OT: Your best Life Hacks to share with the board.
What is your best Life Hack you can share with the board? I will share one that helped me yesterday. Yellow Jacket Nests can be a huge problem this time of year in SE Michigan and yesterday when I was mowing I got stung so to get rid of the threat here’s what you do. Locate the nest, fill a shoovac about 1/4 of the way full with a dish soap and water mixture. Put the suction by the entrance of the nest, turn on and leave on for two hours. I came back and emptied it and there were so many dead yellowjackets it was unreal. I stopped counting at 150, not kidding. If the nest is off the ground you may need duct tape to hold the suctioning hose in place. What is your best Life Hack for the board? Hopefully some juicy news comes out of camp and this thread won’t be the highlight of our day, but I thought it would hold us over for awhile.
Regarding yellow jackets, there are always two entrances to an underground nest. Make sure you account for both.
I use the exhaust vent from the plasma inverter in my lab to keep my coffee mug warm. I'm working on dissipating the magnetic field to .3 M ellipse which will enable me to "levitate" a few mugs in a 0 g micro environment.
If you have bees or wasps, they always fly back to their nest. If you put a shop vac hose next to the opening it will suck up the insects, killing them in the process. Takes several hours, but it is fun to watch them get pulled to their deaths. (You have to turn the shop vac on.)
August 8th, 2018 at 10:25 AM ^
I suspect there aren't any rednecks on the board.
Down here in the south, they pour gas on both the entrance and exit and strike the match. One beer later, repeat.
August 8th, 2018 at 10:53 AM ^
Use diesel, not gas. The fire will get deeper into the hole.
August 8th, 2018 at 10:59 AM ^
I’ve seen gas do the job all by itself, without the use of fire.
August 8th, 2018 at 11:07 AM ^
...but it's not as fun to watch
August 8th, 2018 at 12:06 PM ^
Don't kill bees, please. Wasps, whatever. But leave the bees alone.
I concur. Bees are already dying. And they're great for all the pretty/tasty things in your yard. Save the bees!
Yellowjackets are wasps technically, I believe. Their hives tend to get very large at this time of the year, and they are much more aggressive than honeybees, which are a bit larger, rounder, and brown in color.
August 8th, 2018 at 11:36 AM ^
Make sure you have an alibi.
hah - I watched the fugigitve Mon night for like the 5th time...it was on hbo. Great flick
Or a fall guy
August 8th, 2018 at 10:20 AM ^
Or a paper trail that will satisfy an investigative committee.
Pretty cool this thread got a response from Chris Carter!
I don't have a shoovac.
Shoovac don't bother me., for I belong to somebody.
August 8th, 2018 at 10:25 AM ^
I opened a new tab and started typing "shoovac" until I realized he meant shopvac.
August 8th, 2018 at 10:46 AM ^
I was in the process of blurting/typing "what the fuck is a shoovac?" until I paused and scrolled.
Got it.
Whenever I'm about to do something I think, "would an idiot do that?" And if the answer is yes, I do not do that thing.
August 8th, 2018 at 12:16 PM ^
Sometimes I do not do that thing, but sometimes I do. Sometimes it is fun. Sometimes not so much.
Anyone have a life hack for painting with dark colors? Trying to paint my bathroom dark blue and after 2 coats it still looks streaky and like crap. Ive never had issues painting before but that was always with a lighter tone color.
It's too late for you now, but use a tinted primer.
Bathrooms get humid/wet walls more often than other places, so they pick up stuff. Washing with a damp rag with soap and warm water, then rinse and dry with a separate damp rag, can help to start. That's not going to help you now, though.
You're going to have to start over and repaint it. Use Kills or Zinzer 1-2-3 primer tinted to a dark gray, then put two coats of your darkblue over that...
Reds, greens, and dark colors that require a deep base need a gray tinted primer.
Otherwise you could just paint about four more coats of the blue and hope it works.
Dbl post
August 8th, 2018 at 10:23 AM ^
Use primer and do not use crap paint. 3/4" Purdy Colossus roller cover is what you want too.
August 8th, 2018 at 11:26 AM ^
That's not too much texture?
August 8th, 2018 at 10:43 AM ^
I want to laugh at your predicament, but no, I will not. My wife tried a dark red cover over primer, to no avail. Think she was 4 coats in when she gave up. As said previously, go with a high quality tinted primer, and then a couple of coats of high quality paint. Your basic white primer and Joe's Hardware Store paint won't get it done right...
You would want to do that yellow jacket thing at like 615am while they are still slow, sleeping, and in the nest.
I like mentoring dark horse/timid but smart employees. Getting them to first fully prepare for a presentation, stand in front of a bathroom mirror for 10 minutes acting like a threatening gorilla, and then into the meeting to present, everyone picks up their energy and it's s huge boost of confidence for them.
I did it at 4pm yesterday. Once I got stung, I stopped the mower and started that process I talked about above. I’ve used it before when ther were nests inside small holes on the outside of my house. It’s the only way to get them without ripping the woodwork apart.
August 8th, 2018 at 10:25 AM ^
D'oh!
I gave two presentations yesterday and could've used your help. Public speaking really isn't my thing.
See Amy Cuddy TED talk for more information about setting your posture before a talk.
I got a tip to quietly and thouroughly look over the crowd for a few seconds before beginning the presentation. Somehow that brings everyone on to my side for just a chat.
More like this!
I’m doing my first presentation tonight in front of a large group of strangers
What is a life hack?
A little known trick that makes your life easier.
Thank you, and I'm enjoying reading the responses.
mine: marry well. most everything else will fall into place or won't matter nearly as much.
Bingo - spot on. Wish I did it right the first time. Came out of that first one though with two cool kids - now adults.
August 8th, 2018 at 10:05 AM ^
The name itself is fairly self-explanatory. But reading the responses should have given enough context to understand the term.
August 8th, 2018 at 11:51 AM ^
if you check when i posted that Q vs. the number of responses at that time, you'll see only a handful were there, thus little context. is my telling you that a 'life hack'?
regardless, you can consider me the forrest gump of mgoblog (without leg braces).
August 8th, 2018 at 12:44 PM ^
Who the hell could ever give a snarky response to XM? by far the kindest, coolest poster on the board.
Don't crap in an envelope and mail it to yourself.
Hmmm, what if you mail it to someone other than yourself? Asking for a friend.
August 8th, 2018 at 10:03 AM ^
Then don't put a return address on it
August 8th, 2018 at 11:05 AM ^
Better now that Forever stamps are available.
When I order food I'll order a second drink so they think it's all for two people
If there is a word you have trouble spelling, just incorporate it into a password you use a lot (i.e. a work computer login) and you will have that word down pat. For instance, this is how I learned to spell "bureau" correctly after 20-ish years of spelling it wrong every damn time. And, since I have three different passwords that reset every 45 days, I have eliminated many words from my "damn it why can't I spell that" list.
I may adapt this system to memorize important dates and maybe even the names of cousins, spouses, and coworkers.
August 8th, 2018 at 11:00 AM ^
Hey, guys... Scruffy's password is tacobureau!
August 8th, 2018 at 12:38 PM ^
Except it's NOT spelled "Ruddock". . .