam's Club. I've even heard that plastic grocery bags can sometimes have the eggs in them. We also live not too far from the river, and the house behind ours isn't exactly the cleanest thing ever, so I wonder if they are part of the problem. Plus there is a ton of ivy on my back fence and we were bad and have a pile of branches and leaves decomposing behind our shed. So we've got our work cut out for us, I guess.

Hubby doused the perimeter of the house with bug killer before he left on his work trip today. If things don't improve I guess I'll have to get a professional. We've only seen two or three of the giant American cockroaches (my parents call them palmetto bugs, but dammit they are roaches). The several that I have found in the bathroom have been a smaller species. They gross me out nonetheless. I hate very few things, but I HATE roaches with a passion.

I'll probably jinx myself, but since seeing the giant one on Sunday in the garage, I haven't come across another yet.

Palmetto bugs aren't really the same as cockroaches, but they're still gross. Your ivy and decomposing tree or yard waste is probably a breeding ground for other beetle insects like stink bugs, or parasites like ticks or fleas. That kind of wood-based organic material sitting around moist soil also attracts termites....so be careful.

Since you have a little one at home, it's probably safer to hire someone to thoroughly remove all the organic debris....maybe even power wash your garage or take down the shed.....than hire an exterminator who will inject chemicals in the soil, or spray the hell out of the perimeter of the house. You don't want to be worried about the dirt and soil around your home, or telling tykes they can't dig around or get dirty with their action figures or "set-ups".

I hate spiders, but I also know the absence of spiders is a sign of a "chemically toxic home".

[GGT]

I'm mildly bummed about our weather. I LOVE cold and snow, but not when it's taken so long to finish painting my home's exterior. Began the cleaning, sanding, caulking and prepping in October, all windows and doors are primed, some have one finish coat. But it might take until Spring to tackle painting the trim, soffits and gutters, at this rate.

[Ominous Gamer]

Christmas tree sap

[Hazir]

Two months ago I got rid of a natural gas powered water heater. Reason for that was that I didn't quite trust it. Tonight I read an article in a local newspaper of a young man having died of carbon monoxide poisoning while taking a shower using the same type of water heater.

[Catgrrl]

My mom got rid of her gas-powered heater over the same fears. Of course, it doesn't matter because her furnace runs on natural gas too, but whatever makes her feel better I guess. I have natural gas for heat and hot water, and we put a CO detector in.

Sick toddlers are physically exhausting! She's miserable so everyone else in the house needs to be, I guess. It is amazing though that after having a kid so many things don't faze me anymore. Cleaning up throw up, or getting puked on, were nightmares to me before kids. I could get nauseous just hearing someone gag. Now, I can clean up her barf on the kitchen table, then sit down and finish my meal. Oh how life changes.

Aren't you glad I posted this gross tidbit? You're welcome. Payback for the spider pics

[GGT]

(1) Yes, being a parent changes life as you once knew it. After one of my kid's sleepovers at his friend's house, I was summoned by the mother to come clean his barf off their carpet. It was mostly straight chicken noodle soup, but she just couldn't do it....since it wasn't from her own kid. So, I used one of her kitchen serving spoons to scoop the barf chunks and liquids off her (deep pile carpet), transfer it to a plastic waste can, then flush it down the toilet. Then I had to clean and disinfect the waste can and spoon, and try to sop up remaining carpet barf liquids with paper towels, and scrub it with a brush and soap. Next day, I scheduled a carpet cleaner to do the job right, and deodorize too. I'm kinda gagging just now remembering the episode. And my son felt soooo bad about the ordeal, while also being one sick little boy.

(2) I've always been afraid, even paranoid, about gas fuel under pressure and open flame pilot lights. My only natural gas appliance is the furnace...but it's located in the attic. I feel a bit better about that than being underneath the floor, in the basement, in case of explosion or fire. Much less worried about carbon monoxide poisoning since my smoke detectors are dual-function.

[Hazir]

I saw those dual function smoke/CO detectors, but how the hell can they be effective ? Smoke goes up, CO goes down. Where you place them to detect both?

We've only got heating on natural gas now, but the heaters are not in our appartment. They're in a separate area on top of the staircase, right under the roof.

GG, that woman who made you do that; not cool at all.

The 'grossest' I remember with a baby was cleaning out the nose of a 3 month old with a bad case of the common cold.

[Catgrrl]

For the CO detector I have it says to place it high, so we have it on the wall near the ceiling. It used to be in our dining area adjacent to the kitchen; the only downside to it was that it also detects "explosive gas" so if I cooked with wine or bourbon it would go off. So I had to move it into our garage, but it's loud enough that we can hear it through the garage door. I have a separate smoke detector in the hallway.

[Flixy]

Due to lab problems my bight shift ends 2 hours early - which is nice for my sleep, but bad for my paycheck

[Nessus]

My old phone blew up. So I got a new one this weekend. Turns out, the old one had saved, internally, and without asking me a goddamn thing, 95% of my contact list. Now, fine, I can recover all work contacts from my office phone, for some arbitrary reason it had saved my parents' number on the SIM so I can call them for family contacts, and I can e-mail my friends for their phone numbers.

But why, for the love of Jesus and Bertrand Russell, didn't the previous thing in any way attempt to inquire where precisely I'd like to keep my phone numbers? And I think this SIM card has made one transition between devices before, whereupon it remembered some completely different arbitrary phone numbers! Who thought this was good functionality? Is there some support line where I can call to kick some Nokia engineer right in the beanbag? Fuck this gay Earth

[Khendraja'aro]

SIM contacts are of very limited capacity (in numbers and what details you can store), so it's been this way for the longest time now that phones default to saving contact data on their internal memory.

That's why it's a good idea to backup/sync such things on a regular basis.

[Nessus]

Ja ja mein Herren, men mein problem vas varför ist dein default behavior designerad by eine dummkopf. Yeah, it's a good idea to not plough your car into a highway railing, but it'd sure be sweet if the car didn't actively attempt to pursue said railings. This is why you guys did so miserably on the Eastern front, I swear to Christ

[RandBlade]

RIP Sir Patrick Moore.

Sir Patrick famously thought he was the only person to have met each of the first man to fly, Orville Wright, the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, and the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong. He outlived them all.

[Hazir]

Oh I remember him.

[RandBlade]

Other than Sir David Attenborough he's probably one of the most influential and interesting TV scientists we've ever had in the UK

Quite a few interesting/sweet eccentric facts being mentioned about him now.
He loved one woman who was killed in a bombing raid in '43. Never married after that because he didn't want to settle for second best.
Had his first scientific article published when he was 13. When asked to present it at a society he wrote in and said he was 13, they wrote back and said they didn't see what difference it made.
Served in WWII '39-'45 by lying about his age.

[Ominous Gamer]

gmail is broken. wow.

[Loki]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/ny...school.html?hp

20 dead. I thought it was 2-3 when the story broke (sad, but not unusual).