Rant for the Day (keep it clean)

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They are no longer bothering the light fixture after I sprayed, but I'll keep an eye out. They still seem to be coming up to the door.

Went to drive into town to pick up RXs and discovered 2 trees are down across the road.
1690061125599.png

They are bigger than they look. Top tree is about shoulder height on me and has a piece sticking down into the hill on the other side. Only managed to budge it a couple of inches. The other one is heavy as hell and wouldn't budge at all. Forgot to take pics, but the entire area to the left is filled with fallen trees and branches.

I called the parish sheriff's department and told them I'm stranded and what road I live on and they said they would alert the police jury road people to come move them. My brother still has to go to work-- but he already told his boss about the situation in case they don't get it moved in time.
 
They are no longer bothering the light fixture after I sprayed, but I'll keep an eye out. They still seem to be coming up to the door.

Went to drive into town to pick up RXs and discovered 2 trees are down across the road. View attachment 112405
They are bigger than they look. Top tree is about shoulder height on me and has a piece sticking down into the hill on the other side. Only managed to budge it a couple of inches. The other one is heavy as hell and wouldn't budge at all. Forgot to take pics, but the entire area to the left is filled with fallen trees and branches.

I called the parish sheriff's department and told them I'm stranded and what road I live on and they said they would alert the police jury road people to come move them. My brother still has to go to work-- but he already told his boss about the situation in case they don't get it moved in time.
Waitaminute! Is that the "road" they have to drive down to deliver your packages?
...I'm beginning to discover why they might have a 'problem' :rolleyes:.
 
Carp! My laptop died. I needed it tomorrow night so I pulled it out this morning to let it charge while I ran updates.

It wouldn’t accept my password, nothing I tried worked. Had an eye appointment this afternoon. Just got home and started over again. Same story.

I finally made headway by bringing up the 'on screen keyboard'. Then I could see what was happening. The keyboard inputs are hosed…

All the number keys across the top are in a caps only state. Shift key or cap lock have no effect on them. Then the number pad… numbers only work if number lock is turned off but none of the symbol keys work at all. The number keys stop working if num-lock is on. 🤪

The rest of the letter keys… randomly shift between caps and lower case which I can see happen on the – on screen keyboard. So, by sitting and waiting for keys to be in the correct state I managed to enter my password and boot...

Didn’t help the situation… I can’t even describe what a keyboard with a ‘mind of it’s own’ does to a booted operating system. It’s randomly entering key commands!!!!. 🤬

I have a bootable copy of linux mint on a thumb drive. I can’t get the keyboard to cooperate long enough to access it. Not that reloading the operating system will help but I’m willing to try anything at this point… Carp!!!! 😤
If yours is like my old Compaq, you can plug in a keyboard from a PC and it will override the onboard pad, same for the mouse! office depot sells crappy GE keypads for 10$ still.
 
Waitaminute! Is that the "road" they have to drive down to deliver your packages?
...I'm beginning to discover why they might have a 'problem' :rolleyes:.
Yes, that's the road. LOL. It used to be a lot worse. They've been smoothing it down, putting down gravel, clearing some of the weeds in the ditches, digging out ditches, etc. About a mile and a half to 2 miles up it goes to really crappy "paved" road. They laid down really thin tar and something on top. Not even 2" thick from what I can tell. Full of pot-holes and bumps.

Thing is, they've been delivering out here for decades and I wasn't having problems for awhile but the last several months they've had issues.

Also, I think one of my cats is sick. He keeps peeing on my bed and on me. He peed on me this morning so I had to do another load of laundry. Got my cardigan, shirt, bedsheet, roll pillow, and my favorite blanket. Got them in the dryer now.

Thunderstorms are kicking around so I don't know if the road people will come out. Not even sure if they got the message. I've had to call the police to contact the power company before when I had trees down on powerlines. At least these ones missed the lines.

I forgot to mention that plugging in a wired keyboard or even using a dongle and wireless keyboard can bypass the laptop's default keyboard. Some will even let you hook them to different monitors.
 
Mention of rocking chairs made me think of a song "Old Rocking Chair's got me".

I found that taking a photo of my porch and sending it to fedexhelp Twitter account in a private message let them add the image to their records to tell the driver where to leave stuff. It has helped a little.

I'm nervous because I have two computer things coming-- one via USPS and another via UPS. Amazon shows both have "shipped". USPS is saying it hasn't received the package yet. UPS said its waiting on something. I'm hoping there are no issues. ETA from Amazon site does not match the ETA on the carrier sites.

The road crew cut up the trees into nice little logs and shoved them in the ditch to get them out of the way so I was able to get into town to pick up RX. Unfortunately, they were out-of-stock on one of Mom's RXs so I have to go back when it comes in.
 
Also, I think one of my cats is sick. He keeps peeing on my bed and on me. He peed on me this morning so I had to do another load of laundry. Got my cardigan, shirt, bedsheet, roll pillow, and my favorite blanket. Got them in the dryer now.
They do that when they have FIV, right before they go terminal and die. BUT if it's a young female, she thinks she's pregnant..
 
Zannej : our road is worse if it's any consolation. Husband or son have to scrape it with the tractor almost after every rain storm because it's so steep. You have to be in first gear just to get up it. I 'll take a photo
Hope you get your trees moved

My rant , which I already started in the other thread: transportation cost in the US

cost of new vehicle : average $30,000 ( what we have now would cost more like double that new now)
Average time until vehicle has major problems 10 years
Average maintenance cost : $1000 a year for a newer vehicle ( tires, brakes, batteries etc). It's probably more now
Average gas per year ( this is when we commuted and lived in a city ) $2000 a year for 1 person ( more now)
Average insurance: $1000 a year ( less here this was Florida prices)
If you replace a new vehicle every 10 years this comes out to a total of
$120000 for vehicle purchases if you buy a new one every 10 years and drive until you are 60 ( so it's actually more since most people drive longer)
Maintenance: $40000
Gas: 80000
insurance : 40000
total : $280000

This is for driving for 40 years and excluding repairs for broken stuff, and for an average car, not large truck or SUV

And now everything is even more expensive.
 
…)Average maintenance cost : $1000 a year for a newer vehicle ( tires, brakes, batteries etc). It's probably more now…
You replace tires, brakes, batteries etc every year?

I‘ve got a 5 year old SUV that I bought used. Other then regular oil change maintenance my only other cost was a new set of tires.

Yes costs have gone up to the benefit of the Taxers.
 
You replace tires, brakes, batteries etc every year?

I‘ve got a 5 year old SUV that I bought used. Other then regular oil change maintenance my only other cost was a new set of tires.

Yes costs have gone up to the benefit of the Taxers.

These are averages over a lifetime. In Florida, I had to buy a new battery every 2 years. Tires, brakes, fluid changes, and so on. One set of new tires way back before covid was $600 installed and they last a few years. Not everyone spends that much , some people work on their own cars and save some money, some people drive a little piece of crap until the wheels fall off. When we had jobs and commuted to work, we always drove decent vehicles and replaced them when they had around 100k miles on them
Some people buy a new vehicle every few years and spend even more. This is not even counting things like accidents Or the taxes on cars
 
Catching up with all the posts…
Re- organ donation. Please make sure to check the laws where you live. In my state, if you are an organ donor, your family basically has no say once you are on life support and there have been 2 physicians who have determined non-survivability.
Organ donation group will take over and subject you to procedures to determine viability of organs. In some cases, the brain is still alive and the person can experience pain. I have seen where the family wants to let their loved one pass peacefully, however that process is held up by the organ procurement team. This results in some tension between the medical team trying to protect the patient and the organ team treating a person like a sack of organs.

Don’t get me wrong, organ donation is a great and noble thing but after seeing all this, my recommendation is to let your family know your preference is for donation, but to revoke your donor status so your family will have the control instead of the procurement team.
 
Some people are not pet people, or not cat people. It all depends, I've had cat or cats as long as I have been alive. We have Teddy, the big fluffy oaf dog, who will die protecting his pack, and 7 cats, with various degrees of Murder Mittens.
Allegries to cat dandruff, hair.Otherwise I would have one.
 
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Catching up with all the posts…
Re- organ donation. Please make sure to check the laws where you live. In my state, if you are an organ donor, your family basically has no say once you are on life support and there have been 2 physicians who have determined non-survivability.
Organ donation group will take over and subject you to procedures to determine viability of organs. In some cases, the brain is still alive and the person can experience pain. I have seen where the family wants to let their loved one pass peacefully, however that process is held up by the organ procurement team. This results in some tension between the medical team trying to protect the patient and the organ team treating a person like a sack of organs.

Don’t get me wrong, organ donation is a great and noble thing but after seeing all this, my recommendation is to let your family know your preference is for donation, but to revoke your donor status so your family will have the control instead of the procurement team.
This is interesting. I had no idea some thing like that occurred.
Do I need to contact the state to revoke the donor status?
 
This is interesting. I had no idea some thing like that occurred.
Do I need to contact the state to revoke the donor status?
I didn’t either until a group of us got into it with some organ donation staff re the treatment of a patient who was dying. Look up the anatomical gift act, it’s actually quite frightening. If you registered when you got your drivers license you can revoke that here:

Donate Life Today - Be an Organ and Tissue Donor or you can go through the LCNW website at www.LCNW.com
Click on remove registration and follow the steps from there. You have to be on a laptop and not a mobile.
 
Magus, all of my female cats are spayed. It's a somewhat young unneutered male. I've had them do stuff like this in the past without having Feline Leukemia. Sometimes its a kidney issue, sometimes UTI. But it can be any number of things. I had a cat who started peeing on things and crapping in places she shouldn't because she had cancer. I took her to 2 different vets and both missed it until it was too late.

I hate feeling so exhausted and not being able to be productive. Today was a complete waste because I've been too tired to do much.

Sonya, I completely agree about the asininely high price of cars. Even used cars sell for way too much now. Dealerships try to screw you every way they can. Insurance companies also.
 
Also, I think one of my cats is sick. He keeps peeing on my bed and on me. He peed on me this morning so I had to do another load of laundry. Got my cardigan, shirt, bedsheet, roll pillow, and my favorite blanket. Got them in the dryer now.
Cats will also pee in odd places when they have a uti.
 
Mention of rocking chairs made me think of a song "Old Rocking Chair's got me".

I found that taking a photo of my porch and sending it to fedexhelp Twitter account in a private message let them add the image to their records to tell the driver where to leave stuff. It has helped a little.

I'm nervous because I have two computer things coming-- one via USPS and another via UPS. Amazon shows both have "shipped". USPS is saying it hasn't received the package yet. UPS said its waiting on something. I'm hoping there are no issues. ETA from Amazon site does not match the ETA on the carrier sites.

The road crew cut up the trees into nice little logs and shoved them in the ditch to get them out of the way so I was able to get into town to pick up RX. Unfortunately, they were out-of-stock on one of Mom's RXs so I have to go back when it comes in.
USPS has something new. After signing up for the program, they email you a pic of the mail and packages to be delivered later that day.

I signed up for the service a couple of weeks ago and find it very helpful since my mailbox is literally a mile away.
 
LCNW link takes me to a laser cutting company.

It's actually Home - LifeCenter Northwest
It's a .org, not a .com.

My rant. Yellowjackets built a nest in my dining room wall (access through gap in siding).

We were told the least invasive way to remove them is put traps 20-30' from the nest. Eventually the colony will relocate or be decimated.

So we go to the local hardware store and are recommended these traps:
20230724_084207.jpg



I read the instructions and follow them explicitly.


20230724_084221.jpg



2-5 hours my ass!
More like 2-5 minutes!

I hang the bag, come back inside, go to the bathroom to wash my hands, and by the time I come out, those damn nasty bastards are already swarming the bag!

Glad I wasn't putzing around when I went to hang it.

Next time, I hang the bag dry and fill it with a watering can.
 
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