August Can't Take It Anymore: August Mini-Rants

Some meats are considered “done” at 145 ºF… but that thermometer looks painful.

Not to digress too much from this excellent thread on the miseries of life, but the link below is to a very informative article on Brush-B-Gon vs Roundup. After reading it, one can rightly consider oneself almost an authority on Horticultural Annihilation. They are both systemic herbicides of similar effectiveness, the main difference being that Brush-B-Gon is selective for brush and similar plants whereas Roundup is non-selective. Both are available in Ontario (pesticides come under provincial jurisdiction). I didn’t see Brush-B-Gon at Home Depot, but Amazon Canada sells it.

The article also mentions that the European Union has banned Roundup as an environmental hazard. I want to take this opportunity to thank the EU for this endorsement of the potency of Roundup. From the looks of things this morning, it worked very well on my mutant shrub from Neptune. Amazingly, there are still a couple of stems among the carnage that look healthy. Considering the systemic action of Roundup, I assume they will perish in due course. If not, it will be my pleasure to perform a second dousing on this alien plague.

The only problem with vinegar used copiously as a herbicide is that afterwards, it smells like Satan’s salad bowl.

A couple of weeks ago when I was mowing I noticed a pinkie sized hole in the ground and wondered if I had an underground nest of bees or wasps or something. Yesterday I noticed a large mound of dirt in that spot. Looks like we have a colony of red ants. Swell.

Yeah Jackmannii. I use it selectively. "smells like Satan’s salad bowl’ is pretty funny though.

We have a fenced area for our two dogs. I don’t use use it (or anything) in that area.

A friend’s wife got him a backpack flamethrower for his birthday a few years ago. It takes out weeds quickly, great for sidewalk cracks. But they return just as fast.

[The cheaper one here.](Red Dragon BP 2512 SVC 400,000 BTU Weed Dragon Backpack Propane Vapor Torch Kit with Squeeze Valve https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000NI7PQG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_D0V3ZNW96RFEEBQX1YJB)

I was unintentionally rude to a young man at the supermarket. I was waiting to check out, keeping 6 ft. social distancing. This guy with a full cart apparently didn’t see me and whizzed right in to the register. I yelled “No!”, and it came out quite louder than I had intended, as if a dog had started to shit in the living room. The guy’s mother led him to another register, and I weakly smiled at her through my mask.

There is a list of all the things you can do with the Weed Dragon Backpack flamethrower. They forgot to mention a few others:

  • Set your house on fire
  • Set your whole neighbourhood on fire
  • Start you own wildfire, if you live in a drought-stricken forested area
  • Get arrested for violating fire regulations (and possibly for arson)

(Yes, I know that torches/flamethrowers have been used for vegetation control. It just seems to be fraught with peril, especially these days with wildfires raging all over.)

I would have thought Satan would prefer a store-branded ranch dressing…

In case you missed it, there was a high wind last Wednesday that left almost one million customers in Michigan without electrical power. The energy companies reported that the recent heavy rains meant that the ground was “soft” and trees were toppled more easily.

My electricity went out Wednesday afternoon about 3:00 and was restored Saturday afternoon at 2:00. That was not too bad, I REALLY feel for the people who are still waiting for their power to be restored.

I was out shopping VERY EARLY this morning to restock the refrigerator.

This is probably the epitome of “first world problems”, but apparently the crisis in Afghanistan was such a huge story this morning that NPR didn’t run the weekly puzzle segment during WESun. I want my Sunday Puzzle! (I know, I can listen to it online, but still…)

One thing is held as a truth. The other is a fact:

  1. Society believes that the mental and physical decline from aging makes one largely unemployable past the age of 65, 70 at the latest.

  2. The country is almost exclusively run, especially our national politics, by people in their 70s and 80s.

Both things suck.

I was surprised too. Now I’ll never get the right answer. But then again, I never do.

I’ll use Roundup, too, if I have to. I had some privet trees I wanted out, so I cut them down, drilled half inch holes in the stumps and poured in the Roundup. Worked like a charm.

Hey, that’s a great idea! Depending on how things develop, I might get out my handy drill and ventilate that stump born of the planet Neptune, and drown it in Roundup!

Or Anything made miracle whip…

Get ready for 240k! I had been experiencing intermittent cranking issues with my '97 Jeep – I would turn the key, it would roll like it was trying to crank, but it wouldn’t quite do it. After backing off the key then cranking again, it would fire up like nothing was wrong. Since this only seemed to happen after being parked for prolonged periods, I had decided to let it ride until my next oil change. Then the check engine light came on. :confused:

Finally got it back from the shop on Saturday (apparently people are opting to have their vehicles repaired now instead of trading them, causing a massive backlog). The check engine light indicated a bad catalytic converter, which was replaced. They also replaced the battery for free, as the technician had noticed that it was “low” (and also still under warranty). The Jeep now accelerates like a beast…but I’m still having the cranking issue. :frowning:

I started to look at trading it in, would have got 15k for it, but just for comparison to see what it would take to get back to the same place a 2013 suburban with 100k on it are going for 35k according to carmax. Sure lots of room for negotiation but still a big gap. I figure I can just soak up a few bigger bills and still be ‘ahead’ for what ever being ahead means in terms of car ownership.

Random and minor - but today, I was looking through some old reviews I’d written at Amazon - and on my profile page a number of things are hidden due to Amazon’s “sensitivity filter”.

This, supposedly, is so that if someone looks up a reviewer’s profile, they aren’t going to see stuff like sex toys, drug paraphernalia, medications etc. Sounds reasonable (though Amazon does note that the review still appears on the item’s page!).

But I’m scratching my head and trying to figure out their algorithms, as some of these things just don’t strike me as all that worrisome:

  • The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World
  • A reusable glass drinking straw
  • A foot splint for plantar fasciitis
  • A really nice tote bag
  • A moose-themed Nativity set

Dunno,… maybe they figure I’mma use that tote bag to lug all sorts of kinky stuff into WDW.

But Amazon’s algorithms frequently show evidence of insanity when they show utterly unrelated stuff. Like the time we bought a leaf bag holder and Amazon thought that maybe this meant we also needed a body bag. WTF??

I didn’t even know Amazon carried body bags.