Rant for the Day (keep it clean)

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Thinking about this… Now I know what the puppy kept barking at last fall and winter. Under the dryer vent is a 1 inch discharge pipe from the sump pump, both go through a cinder block and then brick wall. The pump water blew out dirt and water usually stands in it, a small puddle.

Last fall dad had a problem with the puppy digging in the water and barking at that spot… Now I know he was barking at the squirrel stashing acorns in the vent. The laundry room is under my dad’s living room, the house is a 17rm, 2 story duplex. Dad could hear the puppy but I couldn’t. My living rm is at the opposite end of the house. We share the laundry and the canning rooms.

Yesterday I looked at the puddle, there were recent squirrel tracks beside it. The squirrel was probably doing spring cleaning, pushing old acorns farther in to make more room in his pantry. They were falling at the 90 degree bend just inside the house where the pipe goes down. The squirrel stopped up the pipe with his old acorns.

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Nasty little devils.

Which brings me to my other rant! Some how my parents got bed bugs. My best guess, they brought them home from the church they attend. I do most of their shopping. They go to doctors appointments and to church, that’s it. They came from one of them and the doctors office is cleaned much better than the church.

Yet somehow they got bed bugs… and we share the laundry! I don’t have them, still don’t. But it was just a matter of time.

So, it cost me $2100 for a reputable company with a guarantee. Their work was guaranteed only if they sprayed the whole house, makes sense. They’ll be back twice in the next few weeks for follow up inspections. Those and any further spraying is no charge.

$2100 for bed bugs? Are they only killed by gold dust spray? And I wasn’t here to see what the guy actually did. I was in Mississippi that day getting a radio put in my truck. For all I know he sprinkled booger dust in each room and called it a day. :(
 
Thinking about this… Now I know what the puppy kept barking at last fall and winter. Under the dryer vent is a 1 inch discharge pipe from the sump pump, both go through a cinder block and then brick wall. The pump water blew out dirt and water usually stands in it, a small puddle.

Last fall dad had a problem with the puppy digging in the water and barking at that spot… Now I know he was barking at the squirrel stashing acorns in the vent. The laundry room is under my dad’s living room, the house is a 17rm, 2 story duplex. Dad could hear the puppy but I couldn’t. My living rm is at the opposite end of the house. We share the laundry and the canning rooms.

Yesterday I looked at the puddle, there were recent squirrel tracks beside it. The squirrel was probably doing spring cleaning, pushing old acorns farther in to make more room in his pantry. They were falling at the 90 degree bend just inside the house where the pipe goes down. The squirrel stopped up the pipe with his old acorns.

---------------------------------------------------


Which brings me to my other rant! Some how my parents got bed bugs. My best guess, they brought them home from the church they attend. I do most of their shopping. They go to doctors appointments and to church, that’s it. They came from one of them and the doctors office is cleaned much better than the church.

Yet somehow they got bed bugs… and we share the laundry! I don’t have them, still don’t. But it was just a matter of time.

So, it cost me $2100 for a reputable company with a guarantee. Their work was guaranteed only if they sprayed the whole house, makes sense. They’ll be back twice in the next few weeks for follow up inspections. Those and any further spraying is no charge.

$2100 for bed bugs? Are they only killed by gold dust spray? And I wasn’t here to see what the guy actually did. I was in Mississippi that day getting a radio put in my truck. For all I know he sprinkled booger dust in each room and called it a day. :(

Peanut, when I managed a group-home with 9 residents I can tell you that the bugs are interesting and more than difficult to completely exterminate. Here, they used a pesticide that worked in two ways. It killed many of the existing bugs but left residue that rendered the survivors / new hatch sterile. It took many months. Frequency of treatments was about every 30 days however my staff and myself stripped beds and did laundry constantly. Never mind all the belongings that were removed, destroyed or otherwise.

They live in appliances, they live in the seams of nearly any furniture like a mattresses, chairs, cushions, etc. Run your thumb and finger along a seam like a zipper.

The bugs can come from a multitude of spaces. Ours came from a "workshop" where people set their bags on the floor and at the end of the day, while our people were blamed, it was actually the staff that had brought them from their home without knowing. ANYWAYS; it will be a tough fight, it will not be cheap, and you and your parents will be on the font lines of the "fight".

A recommendation or two. First, take any and all laundry to the laundromat. Run them in a dryer first as long as you can first. The big "industrial" types. Once they have run 30 minutes plus on the hot cycle, wash the items and then dry again. The high temp dryer run kills them and then they get washed away. Check everything brought into the home. Possibly transfer items from bags into something so the contents can be checked. They are tiny in the beginning and can be very difficult to see and identify. If you have any questions let me know. There are some pretty decent articles online as well.
 
Peanut, when I managed a group-home with 9 residents I can tell you that the bugs are interesting and more than difficult to completely exterminate. Here, they used a pesticide that worked in two ways. It killed many of the existing bugs but left residue that rendered the survivors / new hatch sterile. It took many months. Frequency of treatments was about every 30 days however my staff and myself stripped beds and did laundry constantly. Never mind all the belongings that were removed, destroyed or otherwise.

They live in appliances, they live in the seams of nearly any furniture like a mattresses, chairs, cushions, etc. Run your thumb and finger along a seam like a zipper.

The bugs can come from a multitude of spaces. Ours came from a "workshop" where people set their bags on the floor and at the end of the day, while our people were blamed, it was actually the staff that had brought them from their home without knowing. ANYWAYS; it will be a tough fight, it will not be cheap, and you and your parents will be on the font lines of the "fight".

A recommendation or two. First, take any and all laundry to the laundromat. Run them in a dryer first as long as you can first. The big "industrial" types. Once they have run 30 minutes plus on the hot cycle, wash the items and then dry again. The high temp dryer run kills them and then they get washed away. Check everything brought into the home. Possibly transfer items from bags into something so the contents can be checked. They are tiny in the beginning and can be very difficult to see and identify. If you have any questions let me know. There are some pretty decent articles online as well.
My buddy surrounded his bed with diatomaceous earth

Ben
 
Rant? Not sure. What is with the ads here today? Seeing more than usual. Is it intended?

add.PNG
 
If it were just me I'd deal with the issue differently. It'd have been time consuming. Lots of don't do this or that... But my folks can't take care of themselves much less help me in such a battle. So I bit the bullet and made the call.


Also... I noticed the banner ads too... they shouldn't appear when logged in, or so I thought.
 
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If it were just me I'd deal with the issue differently. It'd have been time consuming. Lots of don't do this or that... But my folks can't take care of themselves much less help me in such a battle. So I bit the bullet and made the call.


Also... I noticed the banner ads also... they shouldn't appear when logged in, or so I thought.

Fully understand and sometimes you need to count on others. Hopefully they know what they are doing and are reputable. Only time will tell. I am so "jaded" with people and businesses as a whole in the past few years that I seem to look at the negatives more than anything expecting the worst. I have to remind myself that not everyone is out for a free ride.
 
If it kills mites and fleas, it kills bedbugs. I sprayed with flea dip (yep, like they use on cattle!) and took a holiday in a motel for a weekend. I treated my whole house for under thirty bucks and have yet to have fleas or anything else but roaches for going on five years. every bloodsucking critter however was sent to bug-hell with extreme prejudice.

P.S
I have cats, many outdoor cats that come and go. NO FLEAS!
 
Hey Dr Jenner with the way things are going , that is a good problem to have
with the purposeful destruction of our country’s freedoms, economy, fuel and food supplies
be thankful for all your prepping supplies. It may be rough now but you’ll be set later, good luck with the move and setting up your new homestead.
Thank you! I know we will be on the other side soon, just exhausted!! We need to have a good old fashioned barn raising here 😂
 
Feeling sorry, Dr Jenner. We went from a nice house to a run down farm. And 6 pods to unload. One pod was storage food. Cousins helped unload them before we got there and they thought I was a lunatic. Oh well. They don't anymore. I wouldn't trade that move for anything. Best thing we did. Hope you feel the same soon.
I think I will soon but yeah I know what you mean about people thinking I’m a lunatic. I have boxes of tampons and guess what the new shortage is… yep tampons! Haha.
it was hard to do it all ourselves but I didn’t want anyone knowing what we have!
 
I need to dump diatomaceous earth all over my house. Fleas are getting bad. The humidity is a gift to them.

My sister and her husband seem to think I'm a freeloader because I'm a fulltime caregiver for my mother. Part of the problem is that my mother likes to gripe a lot & mostly talks about negative things. She also likes to exaggerate and never takes responsibility for her own actions and likes to blame others for things. So, she tells my sister that I'm not cooking for her (when I am) and that I'm not doing stuff that she wants me to do (when she wants me to do something I'm not physically capable of doing). Took her to a doctor appointment & her A1C was 8.8 (it had been down to 7.1). She immediately started trying to blame me for it. Lied to the doctor and said I was only feeding her one meal a day. For starters, she is perfectly capable of making herself a sandwich but also, I will ask her if she wants something and she will say "No". And she knows I will cook something for her if she asks me to but she doesn't ask. And also, I've been struggling to stay awake (that's another rant) lately. I mentioned the ice cream drumsticks she's been eating. Doc said she shouldn't eat those. She immediately tried to pin it on me saying I kept buying them and I said I bought them because she told me to. (She kept insisting I buy them and whining when I didn't). So, I told her in front of the doctor that I won't buy them anymore. I also mentioned she doesn't check her blood sugar bc she can't get her tester to work. He said he's scheduling her to meet with a Diabetes specialist who will teach her how to use the Freestyle Libre. Now, I suspect Mom doesn't really want to have her blood sugar checked because she likes to lie & use low blood sugar as an excuse to ask for candy/sweets etc. She doesn't realize that she doesn't need to lie to me for me to do stuff for her.

I will say, family can be freeloaders. One of the reasons my brother-in-law dislikes me (other than my Mom lying about me to him & my sister) is because he has a low opinion of people's sisters due to his aunt straight up stealing from his father's family business & mooching off of him as much as she possibly could. But his father promised the late grandfather he'd take care of her so he didn't have her arrested for embezzling hundreds of thousands of $ from the business & when he passed the business to my brother-in-law he tried to make my brother-in-law keep the aunt working there but instead he fired her and then had to threaten to sue her & report her theft when she stole some computers from the office & tried to set up her own competing business with stolen client info and embezzled funds. Brother-in-law ended up selling the business to avoid having to deal with his father constantly demanding he hire her back and run things the way he wanted. The father had hired illegal immigrants to pay under the table & my brother-in-law got them all work visas and made sure everything was above board.

I have rants on affirmative action but I'm too tired to type them right now.

I will add that even though my brother is mooching off of Mom and barely contributes-- doesn't clean, rarely cooks, & mostly acts like video games are his job and thinks that he can just run away to Japan and everything will be great-- he accuses me of being a moocher when I'm the one who does the cleaning, gets things fixed, feeds his cats, etc. He junked up his room so badly with trash that sometimes when he walks out he drags trash into the hallway from his room. Mom asked him to clean it up. I was helping her get down the hallway the other day & she complained that she asked him to pick it up and why hadn't he picked it up. It told her that its because he thinks he shouldn't have to pick anything up. He thinks he shouldn't be responsible for anything. He was in the kitchen and overheard me and started using profanities to describe me & told me I was "always playing the victim". Not sure how he gets "victim" from me pointing out a fact-- he thinks I'm the only one who should have to do any household chores and that I should have to put away his leftovers and clean up his messes.

Now, to be fair, he has been helping with carrying in groceries more lately and he brings cases of water to the living room for Mom, and he sometimes takes the trash out once per month-- but only ever one bag. He doesn't get the rest of the trash. Just one kitchen trash can that often overflows before he takes it out. But, he thinks he's doing "everything". He's a 42-yr-old man-child. I wish he would grow up and start helping out more. He actually screamed at me for saying "thank you" to him yesterday. He's had a really short temper and keeps screaming at me over nothing. He was blocking my path to the fridge and I politely asked him to move. He didn't budge. I asked again and he screamed at me that I was in his way. He had 4 feet to the other side he could have moved to but refused and wanted to go through a bottleneck where I was walking instead. Ugh.

And the puppies have been knocking over trash cans and tearing stuff up in the kitchen. We can't keep them out of the house. Upside on that is I may have found a family who will adopt them. But I'm waiting to hear back from them.

Zannej
in the picture if you look on the far right corner is where the mod# and ser# are , also Trane puts a secondary sticker inside the service door on the bottom metal plate just where your power enters the unit, if the weeds are grown up into the condenser coil that could be some excess heat gain, coils may need to be flushed with a water hose as well. When the ac is running is the fan on top of the outdoor unit running?
There was no info on the inside door, but one of the repair guy said the label is on an outside corner I couldn't get to. Fan wasn't running so they replaced it. It's fixed now fortunately.
 
I will never be able to hold up my head and claim I was an engineer. :cry:

Tonight I had phone meeting scheduled for 6:00. Come 6:20 no call.

Tried calling. Mobile connection not available.

Tried power cycle but couldn't get power options to come up.

After trying to search on how to power cycle with power button that doesn't work... Tried an app but it wanted a credit card. Delete the app....

Arghhh!

An hour after I started The Princess walks in after skipping out of KungFu thinking I was dead.

I demonstrated my Dilemma to her. She suggested trying the power button on the other side of the smart phone. It worked!

I needed help to power off my phone!

I am soooo.... stupid!

Ben

PS I never had to shut off this phone until now and the old phone had the power button on the other side. I really hate when functions (power buttons, cruise control...) get moved from one place to another.

Now an old joke...

How did Helen Keller parent punish her when she misbehaved?

They rearranged the furniture.


I feel like I must have done something wrong.
 
I heard a worse one about Helen Keller's parents putting the plunger in the toilet when they were mad at her.

Because I couldn't take my thyroid meds I was sweating even worse than usual all day. And the smell of my sweat has a different odor when I'm off the meds. Yick. I was overheated while waiting at the pharmacy. Some other customers were sympathetic. I took a sink bath (since shower is still broken) before going in but in the store I could not stop sweating. I feel sorry for the maskless people who could smell my sweat.
 
I heard a worse one about Helen Keller's parents putting the plunger in the toilet when they were mad at her.

Because I couldn't take my thyroid meds I was sweating even worse than usual all day. And the smell of my sweat has a different odor when I'm off the meds. Yick. I was overheated while waiting at the pharmacy. Some other customers were sympathetic. I took a sink bath (since shower is still broken) before going in but in the store I could not stop sweating. I feel sorry for the maskless people who could smell my sweat.
I have that problem, I smell like bad chicken soup. try spraying down with 100 proof medical grade massage alcohol, at least then you just smell like a cough drop!
 
What is kennel dip?

It is so damn hot here. I had to go outside and spend some time out there and my clothes were completely soaked through with sweat. So hot the dogs wouldn't even go out. They were watching me from my bedroom window. LOL.

5 of the cats are spread out in my room on various surfaces/objects and Jelly (the dog) is passed out with his face on a sweaty shirt I took off.
 
Too bad Z. Too bad nobody cares to prosecute these days.
Yeah, they only do it if they can make money off of it. The bank told him it was clearly not him that took the money out but he had to submit paperwork and they will allegedly do an investigation. Thing is, earlier in the day the bank called about someone trying to fraudulently take out a loan in his name. To make matters worse, Capital One transferred his entire IRA to Millennium Trust without permission or any forewarning (AFTER he filed paperwork to transfer it to Barksdale and they refused. My guess is they got paid to transfer it elsewhere. But Millennium Trust won't let him have any access to his account. Login doesn't work. When he called on the phone they told him to call Capital One. He called CO and they told him to call MT. He called back & MT was closed. Too bad they won't prosecute if he tries to file charges for theft/fraud.
 
I had a blue cross plan that never paid a thing until I called them and complained. Then they would say it should have been paid and they went ahead and paid the bill.
A guy that I worked with said he had the same problem so I told him to call them. He did and they paid him back for all their errors.
 
Rant for the day? Hmm, yeah. Family sucks. Uncle passed a few years back. His wife decided to re-marry which is fine but all of them are rude with no concern for others. It's all good. Wedding was an hour late since they "forgot" the rings.. Who does that? My cousins, from the original union only know us when it is convenient.

Stupid dog would not listen nor come into the house so we could leave. Eventually got close enough to grab his collar. He is now on the leash and tied plan and his freedom has been removed.

Trying to move some web hosting. Completely inept people. Cannot even get a payment completed properly. It seems obvious that we are in a time where people do not want to work, are not smart enough to work, or simply do not know how.

Honestly I am over it. Covid seemed to create stupid and/or lazy it would seem. My complaints are pretty insignificant compared to others here so it is what it is.

Over it. So very over things.
 

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