Things that just bug ya?

22-rimfire

22-rimfire

Joined
Nov 20, 2005
Messages
19,385
We were making spaghetti this evening and it occurred to me that the spoon my wife was using was a brand new one I just bought. They called it a basting spoon.... rigid, flat bottom for scraping or using as a spoon. Really useful and fairly difficult to find anywhere. You have no idea how many stores I have looked at kitchen utensils to finally find one of these. My old ones were rusting and probably 20 years old+.... my sister said... why in earth do you keep them (rusty spoons) around? Why? Because I can't find one to replace it!! This bugged me to no end that I couldn't find a simple damn spoon.

Dirty kitchen. I really dislike a dirty kitchen. The food tastes better in a clean kitchen.
Dirty dishes in the sink. This really bugs me. I can handle maybe a couple hours of soaking something, but longer.... got to be washed and clean.
Dirty House... clutter is okay. It just has to be clean.
Dull knives
Dirty or soiled pet bowls. We have cats. I use pyrex bowls.... glass, easy to clean, and resistant to breakage should one get dropped or knocked off a table or something.

I'll think of more. Maybe you can help me out here with your pet peeves.

Looks like I just hate DIRT. But I love it in the garden.
 
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Tilth vs dirt - I get it!

I use the anti-gobble dishes for Daisy and Dez and, yes, they get grimy and so unappetizing looking so they are frequently washed up here too.

Right at this very moment, I just hate clutter and cluttered work surfaces ... not likely a temporary sentiment :rolleyes:
 
22 - next time you're looking for "hard to find" kitchen utensils, try restaurant supply stores rather than "regular" stores. RS stores have ALL the weird stuff.

These are way beyond the "bug me" stage - Rats, mice, racoons, rattlesnakes and copperheads.

I hate mice and rats due to the damage they can do and the fact that they pee and poop on everything.

Raccoons "bug" me because they will pull a partially ripened peach/pear/plum off a tree, take a bite, determine that it is not ripe, throw it on the ground and repeat. I've gone out to find 30 to 40 on the ground under a single tree.

Raccoons will also strip a fig tree over night. And their fat 30# to 50# bodies will break the limbs out.

Rattlesnakes and copperheads are just plain evil. DIE!! DIE!! DIE!! Any other snake gets a pass. Not rattlers or coppers. Capital punishment is the ONLY rule.
 
My favorite, best-fitting items go out of production, get “improved” to the point that I find them worse or unusable, or are now manufactured to lower standards.

Example:
I recently received an item (sale price $11K) as a gift. This is made by a US manufacturer whom I have used since the mid ‘70’s. Same owner, same maker (only 3-man shop), same specs. Except, they moved one of the parts 1/8” higher and must have replaced their castings because other features are not the same. I deal in microns and this bugs the crap out of me — feeling the difference in size and location of parts. Also, adjustment screws that have too much play and
“self-adjust.”

So, I send it back along with another one that is PERFECT (for me) and ask them to adjust to match—customize it. What a shock: they missed by a country mile.

So, that’s a second one: when I ask someone to do specific work with detailed measurements, pay $125/hour, and they don’t it bugs the crap out of me.

Last one: deodorizers/air “fresheners”/scented sanitizers/fabric softener. The crap you smell everywhere indoors and out. That should be outlawed.
 
zzyzzogeton said:
Rattlesnakes and copperheads are just plain evil. DIE!! DIE!! DIE!! Any other snake gets a pass. Not rattlers or coppers. Capital punishment is the ONLY rule.
Click to expand...
This took me back to the first day, first lesson of 6th grade: how to tell the difference between a rattlesnake and a bull snake (on the play ground).
 
zzyzzogeton said:
22 - next time you're looking for "hard to find" kitchen utensils, try restaurant supply stores rather than "regular" stores. RS stores have ALL the weird stuff.

These are way beyond the "bug me" stage - Rats, mice, racoons, rattlesnakes and copperheads.

I hate mice and rats due to the damage they can do and the fact that they pee and poop on everything.

Raccoons "bug" me because they will pull a partially ripened peach/pear/plum off a tree, take a bite, determine that it is not ripe, throw it on the ground and repeat. I've gone out to find 30 to 40 on the ground under a single tree.

Raccoons will also strip a fig tree over night. And their fat 30# to 50# bodies will break the limbs out.

Rattlesnakes and copperheads are just plain evil. DIE!! DIE!! DIE!! Any other snake gets a pass. Not rattlers or coppers. Capital punishment is the ONLY rule.
Click to expand...

Unless the poisonous snakes are in my yard, I walk around them. That wasn't the case years ago, but I respect their niche in the outdoors. Just don"t bite my butt!

Have to remember the restaurant supply places. Believe it or not, I found these spoons at a (Walmart) Neighborhood Market in my area. I tend to cruise past the kitchen utensil/stuff section of stores frequently looking for something useful, but not necessarily expensive.

Raccoons are a pain in the butt in my yard. They are like little bears and have pretty much destroyed sunflower feeders I have. I know. They're just looking for dinner. But find it elsewhere. I'm just glad I don't have bears. My brother does and they wreck his feeders on his deck from time to time.

Opossums ("Possums" to us normal folk.) make frequent visits to my garden. Generally not a problem, but something just takes a single bite out of tomatoes and moves on.

Something is nibbling on the cable connection inside my garage attic.... cable has been replaced once.
 
Roaches. Literally bugs me when I'm drinking a glass of water and find a freaking roach crawling on the glass. Thankfully the Advion roach gel seems to be working. Just every month I need to change out the bait.

I live in an apartment, so I suspect I get a fresh batch of roaches from my neighbors every time I wipe them out. Ants too.
 
annr said:
This took me back to the first day, first lesson of 6th grade: how to tell the difference between a rattlesnake and a bull snake (on the play ground).
Click to expand...

People always talk about the head (bullet vs spade shaped) but I've always used the tail - rattlers and coppers have bluntly rounded tails, where most non-poisonous snakes have tails that taper to a point.

Being here in central Texas we have mainly Western Diamondbacks, but we are also on the western edge of the Eastern Diamondback range. The quick way to differentiate the two is to look at the tail - brown and black bands = Eastern vs white and black = Western.


22-rimfire said:
Unless the poisonous snakes are in my yard, I walk around them. That wasn't the case years ago, but I respect their niche in the outdoors. Just don"t bite my butt!

...snip....

Opossums ("Possums" to us normal folk.) make frequent visits to my garden. Generally not a problem, but something just takes a single bite out of tomatoes and moves on.

Something is nibbling on the cable connection inside my garage attic.... cable has been replaced once.
Click to expand...

While possums are ugly as sin and can be somewhat destructive, they are not nearly in the same league as coons. A "Possum Positive" is that they are voracious eaters of ticks, so they are really good for keeping down instances of Lyme disease spotted tick fever and other tick spread diseases.

The cable nibbling is due to mice, rats or squirrels. Starting around 2005 or so, most wiring manufacturers shifted to soy-oil based or corn-oil based plastic insulation. The wiring smells like food to them, but it has zero/zip/nada nutritional value. A local Nissan dealer had 100+ cars with wiring damage after they parked a bunch of cars in a field near a creek for a couple of weeks.

My Prius was totaled by a squirrel. Parked it one night. The next afternoon it wouldn't start. Investigation revealed the master cable bundle was 2/3 chewed through. The glue trap I keep under the hood (replaced when mouse or rat is caught) was covered in red fur. Since my mice are gray and my rats are brown, the only culprit left was a squirrel. War has been declared - I've shot 18 squirrels since January 2016.

Noctis3880 said:
Roaches. Literally bugs me when I'm drinking a glass of water and find a freaking roach crawling on the glass. Thankfully the Advion roach gel seems to be working. Just every month I need to change out the bait.

I live in an apartment, so I suspect I get a fresh batch of roaches from my neighbors every time I wipe them out. Ants too.
Click to expand...

Most "standard" cockroaches are introduced into homes via paper bags and/or cardboard boxes. Roaches lay their eggs in them in the warehouses. When people store them after bringing them home for later reuse, voila - instant roach infestation.
 
zzyzzogeton said:
..... Most "standard" cockroaches are introduced into homes via paper bags and/or cardboard boxes. Roaches lay their eggs in them in the warehouses. When people store them after bringing them home for later reuse, voila - instant roach infestation.
Click to expand...
I think you caused me a fricking nightmare. I dreamed that I was moving some papers around near where one of my cats always lays and there was this HUGE cock roach and lots of other ones in one spot as they scattered. I tell you... it was a nightmare!

Fleas are something I have to deal with from time to time. It is an ebb and flow kind of thing. None for months and all of a sudden you start seeing them indoors (because of the pets). Then the work begins to get rid of them and it takes a while. One flea is one too many jumping on my leg!
 
I hate green wood, or having to burn wood that is damp. I have to have an organized wood pile to ensure my firewood is properly seasoned. There is the green pile where wood is processed, then the brown wood pile up at the house that is available to use that has sit for a full year or more. Finally there is the indoor wood bin where the wood gets a chance to warm up to room temperature and to reduce its humidity further. Doing it this way is far less work than what some of my neighbors do when they burn wood straight off the green pile with maybe a few weeks/months of seasoning only to find that they have to stoke more often, going through a lot more wood then they have to, and get the chimney filled up with crud.
 
Bufford said:
I hate green wood, or having to burn wood that is damp. I have to have an organized wood pile to ensure my firewood is properly seasoned. There is the green pile where wood is processed, then the brown wood pile up at the house that is available to use that has sit for a full year or more. Finally there is the indoor wood bin where the wood gets a chance to warm up to room temperature and to reduce its humidity further. Doing it this way is far less work than what some of my neighbors do when they burn wood straight off the green pile with maybe a few weeks/months of seasoning only to find that they have to stoke more often, going through a lot more wood then they have to, and get the chimney filled up with crud.
Click to expand...

Bufford, good staging method. Now for my inner fireman's viewpoint...

Wood piles should be kept AT LEAST 30 feet, preferably more, from a house or other structure. If a pile is right up aganst a house. embers from a nearby wildfire/grass fire/etc might land in a dry wood pile, which would then transfer the fire to the structure. Grass fires that burn up to the wood pile can cause the same effect - a burned down house. While this separation may not be possible in a house in town due to lot size, the pile should still be as far from a structure as possible.

If one lives in a more rural setting, which we call the wild land/urban interface, brush, trees and tall grass should be removed for a minimum of 30 feet back from a structure (per Texas Forestry Service and Texas A&M Fire Fighter Training School).

Radiant heating from a wood pile or wild fire can cause a structure to ignite. Many factors affect how well radiant heating from a fire will transfer to a particular structure (temperature, wind speed/direction, proximity to the fire, exterior material of the structure, dryness of the exterior,..........).

The recent fires in California demonstrate the way wind borne embers and radiant heating can spread fires to structures from either wild fires or other structures on fire. Dense housing tracts are just multi-structure fires waiting to happen.
 
30 feet.... not to mention termites in the stored wood outdoors. You really don't want termite habitat up against you house if you have any choice.
 
Squirrels and chipmunks, raccoons and coyotes, poisonous snakes in my yard, yellow jackets, and fire ants.

According to our SC naturalist (Rudy Manke), possums love to eat copperheads, so other than being weird they don’t bother me.
 
Ants, termites...hate them!
Even when you seem to have cleaned a room of any and every possible bug, insect and creature possible these little buggers start appearing in the corners, here and there, in a matter of minutes or hours.
They are true colonizers and should be the first sent out to inhabit, conquer and expand on outer planets, IMO.
 
Neighbors who put out enough trash every week that it looks like they are moving, or abuse the city trash collection service.

One puts out things for days before pick-up and puts out items that the city does not collect: TVs, computers, toilets, etc.

When the trash truck comes it spends 10–15” tossing all of the discarded items, furniture, etc., into the truck —just from this one neighbor. This neighbor does this every week instead of paying someone to remove his stuff or taking it to the dump.

Another neighbor does the same after remodeling. Instead of the contractor’s hauling away the old stuff, they put it on the curb. After the city does not collect, they leave it there until they get a ticket— then they complain to me who did not turn them in.

Shouldn’t it be a clue if the city takes everything but the discarded fixtures, maybe the city isn’t responsible for collecting them?

Waste of taxpayer $.
 
I know a person who does nothing but bitch, piss and moan about how it’s “almost impossible to succeed” in modern day America. Now I know that there are a lot of times where people in the US are at a huge disadvantage and, without getting into politics on here, some things need to change.

That’s not the case with this person however. She nor her spouse have any chronic health problems. Neither her or her spouse has ANY post high school training and few skills. And when the spouse DOES get a decent paying job he can’t seem to stay employed for more than 6 months. And yes, of course, she got pregnant in high school. Speaking of kids, they have 5 kids, 4 still at home. The oldest left the damn state at 18 because she got tired of watching her younger siblings while her mom facebooked.

It’s like these people can’t even wrap their minds around the fact that having too many damn kids and making piss poor financial decisions can have negative consequences.

I have to watch my mouth because most of the time I have no problem telling people they’re stupid. I simply don’t give a damn anymore. As long as my wife, son and dog are happy with me I’m good. But one of her sons and my son are best friends and have been for years so I have to keep the peace for now. Plus her son spends the night at our house sometimes so at least he gets to see how responsible adults act every now and then. Ugh.
 
Pharmacists who repackage the medication in a pharmacy bottle even though the manufacturer’s bottle contains the exact number of pills to fill the prescription.

AND they put a 1-year expiration date on their bottle even though the manufacturer may put exp. 01/22 (4+ years out).
 
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