09:21 – The mosquitoes have been horrible this year. They even get indoors, presumably on Colin’s coat. They’re out there lying in wait even at high noon. Early mornings and evenings are even worse.
So yesterday I decided to start using DEET even during the day. Unfortunately, I had no idea if we had any DEET and, if so, where it was. The first thought that crossed my mind, of course, was “I wonder how difficult this stuff is to synthesize.” Not difficult, as it turns out, but it requires a couple precursors that I don’t have in stock. Oh, well.
When Barbara got home, I asked her if we had any DEET. She said to look on top of the filing cabinet in the basement. Of course. Where else would we keep our DEET? As it turned out, we had two spray cans of deep-woods OFF, one relatively new and the other looked to be antique. The change in contents over the years between those two can is interesting. The old can lists the contents as “Active Ingredients. 25.00%: N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide, 19.00%, other isomers, 1.00%, 2,3,4-5-bis(2-butylene)-tetrahydro-2-furaldehyde, 1.00%, N-octyl bicycloheptane dicarboximide, 4.00%. Inert Ingredients. 75.00%.” The new can lists the contents as “Active Ingredient: DEET ….. 25%, Inert Ingredients ….. 75%.”
Apparently, they’ve both simplified their formula and gotten less precise about measuring what they put into it. And what’s this 25% crap? Whatever happened to 100% DEET? You’d think that “DEEP WOODS OFF!” would contain a manly percentage of DEET rather than the girlish 25%. What would Tim the Toolman Taylor say about this dilute stuff masquerading as a serious mosquito repellent?
Hi Bob,
I picked up some of the 100% stuff at Wal*Mart a couple of months back. “Repel 100” was the brand…
Cheers,
Rod Schaffter
Of course. Who wouldn’t have that as their first thought upon realizing
they couldn’t find the bug spray?
Interestingly, the only US producer of DEET is located in Greensboro, about 30 miles east of us.
http://goo.gl/maps/Gt92K
Swing by. Maybe they’ll sell it to you by the barrel at a wholesale price. đ
Well, the company that used to own the plant was bought out by an international. Back before they were bought out, they’d sell it off the loading dock, but the minimum order was IIRC 200 kilograms.
If you have mosquitoes in the house, I have found a vacuum cleaner is best way of disposing of them. Usually, they come to rest on a wall, and it is quick work to get rid of them. In Europe, hardly anyone has screens in windows, and we had a more or less stagnant creek out back. It used to power the local flour mill a few houses down the road, but was dammed up ages ago. One year was really bad for mosquitoes, and nightly we would vacuum dozens off the walls and ceiling. When I told other people about the solution, they were at first incredulous, but after trying it, became believers.
But we have a Border Collie. Last night, he was lying up on the couch between us, periodically snapping at the air. I’m sure there was a mosquito nearby, which I’m pretty sure he got eventually.
Grrr. How difficult can downloading a song be? I do not download much music from Amazon (or others), because I want the original lossless files from CDâs. But tonight, in searching for the â70âs disco version of âMighty Highâ by the Mighty Clouds of Joy (disco being the ultimate music form), I thought I had found it on Amazon, and bought it, as the version I wanted was not on any CD. Now, in the past, after buying, there was a link or something to open the Amazon MP3 Downloader and get the song. This time, it told me the song was on Cloud Player and would require a lot of convoluted set-up to download it.
So I opened the downloader directly by clicking on it in Program Files. First, it was in German—even though I have used it several times since returning to the US, and it was then in English. Second, it wanted to upgrade. So I let it. It was still in Deutsch with no setting to change the language, even though there were files in the program folder for half-a-dozen different languages. After a good 30 minutes of investigation, I finally found a help page on Amazon, aimed at dummies. There, and only there, was a link to install the MP3 downloader. So, I did it again. Same file as before from exactly the same Internet location and exactly the same size. Installed it again anyway. Sure enough, it was in English. It said to go to your browser and âcomplete the downloadâ.
By now, I have been traversing an obstacle course for a good 45 minutes. Looked at many web pages but could not find anything to download. Went back to the idiotâs help page and found instructions on âhow to download your purchaseâ. Again, there was a link that went to a place that no other page had. I presume they really, really want you to use the Cloud Player, instead of downloading. They talk a lot about playing your purchase on your âmobile deviceâ using Cloud Player, so I presume they are in cahoots with the phone companies to get you to use up your data allotment fast, by listening to everything on Cloud Player, instead of downloading to your phone and listening as much as you want, free of data usage.
Okay, the link on the dummiesâ page took me to a place that said I must register all my âdevicesâ. That is new. My computer is now a device. Until I register my computer, I cannot use the Cloud Player, which is now necessary for downloading. Okay, after that it shows only that one song in my Cloud Player (so this IS a whole new way of doing things since my last purchase, because my purchases back to 2006 are not there)—even though it says all my previous purchases should be there.
Wait. Unbelievably, there is more. It now says I must register the download process by linking it to my preferred browser. I click on the button for that. Only then does there appear a link in Cloud Player to download; I click on that. It brings up the dialog âOpen withâ and I almost clicked âSave fileâ thinking this was the MP3. It was not. It was asking to open the MP3 Downloader program to download a file. On careful inspection, the file it wanted to download was an â.amzâ file, not an MP3.
Wow. Could this be any more difficult? I left it with the âOpen withâ file it suggested, and MP3 Downloader opened and downloaded the file. It then asked if I wanted to see the download folder. Okay, sure. I clicked on that, and what should I see? Grrrrrrrr. All my previous 6 years of downloads are GONE! I double-check with my favorite file manager, Xplorer^2, and confirm that they have removed all my previous purchases from that destination folder—the same folder I have been using for the last 6 years, and the default one Amazon has always used.
Now I am not sure whether this is intentional or a coding mistake—perhaps they created a new destination folder in all those steps I followed and it overwrote a new folder over the old one, erasing all contents (nothing in the Recycle Bin, which makes me feel this was intentional). In any event, I, myself, did nothing with that folder, and this should not have happened. Resembles the Kindle affair where they removed books that were legitimately bought and paid for.
Fortunately, having learned well from our host, I back up everything, and in the case of media files like music, I copy them to my music library file structure anyway. I just went to the backup and copied all the contents back to the Amazon folder. Problem is that the Amazon software does not recognize any of it as being there. No matter to me, because I never use that folder or the Amazon software, except for a few minutes (usually) involved in a new purchase. But beware if you keep all your Amazon purchases in the folder Amazon puts it in. Better back it up before your next purchase.
To cap it all off, what I bought was NOT the original disco version which I previewed and confirmed was what I wanted before I bought it, but rather, a later re-recording, with different voices and slightly different arrangement and mix. The beginning of the song I bought is also upcut. If I had paid more than $0.89, I would be pissed.
I suppose I am now ready for my next Amazon music purchase, but I wasted the entire evening and $0.89—still not getting what I wanted.
Chuck wrote:
“(disco being the ultimate music form)”
I knew that if only I lived long enough you’d say something I could agree with completely… đ
Tina Charles or Maxine Nightingale anyone?
I’d buy music (preferably music video) from Amazon, even iTunes, in a flash if they didn’t try to limit you do one device.
I could never believe the lack of screens on windows in the UK and Europe. I like getting some fresh, cool air but mugs would get in if I opened the window. This was a particular problem in Turkey where I was in an area where there were malaria bearing mozzies. So I sweltered through a night in a hotel with inadequate air conditioning to avoid even the tiny chance of getting malaria.
Some of my family and friends are more concerned about the supposed health risks of insecticides than they are of the bugs insects carry. I used to visit a friend in a nearby town whose screens didn’t fit the windows properly. As a result there’d be dozens of flies swarming around while we were having dinner. It got to the point that I’d ask my friend, all innocently, if I should bring some insecticide. He’d yell “NO NO NO NO NO!!” and promise to clear the room by swatting them all while I was on my way there.
The other thing that amazed me was the lack of refrigeration for soft drinks. Went into a shop in rural France and asked for a coke. I was handed one from an unrefrigerated shelf. Amazing.
*mugs. = bugs.
I remember originally being surprised at the lack of window screens. But it’s really not much of an issue. Maybe in warmer climates, flying critters are more of a problem. Sure, you get the occasional fly or mosquito; we live next to a forest, so sometime the odd beetle flies in as well. But it’s really not much of a problem.
When I visit the States, I have the opposite experience: it bothers me that most windows have their views darkened by screens.
Cold drinks, on the other hand, I do miss. We always have our private drinks in the refrigerator, and ice cubes in the freezer. That’s not the norm, though, and most restaurants will serve soft drinks at room temperature. If you ask for ice, they look at you oddly and bring one or two small ice cubes.
We always have our private drinks in the refrigerator, and ice cubes in the freezer. Thatâs not the norm, though, and most restaurants will serve soft drinks at room temperature. If you ask for ice, they look at you oddly and bring one or two small ice cubes.
So does everyone in Europe have teeth that are cold sensitive due to the lack of dental hygienists?
(disco being the ultimate music form)
Did Barry Manilow ever do a disco version of Mandy? Talk about ultimate!
“So does everyone in Europe have teeth that are cold sensitive due to the lack of dental hygienists?”
Ugly teeth are indeed pretty common here, in anyone over the age of 30. Anyone under the age of 30 has had their teeth corrected, and probably goes to the dental hygienist regularly. Somehow, this stuff only became widely accepted here 20 years later than in the States.
There’s one political announcer/analyst on Swiss television, probably about 40, who obviously smokes a lot. It’s a bit hard to see in the picture (but really obvious on HD-TV): there are literally black stripes of gunk between his lower teeth. Gross. We have kind of a family bet running, how much longer the TV station lets him get away with it…
For disco, I have to admit that I favor Village People.
It doesn’t hurt that back in 1980, when I was the finance vice-chairman of the Libertarian National Committee, Village People contributed a lot of money to the campaign.
I never have understood the affection for super-cold drinks. After all, room temperature in northern Europe is never much more than 70°F/21°C, and that is a significant ~30°F colder than your mouth.
Never have I met an American who does anything more than sip a refrigerated or iced beverage. When I am thirsty, I want to chug liquid. Sipping is for hot coffee or tea. You sure cannot chug 55°F liquid anything without freezing your tongue and tonsils to numbness. And I am serious about that. Around Boston, the Atlantic seldom gets above 55°F, and that is cold enough to freeze your feet and ankles to numbness and no feeling whatever in less than a minute. Same goes for your mouth, but I guess that is why Americans sip their beverages, instead of chugging them.
Warm beer? Thirty degrees below body temperature is not warm. Most people would reject food at that state of coldness.
I guzzle drinks with ice in them. I just chugged a half liter of iced Coke between these two sentences. I don’t think I’m unusual.
Well, at least in that respect.
“I donât think Iâm unusual.”
Did you synthesize the Coke? That would make you unusual.
I like ice in my drinks and ice cold beer.
I like the Village People (YMCA, In The Navy, etc) too, and I also love *cold* beer, milk, soft drink and fruit juice. After mowing the lawn on a hot summer’s days a couple of ice cold VBs don’t touch the sides on the way down.
Room temperature milk, soft drink, even fruit juice I can drink, but to really like it I like it straight from the fridge. Warm beer should be banned as “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Boy, I’m going to have to stop agreeing with our host, I might turn into a card carrying you-know-what.
Like Chuck I sip hot tea, coffee and hot chocolate, but the only drink that I actually like at room temperature is water. I like it cold too, but room temperature is acceptable. I’ve heard of guys who can chug boiling hot tea and coffee. I couldn’t.