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Ants! Update…

amdrolabelUnlike MacGyver, Lieningin, and Charlton Heston…  (See post from April 27th) I have found an ally in my battle with the ants, his name is AMDRO.  I’ve tried alot of different ant baits, poisons, sprays, etc…  This is best product I’ve found.  Unlike Terro, it isn’t runny.  It is more paste like, and will stick wherever you put it.  I used the syringe version of Amdro.  It was easy to apply right to the ants paths, so they were guaranteed to find it.  amdrodiagramI did this less than a week ago, and I’ve seen no ants inside, and the big lines of ants are gone.  I catch a few on the house every so often, but it seems to have worked really well.  I also took the added step of caulking wherever I caught the ants getting into the house (i.e. cracks in the brick, etc…).  This probably helped alot as well, but the Amdro has apparently done the job of killing the colonies fairly well, since I’ve seen much, MUCH less activity around the yard.  I’m really pleased, and thought I would share this, since I have heard from many folks that they are having trouble too.  And if you didn’t the read the comments on the previous Ants posting, I cleaned with lemon 409, and the kitchen has been ant free ever since.  Just for kicks I thought I really test the power of lemon, and cleaned our picnic table with it (lots of ants).  It may be just from the cleaning, and not the lemon, but I’ve seen a huge difference there as well. 

So, Caulk, Amdro, Lemon 409.  That seems to do the trick.

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ANTS! Update!

thenakedjungleIs it just me, or has anyone else been overwhelmed by ant problems this spring.  We’ve always had issues outside, but this year they have moved inside!  I’ve been hitting them with all I’ve got.  I’ve tried talking to ants, reasoning with the ants (“You have to leave…  I’m not saying you have to go home, but you can’t stay here”). I’ve tried sprays at all different concentrations.  I’ve tried baits.  I am trying one right now that is suppossed to be best thing around.  I forget the name, but if it works I’ll certainly gladly post it.

My last attempt will be to dig a trench around our house and fill it with motor oil.  I think I saw that in a movie once.  It seemed to work…  Oh no, I’m wrong.  That didn’t work.  That had to set it on fire.  I wonder if I need a permit for that?

UPDATE: I have decided that I am living the life of Leiningen from the Short Story, Leiningen Versus the Ants (1938).  It was later turned into a movie in 1954, called The Naked Jungle.  Starring who else, but Charlton Heston.   I remember watching this along time ago, but it seemed kind of like a dream, so I wasn’t sure if I made it up.  I just knew the short story was called something versus the ants and that I read it in school.  Also, I also found a MacGyver episode with the exact same plot line, except that Richard Dean Anderson is there to save the day, not Charlton Heston…  So HA!  I’m not crazy.  The ants really are out to get me!

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Bring down the lights

mac600Just about to lay down for some sleep before heading to work in the morning.  I thought I would take a minute to check everyone up on what I’m working on.  Not to busy at work this week.  Although, Friday morning Pat, Mike, and Myself loaded out the moving lights for service.  They need new bulbs, focusing, etc…  Sounds easy…  Its not.  We have to lower the truss that is 40 feet up just so we can reach them.  Which means we have to climb 50 feet into the ceiling to lower the power cables with the truss as well.  Once we get them down.  It took two people to hold the lights while one detached them from the trussing.  I’m glad their were only 10 of them.  It awhile, but its done.  Just don’t remind me that we have to put them back up again!  But I am looking forward to programming when they come back.  It will be nice to program 12 lights that actually match again.  We load them in the truck tomorrow, and Pat will drive them down.  Thankfully, we managed to get the truck with the lift and not a ramp.  YEAH!

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Hard Disk Recovery

I was almost passed out when I sat down at our computer and saw only one word document on our storage drive.  I put the 500GB drive in earlier this year to store our family pictures and videos as a backup, and to allow me to format our system drive.  Well, that worked out fine, until Friday when I couldn’t find any of the last 8 years worth of files, pictures, and videos.  Needless to say, I was alittle distressed.

I finally was able to get everything back.  Luckly it wasn’t a horrible drive failure.  I thought someone else might be interested in some of the tricks you can use to try to recover lost data yourself.  In windows there is a utility built in called Check Disk.  You can use it to identify bad sectors on your hard drive and often times to repair those bad sectors.  Microsoft has an article on how to use Check Disk here.  There are also a few free or fairly inexpensive (inexpensive compared to the thousands of dollars it can cost to send your drive to a recovery specialist) utilities available from a company called Runtime Software.  They have a recovery utility for $79, and you can try it for free to see if it will work before you buy it.  Very handy.

Runtime also has a free utility for cloning your hard drive, called Shadow Copy.  It is what I am now using to backup my computer.  I have a hard drive in a lockable “hotswap” tray that serves as my backup.  In the event of a fire or such event, I can quickly grab that drive which will be an exact copy of my computer (windows, programs, files, and all).  Or in the event of my hard drive crashing, I can boot my backup and be up and running in under 5 minutes exactly where I left off.  Pretty nice setup.  There are other product available to do this, but I’m cheap.  This works for me. 

I’m just happy I got my files back!  Yeah for Check Disk!!!

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