T&L Publications

The calls have gotten worse, mostly political messages and surveys. I am on the do-not-call list but it doesn’t seem to cover these types of calls. In my earlier posting I described what I want in a call blocker and I think I found a possible solution. The call blocker made (or distributed) by JF Te...

I am back to grousing about calls from politicians wanting my vote, charities, wanting my money, and surveyors wasting my time. And, I’m thinking about the kind of call blocker I would use. My specs are simple. 1. Would use two answer machines, one for intercepted trash calls, the other, my regular ...

Let me add chaos to confusion on this topic. The suspect t'stat in question is in the lower floor with it’s own heating/cooling system – a heat pump. (Our house in on a steep slope so part of the lower floor is actually a basement). Now we have a stair well between the basement and ground floor (upp...

Robert, I agree with you, comfort is a personal and a relative thing. Also I believe comfort is actually based not only on temperature but humidity (is dew point relevant here?) I just want to find out which of my array of thermometers in this room is giving me the best guess at real temperature whe...

Hmm. Maybe I am looking for the wrong thing. Rather than the most accurate (and cheap) thermometer I should ask how to get a precise temp reference in the human comfort range. Yes, boiling water would give me a 212 (at sea level) and ice cold water a 32 reference but I wonder if there is a way to ge...

I can certainly tell the difference between 79 and 77 and the fact is when the set point is at 79 and it shows that it is 77 and the compressor is still running I just up the set point to 81 to get what I can accept as a comfortable temperature. But from the reading of the other thermometers I can a...

I suppose I could amass as many different thermometers as possible, set them all side by side, and if two or three agree, accept that as a reading as close to accurate as possible. Then use one of those as my standard. Ah but I hear someone saying I will have to vary the ambient temperature and take...

I am having “issues” with the digital, programmable thermostat in my house. I won’t go into details other than to say when I set it to cool at 79 the AC is still cooling and the t'stat's own temperature readout showing 77. To investigate I bought a simple digital display thermometer from Walmart, pl...

Would like to annoy the dog's owner but he (the dog) only barks when they are gone. He knows if he keeps barking they will return and they keep him inside when they are home.

Some dogs are just born psychotic (like some people). I have approached and petted numbers of Golden Retriever that never barked, snarled or bared their fangs. Yet my neighbor at our previous house got one as a puppy. They already had a very friendly black lab, but this Golden grew up angry and mena...

Bottom line, that dog has a right to bark during daytime hours with some exceptions I must disagree. Although there may not be a specific ordinance against barking dogs, there are usually "nuisance" ordinances which might apply. If a dog barks only during the day one could argue that the ...

This is not a problem of training the dog. It is a problem of training the owner. Unfortunately, the owner is not around as, by definition, the dog only barks when the owner is away and not aware that the dog is barking. But if the owner comes home to find the dog cowering behind the fence, afraid t...

In my past conflicts with neighbors who had barking dogs I thought of poison tipped arrows tethered with string to retract them after the kill, or, better yet, sausage patties laced with herbal laxatives tossed over the fence so the dog would defecate himself to death. Then I imagined the headlines ...

I'm not sure of the breed, looks sort of "poodleish", but in my lifetime I have found that cockers, small poodles, and especially shelties have the most ear piercing yap. However, it seems that only certain dogs are inflicted with paranoia when their master leaves the house, in this case t...

In my new digs everything has been fine until a new neighbor moved in with a yappy dog. She leaves him in an enclosed area when she goes shopping or whatever, and the dog, being a dog, believes his continued barking will bring her back. Of course when she returns, his mindless theory is confirmed, h...