What's on your mind? (2025) - good way to start... even if a bit early... :-)

Not About Food
2360

Maybe, but then again, maybe not. I have twice over the 20 years I’ve lived in this neighborhood encountered a great horned owl just sort of squatting in the street when I was headed to work at Oh-Dark-Thirty. And if I’d been out of the neighborhood (i.e., not doing 20mph), I’d surely have hit them, too.

The first time it was facing my car, right in the middle of the road, and just sat there blinking in the headlights. The second was more off to the right side, but still on the street and facing toward a house. Both times I tried to shoo them (shouting, stamping) but they didn’t react. Called animal control and the first time heard from a neighbor that they’d come out while still dark. Don’t know about the second case.

I’m guessing they were just really old and maybe not altogether with it; so far as I know, most (all?) animals can get age related neural degeneration.

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2361

We’ll never know. I was just glad there was a car right behind me that hopefully finished the poor thing off.

It was a traumatizing ending to an already shit day.

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2362

If your toaster stops working with these symptoms, try this fairly easy 10 minute(*) fix before you hit up Uncle Jeff for a replacement. Unless you’ve already been eyeballin’ a New & Improved model.

On an outlet that you’ve checked works, when you depress the lever the electromagnet fails to come on and hold it down, and when you keep holding it down yourself, the elements do not start heating. If either part works you’ve got a different problem than what I’m thinking of.

The left bay on our ~ 13 yo 4-slotter stopped working as described above. Makes sense that it was the left because for reasons unknown, if we’re doing 1 or 2 slices, the left bay is the one we always use. The right worked so I already had confirmation on the outlet.

Took it apart, cut up a foam-core emery board (space is kind of tight) and scrubbed the oxidation off both parts of the electrical contacts, but it back together, and now I can simultaneously make 4 pieces of toast again! And yes, I went ahead and scrubbed the other bay’s contact points while I was at it. I’m not an electrician but I guess that each time you use it, you get a small arc just as contact is made, which oxidizes the surfaces over time.

Broad view from the front:

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Up close, the contact points, post cleaning:

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(*) Ten minutes or less for the fix itself. It took about 20 minutes to get it apart, and 5 to put it back together. More time to get apart because for some (probably stupid, but maybe not) reason they put it together with 10 tiny Phillips head screws, then, hidden under silicone plugs that took me a while to non-destructively wiggle out, they had 6 more T15 screws. So I had to go dig around in the toolboxes to find my tiny Torx head driver set.

It also took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to release the knobs off the levers. On this one (Black & Decker), coming at the knob from the side, where the sleeve part of the knob goes over the lever, it has a slot that can be spread with a regular flathead screwdriver to release the knob.

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2363

Yesterday we said “F*** it, we’re taking a break.” We jumped into the car and headed up to Big Trees State Park in Calaveras County to spend a few hours amongst the Giant Sequoias. Very little is as restorative as some quiet time in nature, especially when you’re in the shadow of a ginormous tree that has lived through it all. We came back feeling a little refreshed. Only checked the news yesterday to make sure my Premiership team won. (They did.)

ETA: I remembered we did watch the late news yesterday, mostly to catch any updates on the latest tragedy to befall our community. That’s when I saw the Death Cap story I referenced in the mushroom thread.

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2364

Remember the before times, sans the internet or smart phones?

Wasn’t all that terrible, and human connections were def better.

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2365

We have red tails here and they are just beautiful to watch when they catch a thermal. The ‘begging’ calls that the juveniles make can be entertaining or annoying, depending on the frequendy and your mood.

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2366

Love the Big Trees, camping at the newer named (formely Squaw ) Oak Hollow campground, and exploring the Stanislaus river. There was a Great Girl Scout camp there near Camp Connell or Dorrington. The bestest camp for a ten year old! :heart:Memories! Sounds like a great getaway for you!

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2367

It’s funny: I grew up going to Big Trees on field trips, so I took them for granted. Big trees? Big deal. It wasn’t until this summer when we were walking the North Grove and met a couple from Boston who were in absolute awe of the Sequoias. We chatted with them for about half an hour, and it gave me a much better appreciation by seeing it through their eyes.

My own Boy Scout camp was between Avery and Arnold on Highway 4. I think the local BSA council sold it to a developer and bought your former GSA camp as a replacement! And recent experience proves there are no fish in the Stanislaus River, at least not this summer. Don’t let anybody tell you different. :roll_eyes:

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2368

My daughter used to work summers at GS Camp Sugar Pine in Arnold! Our favorite was Bothin near San Rafael in Marin.

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2369

I’m glad you were able to get away. We get up to Cape Cod or the Berkshires as much as possible-- very poor cell reception in both locations and a lot of nature. It removes much of the temptation to remain connected and time slows down just enough. Watching sunsets every day and no one honking as soon as the light turns green. Rarely hear a loud car stereo or siren. Just perfect. Definitely due for a break.

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2370

From Nigerian Princes to Torontonian bank managers… Fun phishing scheme.

Got an actual paper letter from a gent identifying himself as a Scotiabank accounts manager, basically inviting me to play scab relative/inheritor of a supposed 3-years deceased client with “$28,347,924.18” in an account, and no other relatives to be found.

The tells: no typographical or grammatical errors, which is unusual, but the paper was very cheap (not something that would come from the desk of a bank manager), it was mailed with a single US $0.78 stamp (post CA to US costs more than that), he listed the value of the account (should have remained confidential until I was verified inheritor), offered to split it with me 50:50 (um, illegal), used an ON area code for his office phone number that doesn’t cover Toronto, and used a gmail account.

Oh well. It would have been great to inherit $14,173,962.09 from my dearly departed, twice-removed, third cousin Mark, but really, I jest cain’t be arsed to answer the letter.

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2371

I’ve been trying to figure out the end game for all these phone scammers who will text you out of the blue, asking stuff like “Hey, are we still on for tomorrow?” to which I naturally reply in the affirmative & mess with them until they get exasperated.

Do they think telling me they have the ‘wrong’ number is eventually going to get them my PWs or account numbers?

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2372

Yeah sometimes it’s murky. This one is pretty straightforward. Once the phish is hooked, it’s, “Well you see of course there are legal fees associated with the probate court and account inheritance/transfer, please send a check for $12345…”.

I haven’t gotten any text scams that I know of. Plenty of spam, though - people I don’t know offering to buy my houses, and political adverts of course. The latter are irritating because they often have largish data accompanying, photos, slide decks, etc.

I do get about 10 scam calls a day, but the bulk of those are recognized as such by T-Mobile and come through with the warning “Scam Likely”. For some reason, I get 2 a day calls from a local area code and a prefix that does not exist, then the last 4 digits differ per call. For some reason TM doesn’t flag this one as spam.

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2373

Oh, I get those calls, too. I never reply to unknown callers. If it’s important, they’ll leave a msg.

2374

I received a bot call last evening supposedly from my mail delivery pharmacy. I asked to ‘speak to someone’ and the spiel just kept on spinning, asking for my info. It wouldn’t let me ‘speak to someone’ so I hung up. Watch out, they’re everywhere!

2375

A few months ago, Sunshine got a SCAM call from a guy claiming to be from Amazon, but he clearly wasn’t. She hadn’t used her Amazon account in many, many years. The guy seemed to know a bit too much about her debit card and bank information. So we went up to the bank, (luckily) no money was missing. But to be on the safe side, the bank manager immediately cancelled her Debit Card and ordered a new one.

It may have been overkill, but we didn’t want to take the chance.

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2376

I got scammed out of what was probably my biggest weekly earnings with Uber once. Those assholes were clearly very good at what they were doing, but I was still absolutely shocked & embarrassed that I fell for it.

Thankfully, Uber ended up reimbursing me, but that was a dark day. Never again.

2377

SQUIRREL! (benign politcal comment)

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2378

Just one question: why do you all keep hanging up on me?

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2379

Ugh. Because nobody calls anyone anymore. Can’t you t-e-x-t like normal folk?

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