From the “Found the Gum” Dept.

I found the missing pieces of gum. They were stuck to the walls of the dryer after the load was finished.

Great.

Fortunately, Jen has this great substance called “Goo Gone” that dissolves gum and glues.

Unfortunately, Jen is in Vancouver (she’s safe and sound). She’s living alone in a two bedroom condo (with no bed sheets or linens). She has the master bedroom at the moment (her roommate will be arriving in September). Unfortunately the second room is a really, really small kiddy room. So they’ll probably move out.

However, back to the gum story. I’m very fortunate to know something about chemistry so I realised that “Goo Gone” is just a hydrocarbon-based solvent, and that something similar would probably work as well.

So I got a rag, and a cannister of white-fuel (for lanterns and gas stoves) and cleaned the inside of the dryer.

Worked like a charm.

From the “Tech Speak” Dept.

I’m crushed to find out that Aneil’s computer is still not working.

Every time he brings it over, I manage to fix it, and then it stops working again.

I finally upgraded to Win2k Service Pack 3.

I finally upgraded to Internet Explorer 6—only to find out that there were about 6 critical security updates that needed to be patched after I installed it….

From the “Saving Water” Dept.

The Municipality of York is sponsoring a water saving program. They’re going house-to-house and replacing old toilet flaps (these are the flaps that open to release water from the resevoir to bowl when you flip the lever/handle) and old shower heads with water efficient ones.

We opted out of the new shower heads (seeing we have water saving “wand” style shower heads and they were only giving away the “stand up, non-adjustable” shower heads), but we replaced all the flaps on our toilet.

They work really well. I estimate that the save about 6 litres a flush; a very significant savings. New toilets use approximately 6 Litres. Our toilet, use to use 20 Litres a flush. Maybe it’s time to replace the toilets out right.

Hell, maybe it’s time we installed a urinal…that would have a lot of water savings…

Better yet, I could dig a hole in the ground, and we can use that….

Just Kidding.

-T