Don't forget about window fans - for those of us lucky enough to live in places where it does cool down at night and where we don't have high humidity (usually) and live in neighborhoods where we can leave windows unlocked (at night, anyway), window fans blow the air across the room and moving air always seems to feel cooler than stagnant air. This topic gives me hope that I won't be wearing my coat forever!
There's a lot of inappropriate architecture out there. If the original inhabitants lived in adobe, but you live in a vinyl box never intended to function without AC, your options are limited.
A few more things that make an enormous difference:
- shade the windows. Awnings, vines on trellis, light-colored shades or curtains always drawn during the day. If it's really desperate, use a reflective film on the windows.
- run a dehumidifier if necessary. Also not cheap, but can offer a lot of comfort for the money.
- if it's your house, plan the garden to shade as much of the pavement around your house as possible.
I like the art of resume B.S. and couldn't agree more; there are a lot of great ways to word sentences to make them sound more appealing and the candidate at hand more attractive for a position.
@Comment#47, I know this doesn't speak for all Dollar Tree stores, but the one I worked in is very irresponsible actually. A customer was yelling at me because I told him the toy his son wanted was recalled. Since I worked only a few days I week, I am least up-to-date with recalled items, but this toy happened to be tossed somewhere in the toy aisle and my manager apologized to the customer about that saying that these were recalled a while ago and one must've somehow still been out. HOWEVER, his son mentioned that the entire row of them is still in the aisle, and to my surprise, I checked and he was right.
I think some stores really need to pull recall items off the shelf asap, because as a parent or a customer, I'd be pissed off to know a product is recalled when I wanted it. I have never had this happen to me in any stores, but this happened so often when I worked that I even got sick of it.
I worked at a Dollar Tree store and I quit because it was such a stressful job. I do warn though, a lot of things in there you should always double check and I am not joking. As a cashier there for only about 5 months, I found a lot of defective items that my own fellow employees do not even remove from shelves (dent cans, open cereal boxes) and some people do not realize a lot of these things are opened.
1) Do not buy the toys. Their toy cars and trucks, and most (not all) of their toys are made of flimsy plastic and break easily. It's a choking hazard to children, and a possibility of lead paint, though that was a while ago.
2) Do not buy any health care products like medicine, toothpaste, vitamins, and body/hair wash unless you know the sources of them. Some of their Crest or Colgate toothpaste was known to be from South Africa which contained a lot more fluoride and not approved by the ADA. Vitamins could also be partly digested or expired, and medicine, you should NEVER take medicine from untrusted sources. Always buy medication approved by the FDA and these are usually name brand ones at local pharmacies.
3) ALWAYS look at the frozen food bag, packages and boxes before you purchase!!! 4/10 times, the packaging of frozen food have very tiny holes that corn and pieces actually fall out, and some customers do not even know because $1 is such a good deal, and tend not to pay attention. Always check your sugar packages for holes on the bottom too, as such as pasta boxes, cereal, leaky bottles of soda and drinks, bread, etc.
I've actually seen some employees that scotch taped sandwich bag boxes up when they were half empty from customers opening them and pulling the bags out.
4) I don't mean to be snobby, but most stationary supplies are also not in good quality. If you're picky like me who must have that Pentel RSVP pen or that good plastic folder, the buys here are not that decent. However, they do happen to sell Crayola products. The looseleaf and notebooks feel very cheap.
5) I highly .. do NOT recommend buying baby products here. I have yet to research any stories about a child's health being damaged by bad quality baby products such as diapers, bottles, pacifiers, but I do not recommend buying anything plastic from a Dollar Store. The plastic is flimsy, and usually cheaper plastic tends to have chemicals that could leech into your drinks or food. I know most parents won't care whether the bottles here are cheap, but on the safe side, I would rather someone buy a trusted brand baby bottle, than something unknown made in China in the dollar store.
Overall, in popular dollar stores like Dollar Tree you should always check for defected or broken products very carefully, but like what was mentioned here already, Dollar Tree has awesome buys on party supplies, paper plates, gift wrap, cards, and snacks.
I've lived for ~50 years in the midwest (Ohio, Indiana, and southeastern Michigan), the majority of them without air conditioning.
We are fortunate to have a full basement in our home & simply run the blower during the hotter parts of the summer to bring the cool air up from the basement. Living near woods and a lake also provide respite (not only from the heat but from other life stresses throughout all the seasons of life).
From time-to-time we consider putting a room air conditioner into the study on the first floor -- it's a big enough room that we could all camp out there on a particularly sweltery summer night, but we haven't gotten that desperate yet (we've also managed thus far to put off buying the gas-powered generator that would keep our water flowing and ignite the furnace during the bi-annual 12-48 hour winter power outage but erode the peace of an occasional really dark and really quiet night).
Whole house fans continue to interest me (esp. ones that are solar powered, problem being that the ones I've seen have not been thermostatically controlled & can't tell the difference between a sunny summer day & a sunny winter one), as does the idea of reducing the electrical load for heating air and water to the point that the furnace and water pump could run on a modestly priced solar array (in cloudy gray Michigan? Dream on. Of course, "modestly priced" is a dream, too, because it's not just getting the number of solar panels down -- it's that you have to also deal with inverters & battery storage -- or replacing mid-line appliances with ones that run on direct current . . . + in our case, finding & hiring someone who really knows what they are doing to design it for us . . .)
p.s. Hello from a college classmate who has been enjoying your blogging here for quite a while
Based on experience, the position of your room vis-a-vis the sun plays a major role on the temperature of your room. Rooms which are exposed to the afternoon sun are usually warmer even when night time comes. Installing shades can really be a lot of help in minimizing airconditioning expenses.
I have been working in retail for a couple of years. It is my first job in the US. I absolutely hate it. I did not know what I was getting into. A retail job is very hard job, physically and emotionally, they expect so much from you in return for those coins they are paying. When I see my paycheck, I want to laugh. If I were single, I would not be able to survive with what they are paying me. I work at the discount store, our sales are up (last year was the best year in the history of our company), consumer's traffic increased, but our hours are down, they schedule as few employees as they can. There are never enough cashiers, the store is always mess, there is never enough people to recover it properly. They do not care about working condition. I agree it is a minimum wage slavery, you work hard for nothing. It is a dead end job!
This series has been fantastic. I learned in November that I needed to be gluten-free (plus I've been dairy-free for decades) and I am extremely annoyed about the expense of the GF flours and the sheer number of different flours that seem to be required to make anything that tastes good. Thank you so much!
I live on the third floor of a walk-up, under a tarred room, with large south and west-facing windows. It gets hot in here before it even gets hot outside. My bedroom window faces a major thoroughfare, and when I open the window, it is so loud that I can't sleep. Then of course the blinds are open too, and the light from the streetlight in front of the building shines into my bedroom. And I really can't sleep when it is hot.
Not to mention - I work at home and don't have the luxury of partaking of someone else's air conditioning during the day.
So - I appreciate your intent, but instead of getting hot and sleep-deprived and stupid, I'll be using the air conditioner again this summer.
We and many others we know would love to go without AC, due primarily to the sheer cost. There are many for whom this is not even an option anymore due to the cost of electricity, even though they need it. And that's the case even with energy efficient ACs and other appliances.
However, we simply cannot function in our boxy old city apartments (ceiling fans do not cool, all they do is move the hot air that rises to the ceiling).
We strip down and sweat like crazy, but there comes a point where it is SOOOOOO uncomfortable that we have to turn it on.
Plus, we have a home office. Even with fans blowing like crazy, when the temp hits a certain point and the humidity is high, AC is necessary or you can get seriously overheated and you just can't concentrate. Since we both have other health issues, we need that AC as well.
The temp in our rooms, without ac, in the summer, is often close to the outdoor temperature. 85 degrees indoor is unbearable without AC. (and we lower the blinds, etc.)
I think these types of articles are primarily for people who live in big houses with central air. A lot of that is sheer waste.
Meanwhile, try living in parts of Texas, Arizona and Florida in the summer months without AC. Some of you may be really cold-blooded, but mostly everyone I know cannot go without air.
Some of us are hot even in the winter (It was 40 degrees out today, and I had only a regular suit jacket on and was hot while outside. Everyone else was wearing winter jackets, hats, scarves and coats. ) and this is not just a temporary hormonal thing. Once it gets over 50, I want to start wearing summer-weight clothes!
As for the suggestion to "live in an appropriate building", well, we just laughed long and hard at that.
There are so many other issues, such as location, availability, affordability, etc. that factor into choosing an apartment and a home that limit almost everyone's options.
A first-floor apartment that doesn't need AC because it gets breezes? Not in any of the five cities we've lived in.
We face a river and often, in winter, the breeze off it chills us. But in the summer, for whatever reason, we don't get a constant breeze.
What you might have said is look for places that have cross-ventilation and are made of materials that act as natural insulators. Or look at how a home is situated and see where the rooms face.
We face both east and west and get brutal sun in the summer that forces us to use heavy shades. But the rest of the apartment (location, layout, affordability) more than compensates for it.
By the way, who writes articles about AC conservation in March, when most of the U.S. is still having cold (not to mention snowy) weather?
I hate air conditioning! Unless you never want to wear cute summer clothes and prefer to bundle up all year round, you pretty much have to go out of your way to AVOID air conditioning just to be comfortable in the summer!
Opening all the windows wide at night asks for cat burglars to invite themselves into homes in my neighborhood. I've already had one break-in attempt, and I'm unwilling to invite another.
In other words, there are other factors beyond how easy it would be to handle the heat. Please take this into consideration, since anyone living on the ground floor or in a house in a major US city would be at risk.
I always love the article roundup so I don't have to do as much searching for the good stuff. Thanks for the link to the credit score myths - great post.
that's a bit like the outdoor cooling thing where you hang your can of beer in a wet cloth, isn't it? as the water evaporates , even on a hot day, your beer gets nice and cool. But back to the aluminium queation, if it's not too much of a drag. What's wrong with it? it must be a food-grade material if the dairy board collected milk in it, surely? And i have a set of saucepans of varying sizes, all made of aluminium. A british company, Swan brand.so why would it be unsafe for making a still? Is this anything to do with the whole Alzheimers/aluminium connection debate?
Now that I have reached the age of hot flashes, Phil sometimes lets me run the AC for a couple of hours. For the rest of the summer, I've discovered that loose hemp or linen clothing makes the heat much more tolerable.
My house was built in 1953. I doubt it originally had central air (as it has now). I rarely turned the AC on last year--just a few of the hotter/more humid days. I used my ceiling fans and the cool night air to keep my house reasonably cool. (In my condo, I used to worry more about my pets during the hot days, but now I know they can go down to the cool basement if things get too warm.
So I had finally saved up enough money to buy the camera I really wanted. The Nikon D90. As many people do, I searched the Internet, ebay, Adorama, BH photo, and many others to get the best deal I could.
These guys I found on ebay call themselves "Get it Digital". They offered a "package" deal, that included extra lenses, and a bunch other stuff. They had the D90 Body, two Tamron lenses (zoom and regular), and the fixed 50mm Nikor lens, with 1.8 aperture, for US$1200. It was the best deal that I had found, so I went forward with the purchase. It included 16G memory.
When I contacted them by phone, they went over the package deal again with me to confirm. They told me that the Tamron lenses that were in the package were not the "D" type lens, and asked if I wanted to "upgrade", as the original ones were not true digital lenses for true digital pictures. The upgrade was about $130. I went with it believing what they had told me.
About a week goes by, and my box shows up FedEx. Naturally I'm excited and am ready to get it all unboxed. Then I notice something is wrong..........
The Camera body was in a box from Nikon that was from the VR package, but without the VR Lens. They removed it, but oh well I thought, I wasn't expecting it, nor did I think that i was getting the VR Lens.
I unboxed the Tamron Lenses, and knew I had been had. They were the cheap ass Chinese knockoffs, which are feather light. They are the cheapest lens you can possibly buy. Both the Tamrons were these type. I searched through the box for the 50mm Nikor, and it wasn't there.
I called the people at Get It Digital To find out what happened, and I was pretty furious.
The guy on the phone was an arrogant jerk, told me "well you see,.....you ordered a different lens package, which didn't include the Nikor 50mm. They pulled the Bait and Switch trick on me when I "upgraded". They DID NOT TELL ME THEY WERE GOING TO REMOVE THE NIKOR 50mm. I went ballistic. I was so mad I could feel the blood boiling in my ears. I was mad at myself mostly, to have gotten tricked. And the jerk on the phone smirking and making a joke of it didn't help.
I told them to put the f***ing lens in the mail NOW, and they just laughed and said it was not part of my package. They made me repurchase the lens by itself, and threw in an extra battery to try and compensate for me being so mad. I explained to them the bait-and-switch operation they had pulled on me, and they really didn't have much to say.
A week later I got the 50mm Nikor. And the cheap ass start up battery that sells for $7 on ebay. Not the solid full battery that can go for as much as $30. I did what I thought was appropriate and Trashed them on the feedback. They freaked out and called me 20 times in about 4 days. They were trying to get me to remove the negative feed back, in exchange for crediting me the extra $75 I spent on the 50mm that I had already paid for. This is called "Feedback Extortion". I ignored them.
Here are some facts about the "Get it Digital" clowns, in NY:
The feed back is faked. Look at the feedback history closely. See the UV filters and HDMI cables purchased minuet to minuet? If you go back really far you see the same user names pop up again. They are pumping their feedback, and also try to bury people like me who legitimately leave negative responses. I think I can safely say that their feedback is about 90% faked. I researched it for a long time. You can see the really obvious ones. (....UV Lens...got it...great product incredible ebayers...incredible products.....++++AAA+...) Yea right. And minuet to minuet like this? Please.
They have pulled the bait-and-switch on many other people. I have gotten over 40 emails in the past month from people wanting to know what happened. I have even spoken to people on the phone about them, and one guy in particular has a case with the NY attorneys office, and the BBB in NY.
The cheap Tamron rip offs are exactly what they are. Knock off Chinese junk. The upgrade is baseless. Tamron does not have upgraded lenses for these cheap chinese types.
I know they deal with the grey market, and claim to sell all new. My D90 has an issue that is well known. Its call the "F ee" or "F --" problem, and it can be fixed through the Nikon dealer service and repair. My camera had to have been used. Or an attempted refurbish.....it has the problem. It was probably returned and sent back by someone else. The Nikon box also was in really rough shape.
The extras they sell you in your package deal are plastic garbage. The cheapest possible tripods and uv filters, and carrying bags.....all crap. The memory also is Chinese built generic junk that has been known to have viruses.
The "Get it Digital" people are boils on the ass of humanity. Please don't deal with these people, and fund anymore of their scams. I think I have successfully killed thousands of dollars in sales for them. The last guy I talked to was about to spend $3500.
I hate being tricked. And what sucks is that I am a purchasing agent for a big company, and it is my job to carefully watch orders, and catch this kind of stuff. All the fast talking and the heavy NY accent spun me a little. But NEVER again.
Pass this along. You an email me droemail@gmail.com, and let me know if you have had an experience with these jerks. The more ammunition I have the better to get these guys off ebay. They make ebay look bad.
Thanks for reading my post.
Dave Ogle
Lawrence, Kansas
I worked at a spa and hot tub company making fiberglass shells. We used acetone to clean the brushes and rollers. We would use 55 gallon barrels of the stuff. If you take a room temperature can of beer, wrap a paper towel around it and start to dip and let dry in acetone, It will get cold enough to drink in a short bit of time. I don't know if there was any residual smell or taste, as I could smell and taste acetone all the time, even at home.
Don't forget about window fans - for those of us lucky enough to live in places where it does cool down at night and where we don't have high humidity (usually) and live in neighborhoods where we can leave windows unlocked (at night, anyway), window fans blow the air across the room and moving air always seems to feel cooler than stagnant air. This topic gives me hope that I won't be wearing my coat forever!
There's a lot of inappropriate architecture out there. If the original inhabitants lived in adobe, but you live in a vinyl box never intended to function without AC, your options are limited.
A few more things that make an enormous difference:
- shade the windows. Awnings, vines on trellis, light-colored shades or curtains always drawn during the day. If it's really desperate, use a reflective film on the windows.
- run a dehumidifier if necessary. Also not cheap, but can offer a lot of comfort for the money.
- if it's your house, plan the garden to shade as much of the pavement around your house as possible.
I just read this - apparently decaf coffee (versus regular) can put pregnant women at risk of miscarriage?
I like the art of resume B.S. and couldn't agree more; there are a lot of great ways to word sentences to make them sound more appealing and the candidate at hand more attractive for a position.
@Comment#47, I know this doesn't speak for all Dollar Tree stores, but the one I worked in is very irresponsible actually. A customer was yelling at me because I told him the toy his son wanted was recalled. Since I worked only a few days I week, I am least up-to-date with recalled items, but this toy happened to be tossed somewhere in the toy aisle and my manager apologized to the customer about that saying that these were recalled a while ago and one must've somehow still been out. HOWEVER, his son mentioned that the entire row of them is still in the aisle, and to my surprise, I checked and he was right.
I think some stores really need to pull recall items off the shelf asap, because as a parent or a customer, I'd be pissed off to know a product is recalled when I wanted it. I have never had this happen to me in any stores, but this happened so often when I worked that I even got sick of it.
I worked at a Dollar Tree store and I quit because it was such a stressful job. I do warn though, a lot of things in there you should always double check and I am not joking. As a cashier there for only about 5 months, I found a lot of defective items that my own fellow employees do not even remove from shelves (dent cans, open cereal boxes) and some people do not realize a lot of these things are opened.
1) Do not buy the toys. Their toy cars and trucks, and most (not all) of their toys are made of flimsy plastic and break easily. It's a choking hazard to children, and a possibility of lead paint, though that was a while ago.
2) Do not buy any health care products like medicine, toothpaste, vitamins, and body/hair wash unless you know the sources of them. Some of their Crest or Colgate toothpaste was known to be from South Africa which contained a lot more fluoride and not approved by the ADA. Vitamins could also be partly digested or expired, and medicine, you should NEVER take medicine from untrusted sources. Always buy medication approved by the FDA and these are usually name brand ones at local pharmacies.
3) ALWAYS look at the frozen food bag, packages and boxes before you purchase!!! 4/10 times, the packaging of frozen food have very tiny holes that corn and pieces actually fall out, and some customers do not even know because $1 is such a good deal, and tend not to pay attention. Always check your sugar packages for holes on the bottom too, as such as pasta boxes, cereal, leaky bottles of soda and drinks, bread, etc.
I've actually seen some employees that scotch taped sandwich bag boxes up when they were half empty from customers opening them and pulling the bags out.
4) I don't mean to be snobby, but most stationary supplies are also not in good quality. If you're picky like me who must have that Pentel RSVP pen or that good plastic folder, the buys here are not that decent. However, they do happen to sell Crayola products. The looseleaf and notebooks feel very cheap.
5) I highly .. do NOT recommend buying baby products here. I have yet to research any stories about a child's health being damaged by bad quality baby products such as diapers, bottles, pacifiers, but I do not recommend buying anything plastic from a Dollar Store. The plastic is flimsy, and usually cheaper plastic tends to have chemicals that could leech into your drinks or food. I know most parents won't care whether the bottles here are cheap, but on the safe side, I would rather someone buy a trusted brand baby bottle, than something unknown made in China in the dollar store.
Overall, in popular dollar stores like Dollar Tree you should always check for defected or broken products very carefully, but like what was mentioned here already, Dollar Tree has awesome buys on party supplies, paper plates, gift wrap, cards, and snacks.
I've lived for ~50 years in the midwest (Ohio, Indiana, and southeastern Michigan), the majority of them without air conditioning.
We are fortunate to have a full basement in our home & simply run the blower during the hotter parts of the summer to bring the cool air up from the basement. Living near woods and a lake also provide respite (not only from the heat but from other life stresses throughout all the seasons of life).
From time-to-time we consider putting a room air conditioner into the study on the first floor -- it's a big enough room that we could all camp out there on a particularly sweltery summer night, but we haven't gotten that desperate yet (we've also managed thus far to put off buying the gas-powered generator that would keep our water flowing and ignite the furnace during the bi-annual 12-48 hour winter power outage but erode the peace of an occasional really dark and really quiet night).
Whole house fans continue to interest me (esp. ones that are solar powered, problem being that the ones I've seen have not been thermostatically controlled & can't tell the difference between a sunny summer day & a sunny winter one), as does the idea of reducing the electrical load for heating air and water to the point that the furnace and water pump could run on a modestly priced solar array (in cloudy gray Michigan? Dream on. Of course, "modestly priced" is a dream, too, because it's not just getting the number of solar panels down -- it's that you have to also deal with inverters & battery storage -- or replacing mid-line appliances with ones that run on direct current . . . + in our case, finding & hiring someone who really knows what they are doing to design it for us . . .)
p.s. Hello from a college classmate who has been enjoying your blogging here for quite a while
I can't remember working for a company that didn't vest the match immediately! But the SPD would rule regardless.
Based on experience, the position of your room vis-a-vis the sun plays a major role on the temperature of your room. Rooms which are exposed to the afternoon sun are usually warmer even when night time comes. Installing shades can really be a lot of help in minimizing airconditioning expenses.
I have been working in retail for a couple of years. It is my first job in the US. I absolutely hate it. I did not know what I was getting into. A retail job is very hard job, physically and emotionally, they expect so much from you in return for those coins they are paying. When I see my paycheck, I want to laugh. If I were single, I would not be able to survive with what they are paying me. I work at the discount store, our sales are up (last year was the best year in the history of our company), consumer's traffic increased, but our hours are down, they schedule as few employees as they can. There are never enough cashiers, the store is always mess, there is never enough people to recover it properly. They do not care about working condition. I agree it is a minimum wage slavery, you work hard for nothing. It is a dead end job!
This series has been fantastic. I learned in November that I needed to be gluten-free (plus I've been dairy-free for decades) and I am extremely annoyed about the expense of the GF flours and the sheer number of different flours that seem to be required to make anything that tastes good. Thank you so much!
I live on the third floor of a walk-up, under a tarred room, with large south and west-facing windows. It gets hot in here before it even gets hot outside. My bedroom window faces a major thoroughfare, and when I open the window, it is so loud that I can't sleep. Then of course the blinds are open too, and the light from the streetlight in front of the building shines into my bedroom. And I really can't sleep when it is hot.
Not to mention - I work at home and don't have the luxury of partaking of someone else's air conditioning during the day.
So - I appreciate your intent, but instead of getting hot and sleep-deprived and stupid, I'll be using the air conditioner again this summer.
We and many others we know would love to go without AC, due primarily to the sheer cost. There are many for whom this is not even an option anymore due to the cost of electricity, even though they need it. And that's the case even with energy efficient ACs and other appliances.
However, we simply cannot function in our boxy old city apartments (ceiling fans do not cool, all they do is move the hot air that rises to the ceiling).
We strip down and sweat like crazy, but there comes a point where it is SOOOOOO uncomfortable that we have to turn it on.
Plus, we have a home office. Even with fans blowing like crazy, when the temp hits a certain point and the humidity is high, AC is necessary or you can get seriously overheated and you just can't concentrate. Since we both have other health issues, we need that AC as well.
The temp in our rooms, without ac, in the summer, is often close to the outdoor temperature. 85 degrees indoor is unbearable without AC. (and we lower the blinds, etc.)
I think these types of articles are primarily for people who live in big houses with central air. A lot of that is sheer waste.
Meanwhile, try living in parts of Texas, Arizona and Florida in the summer months without AC. Some of you may be really cold-blooded, but mostly everyone I know cannot go without air.
Some of us are hot even in the winter (It was 40 degrees out today, and I had only a regular suit jacket on and was hot while outside. Everyone else was wearing winter jackets, hats, scarves and coats. ) and this is not just a temporary hormonal thing. Once it gets over 50, I want to start wearing summer-weight clothes!
As for the suggestion to "live in an appropriate building", well, we just laughed long and hard at that.
There are so many other issues, such as location, availability, affordability, etc. that factor into choosing an apartment and a home that limit almost everyone's options.
A first-floor apartment that doesn't need AC because it gets breezes? Not in any of the five cities we've lived in.
We face a river and often, in winter, the breeze off it chills us. But in the summer, for whatever reason, we don't get a constant breeze.
What you might have said is look for places that have cross-ventilation and are made of materials that act as natural insulators. Or look at how a home is situated and see where the rooms face.
We face both east and west and get brutal sun in the summer that forces us to use heavy shades. But the rest of the apartment (location, layout, affordability) more than compensates for it.
By the way, who writes articles about AC conservation in March, when most of the U.S. is still having cold (not to mention snowy) weather?
I hate air conditioning! Unless you never want to wear cute summer clothes and prefer to bundle up all year round, you pretty much have to go out of your way to AVOID air conditioning just to be comfortable in the summer!
I just choose to live in Minnesota. I don't even THINK about air conditioning for 8-10 months of the year :-)
Yes, it's not realistic where I live.
Opening all the windows wide at night asks for cat burglars to invite themselves into homes in my neighborhood. I've already had one break-in attempt, and I'm unwilling to invite another.
In other words, there are other factors beyond how easy it would be to handle the heat. Please take this into consideration, since anyone living on the ground floor or in a house in a major US city would be at risk.
I always love the article roundup so I don't have to do as much searching for the good stuff. Thanks for the link to the credit score myths - great post.
Although I don't suppose it's really necessary to mention, you will at this point not be surprised to learn that my wife sometimes teases me too.
that's a bit like the outdoor cooling thing where you hang your can of beer in a wet cloth, isn't it? as the water evaporates , even on a hot day, your beer gets nice and cool. But back to the aluminium queation, if it's not too much of a drag. What's wrong with it? it must be a food-grade material if the dairy board collected milk in it, surely? And i have a set of saucepans of varying sizes, all made of aluminium. A british company, Swan brand.so why would it be unsafe for making a still? Is this anything to do with the whole Alzheimers/aluminium connection debate?
Now that I have reached the age of hot flashes, Phil sometimes lets me run the AC for a couple of hours. For the rest of the summer, I've discovered that loose hemp or linen clothing makes the heat much more tolerable.
My house was built in 1953. I doubt it originally had central air (as it has now). I rarely turned the AC on last year--just a few of the hotter/more humid days. I used my ceiling fans and the cool night air to keep my house reasonably cool. (In my condo, I used to worry more about my pets during the hot days, but now I know they can go down to the cool basement if things get too warm.
Not to ask a silly question but if this card is working such wonders for your credit.... then why are you still on netspend??
Thanks for the tip. I used toothpaste with baking soda and it worked. I was a little skeptical since some people said it would make it worse.
So I had finally saved up enough money to buy the camera I really wanted. The Nikon D90. As many people do, I searched the Internet, ebay, Adorama, BH photo, and many others to get the best deal I could.
These guys I found on ebay call themselves "Get it Digital". They offered a "package" deal, that included extra lenses, and a bunch other stuff. They had the D90 Body, two Tamron lenses (zoom and regular), and the fixed 50mm Nikor lens, with 1.8 aperture, for US$1200. It was the best deal that I had found, so I went forward with the purchase. It included 16G memory.
When I contacted them by phone, they went over the package deal again with me to confirm. They told me that the Tamron lenses that were in the package were not the "D" type lens, and asked if I wanted to "upgrade", as the original ones were not true digital lenses for true digital pictures. The upgrade was about $130. I went with it believing what they had told me.
About a week goes by, and my box shows up FedEx. Naturally I'm excited and am ready to get it all unboxed. Then I notice something is wrong..........
The Camera body was in a box from Nikon that was from the VR package, but without the VR Lens. They removed it, but oh well I thought, I wasn't expecting it, nor did I think that i was getting the VR Lens.
I unboxed the Tamron Lenses, and knew I had been had. They were the cheap ass Chinese knockoffs, which are feather light. They are the cheapest lens you can possibly buy. Both the Tamrons were these type. I searched through the box for the 50mm Nikor, and it wasn't there.
I called the people at Get It Digital To find out what happened, and I was pretty furious.
The guy on the phone was an arrogant jerk, told me "well you see,.....you ordered a different lens package, which didn't include the Nikor 50mm. They pulled the Bait and Switch trick on me when I "upgraded". They DID NOT TELL ME THEY WERE GOING TO REMOVE THE NIKOR 50mm. I went ballistic. I was so mad I could feel the blood boiling in my ears. I was mad at myself mostly, to have gotten tricked. And the jerk on the phone smirking and making a joke of it didn't help.
I told them to put the f***ing lens in the mail NOW, and they just laughed and said it was not part of my package. They made me repurchase the lens by itself, and threw in an extra battery to try and compensate for me being so mad. I explained to them the bait-and-switch operation they had pulled on me, and they really didn't have much to say.
A week later I got the 50mm Nikor. And the cheap ass start up battery that sells for $7 on ebay. Not the solid full battery that can go for as much as $30. I did what I thought was appropriate and Trashed them on the feedback. They freaked out and called me 20 times in about 4 days. They were trying to get me to remove the negative feed back, in exchange for crediting me the extra $75 I spent on the 50mm that I had already paid for. This is called "Feedback Extortion". I ignored them.
Here are some facts about the "Get it Digital" clowns, in NY:
The feed back is faked. Look at the feedback history closely. See the UV filters and HDMI cables purchased minuet to minuet? If you go back really far you see the same user names pop up again. They are pumping their feedback, and also try to bury people like me who legitimately leave negative responses. I think I can safely say that their feedback is about 90% faked. I researched it for a long time. You can see the really obvious ones. (....UV Lens...got it...great product incredible ebayers...incredible products.....++++AAA+...) Yea right. And minuet to minuet like this? Please.
They have pulled the bait-and-switch on many other people. I have gotten over 40 emails in the past month from people wanting to know what happened. I have even spoken to people on the phone about them, and one guy in particular has a case with the NY attorneys office, and the BBB in NY.
The cheap Tamron rip offs are exactly what they are. Knock off Chinese junk. The upgrade is baseless. Tamron does not have upgraded lenses for these cheap chinese types.
I know they deal with the grey market, and claim to sell all new. My D90 has an issue that is well known. Its call the "F ee" or "F --" problem, and it can be fixed through the Nikon dealer service and repair. My camera had to have been used. Or an attempted refurbish.....it has the problem. It was probably returned and sent back by someone else. The Nikon box also was in really rough shape.
The extras they sell you in your package deal are plastic garbage. The cheapest possible tripods and uv filters, and carrying bags.....all crap. The memory also is Chinese built generic junk that has been known to have viruses.
The "Get it Digital" people are boils on the ass of humanity. Please don't deal with these people, and fund anymore of their scams. I think I have successfully killed thousands of dollars in sales for them. The last guy I talked to was about to spend $3500.
I hate being tricked. And what sucks is that I am a purchasing agent for a big company, and it is my job to carefully watch orders, and catch this kind of stuff. All the fast talking and the heavy NY accent spun me a little. But NEVER again.
Pass this along. You an email me droemail@gmail.com, and let me know if you have had an experience with these jerks. The more ammunition I have the better to get these guys off ebay. They make ebay look bad.
Thanks for reading my post.
Dave Ogle
Lawrence, Kansas
I worked at a spa and hot tub company making fiberglass shells. We used acetone to clean the brushes and rollers. We would use 55 gallon barrels of the stuff. If you take a room temperature can of beer, wrap a paper towel around it and start to dip and let dry in acetone, It will get cold enough to drink in a short bit of time. I don't know if there was any residual smell or taste, as I could smell and taste acetone all the time, even at home.