Random randomness

[Daehawk]

Dont need to be climbing up on chairs. The other day I was simply on my tip toes trying to screw in a bulb and fell / semi passed out as I fell but was awake when i hit. just got dizzy or something. its the third time ive fallen in few months. Fell out of a car the other month.

[Kraken]

The Red X comes and installs it.

Cue the reasons that you don't want anyone in your house.

[em2nought]

National Fire Protection Association

• Smoke alarms were present in three-quarters (74 percent) of reported home fires in 2014–2018.
• Almost three out of five home fire deaths were caused by fires in properties with no smoke alarms (41 percent) or smoke alarms that failed to operate (16 percent).
• The risk of dying in reported home structure fires is 55 percent lower in homes with working smoke alarms than in homes with no alarms or none that worked.
• When present, hardwired smoke alarms operated in 94 percent of the fires considered large enough to trigger a smoke alarm. Battery-powered alarms operated 82 percent of the time. Power source issues were the most common factors when smoke alarms failed to operate.

There's a short video of the fire here. Sorry I can't figure out how to just embed the video.

As for smoke alarms. got none.

If you google "free smoke alarms" you'll get some hits. Looks like your local/regional Red Cross is the best bet.

If he didn't ever get any because he cared about his wife previously then I seriously doubt he's going to bother with a free one even if the fire brigade brings it to him themselves. A smoke detector with a ten year battery is what I gave my cousin for Christmas figuring if I move at least she'll be set for ten years because I doubt she'd bother to change or pay for a new battery every year. Maybe I should set my cousin up with Dae, he likes older women, and she has a car because I gave her one. I wonder if any insurance claims have ever been denied due to non-working or missing smoke detectors. I know my mom's insurance company used to send her very cheap generic 9Vs ever year.

[Daehawk]

We always bought our cola products at Dollar General....or tried to as they had the best deals.

The weekly ad these days shows them at 3 for $15. Thats f'n ridiculous. it wasn't even 10 years ago Id get them 3 for $8. Thet're nearly double now in a short time. Not like Im speaking of 1980. It was more like 2014 and 2015. Its why I buy Walmarts Sam cola..have been for a few years now. But I have no idea why regular Coke and Pepsi are so dang high these days.

I started really drinking more cola in the 90s because they were cheaper. A 12 pack then was $2.50. The sale price was 2 12packs for $4.

[Smoove_B]

Yes, soda prices are absurd. They raised them during the early days of the pandemic and consumers still paid, so now they're going to stay elevated.

[em2nought]

Before the "accidental" release my generic walmart soda 2Ls were 68 cents, I refuse to pay $1.42 for them now. Frickn' high fructose corn syrup. I've increased my PG Tips iced tea intake even though I hate keeping that white glass cook top clean.

I should have bought a countertop single burner appliance three years ago.

[LordMortis]

Yes, soda prices are absurd. They raised them during the early days of the pandemic and consumers still paid, so now they're going to stay elevated.

You can still get Coke and Pepsi 2 Liters on deep sale for $1 a two liter every few months and the lesser pops go on sale for $1 quite frequently. However, they limit quantities and they never used to do that before. I'm a bit surprised at the sticky nature of pop pricing. I'm seeing the price of snack foods starting to recede a small amount. No where near pre-pandemic inflation but going down just the same. I had assumed it was because of the over prescription of diabetic treatments and weight loss drugs in the last year causing a glut in the supply pipeline. It's been bad for me. I have a hard time turning down ultra cheap snack food, even as I have been calorie counting for shy of a year. So I also a glut of snacks in my house and I continue to buy at a pace well above my permitable consumption level. Now if only Cheez Its would come back to down in sales of under $1.50 a box where shrinkflation didn't decrease the contents by 30%. Cheez Its remain my perfect calorie counting snack.

Also, I can't speak to Coke, specifically, but I've read from several sources that increased input costs forcing inflation has largely been an excuse, not a reality. Return to shareholders has accounted for over 70% of food inflation. I wish I could find sources.

[Rumpy]

I don't even do pop anymore, not even diet ones. I've largely cut it out and instead drink sparkling water for the bubbles. Flavors are getting better and better, and there's a brand here that emulates soft drink flavors, ie root beer, cream soda, , etc, and they taste nearly identical to the real thing.

[LordMortis]

I still have three two liters left at home. Two of them are 2+ years old. The third is what was limited Cherry Vernor's that I really wanted to try and still can't warrant opening months later. I drink four literal cups of lightly sweetened coffee in the morning and then water for the rest of the day. I get a few beers a couple time a year and drink the leftover milk I buy by the half gallon on sale to sometimes make overnight oats/meatballs/twice baked potatoes/asst'd package good that requires milk. I drink a lot of tap water. Probably a gallon most days.

[Rumpy]

Man, I haven't heard the Vernor's name is ages. I think the last time I saw some locally was over 30 years ago. It was the Birch beer, if I remember correctly.

[LordMortis]

Close. Ginger Ale. For whatever reason, it's not as good as it was when it came in glass bottles many years ago but it's still the best of the mass produced ginger ales, IMO. No idea what they cherry will taste like. It's gotten bad reviews from friends but I love Vernor's. I love Black Cherry pop. So I have to try it... Eventually....

[Holman]

So we have a squirrel (I believe) under the roof again. We've heard it running around off and on for several days now.

Our third floor is three rooms up under a hip roof. There is no human-accessible attic space at the highest point, but storage space at the edges of the roof are accessible from inside. In short, an animal anywhere under the roof can get to anywhere else under the roof, but we can access only some of that space.

That means that we can put a trap in our accessible space and that the animal will be able to get to it.

We've placed a cage trap in the storage space. This has worked in recent years (when we've caught two squirrels), but our present invader seems smarter than most. It was able to remove the peanuts we first used as bait, presumably through the outside caging. When I replaced these with a piece of toast covered with peanut butter, it refused to enter the cage but was still about scrape off about half the peanut butter from outside.

I'm now using a piece of toast with shelled peanuts and raisins stuck in peanut butter on top. I've also been careful to place the bread in the exact middle (rather than at the rear) of the cage, so the squirrel will almost certainly have to enter to get the bait.

And now we wait...

(Any and all advice on trapping squirrels is welcome. Aside from the ethical concerns, I don't want to poison it because it would almost certainly crawl off somewhere inaccessible to die and rot behind my bedroom wall.)

[Daehawk]

I hate sparkling water. No matter the flavor for some reason the bubbly water hits my mouth and insta regret. Ive tried a few when something new comes out to see. Its why I have never tried Bubbly i think its called?

Never heard of Vernors but looks like they make Faygo now which has been a thing here since i was little.

EDIT: Looks like Publix sells Vernors.

[Holman]

A glass that's half seltzer and half orange juice makes a cheap and refreshing drink, and it's healthier than soda.

[Daehawk]

this seems liek a lot.....

[LordMortis]

So we have a squirrel (I believe) under the roof again. We've heard it running around off and on for several days now.

They dance on my roof every day and now a have a rabbit(s?) living in burrow right up against the foundation of my house under my deck. That is something I should probably do something about.

....

I was slowly becoming a regular cleaner until I got hit by a car. Now, 10 months later, I'm slowly becoming a cleaner again.

[LordMortis]

What's that? Fireworks? I guess it's a holiday.

Are fireworks on Halloween a thing now? I don't remember fireworks on Halloween being a thing. That or there is a lot of heavy gun play going on in multiple directions. Kinda makes me hope that fireworks on Halloween is a new thing.

And now fireworks on Turkey Day weekend are a thing. At least it's not crazy late and I don't own dogs. I know it's stereotyping, but don't ever live in a neighborhood of renters. My tiny corner of the world is never bouncing back from 2008 because slumlords will never sell their slumlord goldmines. For two out of the last 15 years, I've had neighbors I could happily ignore from the rental next door. For 13, they've been absolutely rotten people and the best I can hope for is they trash the house for a lot of cost before they leave.

[Blackhawk]

this seems liek a lot.....

With a couple of exceptions, it seems pretty reasonable. Don't do laundry unless you have a full load (it's wasteful.) I don't think windows need cleaned monthly use your eyeballs - clean them when they're dirty.) And I'm not sure what they mean by 'wash carpets' (do they mean shampoo the entire house?), but seasonally seems a bit too often. Oh, and if they think I'm redoing all the closets every three months, they're nuts.

[Blackhawk]

What's that? Fireworks? I guess it's a holiday.

Are fireworks on Halloween a thing now? I don't remember fireworks on Halloween being a thing. That or there is a lot of heavy gun play going on in multiple directions. Kinda makes me hope that fireworks on Halloween is a new thing.

And now fireworks on Turkey Day weekend are a thing. At least it's not crazy late and I don't own dogs. I know it's stereotyping, but don't ever live in a neighborhood of renters. My tiny corner of the world is never bouncing back from 2008 because slumlords will never sell their slumlord goldmines. For two out of the last 15 years, I've had neighbors I could happily ignore from the rental next door. For 13, they've been absolutely rotten people and the best I can hope for is they trash the house for a lot of cost before they leave.

At least they make sense on New Year's.

[Kraken]

Michiganders love their Vernor's. Ginger ale never appealed to me. I quit drinking soda altogether more years ago than I can remember, but I do like my unflavored fizzy water.

Shrinkflation pisses me off more than inflation does. I buy pizza sauce in 16 or 32-oz jars. One pizza uses 8 oz of sauce, so a jar is either two or four pizzas. Now the 32-oz jars are history and there's only one brand that still comes in 16 oz. Most have shrunk to 14.5, and some are just 12 oz. I don't have a 7.25-oz measuring cup!

[Daehawk]

Ive only known windows to be a spring thing.

As for fireworks I saw a thing on Facebook asking people to plz donate to an animal shelter in your area instead of blowing your money and loud stuff that scares people and animals. I agree of course.

[em2nought]

I love Black Cherry pop.

Texas had Cherry Dr. Pepper by the 2L which I've never seen anywhere else. Walmart even has a generic version.

Red Lobster offered to put grenadine in my Pepsi the other day, that was so good I'm thinking about getting a bottle of grenadine for myself. Maybe a little in my ice tea.

[Daehawk]

Walmart sells Dr Pepper Cherry. Had a 12 pack last week myself. I like it . Also like cherry pepsi and i dislike pepsi/

[em2nought]

Walmart sells Dr Pepper Cherry. Had a 12 pack last week myself. I like it . Also like cherry pepsi and i dislike pepsi/

Texas & Tennessee then. Maybe it's just the states where folks that were at the Alamo were from. Happy New Year!

[Daehawk]

How do I stop getting email updates fro ma twitter user I hate who I have never followed? I get an update email off and on from twitter / X that includes like 5 twitter posts from various people. People like Tim Russ or George Takei, or Steven King.

but for some reason one of them without fail is an idiot named Dana Loesch. I dont know who this total asswad is but all she posts are lies and bs about how great this and that republican GOP is...today it was saying the Gov has a good trigger finger with a pic of Diesoontos on it.

How can I get rid of her being included in these emails?

[Unagi]

How do I stop getting email updates fro ma twitter user I hate who I have never followed? I get an update email off and on from twitter / X that includes like 5 twitter posts from various people. People like Tim Russ or George Takei, or Steven King.

but for some reason one of them without fail is an idiot named Dana Loesch. I dont know who this total asswad is but all she posts are lies and bs about how great this and that republican GOP is...today it was saying the Gov has a good trigger finger with a pic of Diesoontos on it.

How can I get rid of her being included in these emails?

Google it?

[Daehawk]

How do I stop getting email updates fro ma twitter user I hate who I have never followed? I get an update email off and on from twitter / X that includes like 5 twitter posts from various people. People like Tim Russ or George Takei, or Steven King.

but for some reason one of them without fail is an idiot named Dana Loesch. I dont know who this total asswad is but all she posts are lies and bs about how great this and that republican GOP is...today it was saying the Gov has a good trigger finger with a pic of Diesoontos on it.

How can I get rid of her being included in these emails?

Google it?

Read the first page os pages...no help. All they tell is how to turn off email notifications. In my settings its all completely turned off. But im still getting this update with multiple posts in it. I dont mind it..just that one user.

I could totally unsub to the entire thing but want to keep it all but her...and sometimes others. Its random who it shows posts from...but she is always in it. im sick of her.

I still dont know why in the hell Twitter has a like button but not a dislike one.

[Rumpy]

Woke up to a phone, cable and internet outage, which was all off for several hours. What a way to start off the new year!

Btw, little known fact about Tim Russ. He's an actual amateur astronomer. Attended an online presentation where he was guest speaker, and it was all about his astronomy hobby. When he's not acting or working on his music, he's observing with his telescope. That impressed me because usually when a celeb says they are, they usually don't know that much, but he seems to be really into it. The only other celeb I know that was heavily into it was Johnny Carson, who was well-known for being an eclipse chaser. Interestingly, I onced cross-checked dates when he was absent hosting and it coincided with an eclipse.

[Jaymon]

We had quite a ruckus with our cats last night during the fireworks. They all wanted to hide, but several of them chose the same hiding spot, and disagreed on who should be allowed to hide there. OK, bit of clarification, not all cats wanted to hide. One in particular did not hide, because she ran out of fucks to give several years ago. Godzilla could be walking down the street and she would be like, "thank goodness, here is somebody who knows how to open a can"

[Daehawk]

My little guy slept in his floor bed wit ha heating pad on low the entire time the neighbors were busy throwing their money into the air to watch it explode.

[Blackhawk]

I have a bookshelf that's falling apart (it's a cheap MDF junker.) I'm going to try to reinforce it (despite a serious lack of reasonable guides), but on a whim I went looking. There are still next to zero bookshelves for sale at most places. Books don't exist anymore, so 99% of all 'book shelves' are curio shelves that would hold a couple of dozen books, max. When you do find full-sized shelves online, they're horribly expensive. On a whim I even checked Ikea, even though I knew it was a waste of time. I did find shelves there for $79, which looked decent. Only $250 shipped. I've never seen a company try so hard to be useless to people that don't live nearby.

Sadly, I think the bookshelf market is dead. Not enough people want them to justify stores carrying the affordable ones anymore (I think I paid $25 for mine probably 15 years ago.)

[Kraken]

I bought four big unfinished oak book cases about 30 years ago and finished them myself. They still look great and are nice and solid. If what you say is true they're probably valuable to boot. I think I paid around $100 apiece for them, plus stain and polyurethane.

[Daehawk]

I have a bookshelf that's falling apart (it's a cheap MDF junker.) I'm going to try to reinforce it (despite a serious lack of reasonable guides), but on a whim I went looking. There are still next to zero bookshelves for sale at most places. Books don't exist anymore, so 99% of all 'book shelves' are curio shelves that would hold a couple of dozen books, max. When you do find full-sized shelves online, they're horribly expensive. On a whim I even checked Ikea, even though I knew it was a waste of time. I did find shelves there for $79, which looked decent. Only $250 shipped. I've never seen a company try so hard to be useless to people that don't live nearby.

Sadly, I think the bookshelf market is dead. Not enough people want them to justify stores carrying the affordable ones anymore (I think I paid $25 for mine probably 15 years ago.)

I got mine at Walmart for about $60 but that was many years ago. Their site shows many types..even some almost like mine...but doubt they keep them in stock like when i got mine. Probably all shpping.

[Anonymous Bosch]

I have a bookshelf that's falling apart (it's a cheap MDF junker.) I'm going to try to reinforce it (despite a serious lack of reasonable guides), but on a whim I went looking. There are still next to zero bookshelves for sale at most places. Books don't exist anymore, so 99% of all 'book shelves' are curio shelves that would hold a couple of dozen books, max. When you do find full-sized shelves online, they're horribly expensive. On a whim I even checked Ikea, even though I knew it was a waste of time. I did find shelves there for $79, which looked decent. Only $250 shipped. I've never seen a company try so hard to be useless to people that don't live nearby.

Sadly, I think the bookshelf market is dead. Not enough people want them to justify stores carrying the affordable ones anymore (I think I paid $25 for mine probably 15 years ago.)

If you're not hung up on appearance, some basic heavy-duty storage shelving would be a more affordable and practical alternative. This Amazon Basics unit provides a load capacity of 350-lbs per shelf for under $60. A modular cube wire grid organizer like this -- available for $49.29 with Amazon Prime -- can also work well and is easier to assemble and disassemble, with a maximum load capacity of up to 22-lbs per cube:

[Baroquen]

Ugh. I get your thinking, and it's very practical. So there's nothing at all wrong with that suggestion.

But IMO those aren't bookshelves. I'd rather use cheapo particle board shelves with fake wood finish than store my books on garage shelves or cubes. I guess I'm hung up on appearances.

[Anonymous Bosch]

Ugh. I get your thinking, and it's very practical. So there's nothing at all wrong with that suggestion.

But IMO those aren't bookshelves. I'd rather use cheapo particle board shelves with fake wood finish than store my books on garage shelves or cubes. I guess I'm hung up on appearances.

I'm sure they could be dressed up a bit though, by getting creative. You could adhere wallpaper or contact paper to the back panel of the shelving unit to add a pop of pattern or texture. That would create a more visually appealing backdrop for books. And perhaps attach decorative molding or trim to the front edges of the shelves to give them a more finished and sophisticated appearance than bare wire.

[Blackhawk]

I can't afford to be picky about appearances. My house is already full of furnishings that work, but don't match, decades worth of odds and ends that I've been given or repurposed. As long as they function, I make due. I can't exactly go out and buy furniture just to get better colors. I've looked at storage shelves, and very few are designed to fit the same space as a regular bookshelf. The first one linked wouldn't be big enough for the books I currently have in the shelf, and 22 pounds per cube wouldn't hold many chunks of my collection.

But it's honestly not important. Looking at shelves was more of a part of looking at options, and the cheapest option is still to try and add some sort of braces/reinforcement to my existing shelf. I just need to see if I can find a cheap rectangular chunk of plywood that will fit in my car that I can cut into triangles.

[em2nought]

I bought a used harvest style butcherblock dining table for $40. The top became a bathroom vanity, bookshelf top, and cutting board. The skirting on the side of the table became two 3 inch by 27 inch reinforcing edges for my kitchen cabinet shelves which had severe bows to them and in addition two reinforcing edges for a very cheap MDF book shelf beside my secretary. My shelves look like the letter "L"s with the little foot sticking down in the back and screwed together with 2&1/2 inch box of screws from Dollar Tree. Works really well to make them level. The 4 legs to the table I couldn't bring myself to throw away. If nothing else they'd be great to beat somebody to death with. If your whole unit is falling apart then those triangles screwed to the vertical and horizontal in the corners sounds like the way to go. Around here it looks like people are throwing a bunch of stuff away after getting their Christmas loot. You could probably find some suitable piece of furniture to cut those triangles out of beside the road on trash day.

Just spent the day helping a friend remove all the custom built do it yourself shelves he screwed into his 40 foot shipping container. He's actually hauling that stuff to Texas from Florida since it's worth at least double what he paid for it way back when we put the shelving in the shipping container in the first place. I made a joke with my friend when we were building similar shelves in my detached garage that the shelves were so strong we could have a dozen people sleeping on them and my neighbor overheard part of the conversation and called the local gov't to inform them we were illegally housing people in my garage. The gov't sent someone demanding to check whether it was true or not. That neighbor was a real piece of work.

[Zarathud]

Cheapest solution is going to be 2x4s and plywood. Cut, sand and paint.

[Blackhawk]

Cheapest solution is going to be 2x4s and plywood. Cut, sand and paint.

I have no way to get full sized lumber home without renting a truck\trailer\rack. I also lack the skill to do even something that straightforward effectively.