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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

...toe the line?

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This reminds me of the time there was a most disgusting, rancid stench in my home and it was so overpowering that my nose would "switch off" completely, making it impossible to trace the source. I finally found a rotting, maggot infested mouse corpse wedged in the metal grill at the back of the fridge freezer! My cat was a bugger for bringing little playmates home for a fun filled afternoon but Smegol would quickly grow bored of them and, with sometimes pretty serious injuries, they would scarper to find sanctuary!

Trish, I have had exactly the same experience!
 
I have had exactly the same experience!

The death of a mouse behind my fridge took a while to register but the stench became unbearable. Luckily, the corpse was accessible in a place where there was no skirting-board. Unluckily, the juices of its putrescence had sunk into a sandy layer, so the stink did not go when the corpse did. Various libations were used to lay the ghost: disinfectant, bleach and a bottle of cheap, unloved after-shave. It faded eventually.

A few months back, I was surprised to find a small, mummified mouse on the window sill of my library. It was obscured from my view by the curtain. Embarrassingly, it was visible to passers-by, I expect. I would have found it earlier but this one had produced no detectable odour! :rolleyes:
 
I think I've worked out what the smell is here. It's this leaky radiator that I have out in the hallway.
It must have been rusting away for some time. Now it's leaking full-on, the stink has increased.
 
The cats left a mouse in the downstairs bathroom - no smell at all. I left it there, as an experiment, to see what would happen, and it just quietly rotted away with absolutely no smell. I am presuming that the 'fridge grill' mouse stank so horribly because of the heat generated by the fridge?
 
Catseye I do think heat from the back of the fridge played a major part in mousegate. I can't even claim to have been the one brave enough to remove it (scoop it off!), that task fell to my step dad who actually threw up during the disposal process!!! I lost Smegol 18 months ago at the ripe and old age of 16 and she is sorely missed.
 
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I was going to respond to this mouse thing, but I suspect that either Trish71 or catseye as modified their post. Makes my response senseless. Ah well. story of my life.
 
I was going to respond to this mouse thing, but I suspect that either Trish71 or catseye as modified their post. Makes my response senseless. Ah well. story of my life.
INT21 please respond, I'm really interested in what you were going to write?!?
 
Can I ask the forum for advice? How on earth do you post something (that is not a reply to another post) as all I can seem to do is tag someone's post if i wish to write anything? (Please forgive me if this makes no sense whatsoever as my probably incorrect terminology is down to my complete ignorance of technology!)
Edit: I have no idea how I've managed to do what it is I'm asking advice on hiw to do it!
 
A friend once told me a tale of mouse and mother-in-law. Some years ago her mother-in-law, a fastidious housekeeper, came to visit for several days. The morning after the mother-in-law's arrival, my friend got up earlier than everyone else in the house in order to prepare breakfast. When my friend passed by the guest bedroom where her mother-in-law was sleeping she spotted the headless carcass of a mouse laid out in front of the closed bedroom door. My friend was horrified at the discovery and immediately swept it up and disposed of it. She could well imagine how her mother-in-law would have reacted if she had seen the dead mouse. The family cat must have thought this visit was noteworthy and decided to offer the guest a rodent delicacy for breakfast.
 
Trish71,

Click on the 'Forums' tab at the top, then click on 'post thread' that is at the right hand side .

Create your thread
 
Trish71,

There was some mention of a 'smell comparison'.

I was going to suggest you post the dead rodent for comparison. A small jiffy bag should suffice.
 
Trish71,

There was some mention of a 'smell comparison'.

I was going to suggest you post the dead rodent for comparison. A small jiffy bag should suffice.
Unfortunately, mousegate happened about 10 years ago so it will just be mouse dust now haha.
 
This discussion is making me extremely glad our dog doesn't go in for catching things. Chasing, yes, but not catching. Not sure she'd know what to do even if she did catch something. One of my brother's cats, on the other paw, is a master hunter. He has a habit of bringing things, still alive things, in to a room next to the one my brother happens to be occupying, and meowing. Said brother then has about ten or fifteen seconds to scrag the cat and secure whatever it is they've brought in or be locked into a race to get to the fleeing whatever before the felonious feline does. Once, and we have not the faintest clue how, the cat brought in a bat. That one, at least, was safely secured and released.

:monty:

Very minor strangeness for you to deliberate over - a TV that persists in turning itself on at night. As an incurable night owl, I'm usually downstairs at 10 or 11pm, checking the dog's settled, ensuring that everything is turned off and locked up, and often fixing myself a little something to eat. In recent weeks I'm frequently finding, on arriving home from a friend's or simply descending from my room, that the TV in the kitchen/dining/communal area is on, while everything else is off, the room otherwise silent and dark. It's actually a little eerie.

One night, having turned it off, I started getting myself a snack, and just as I've closed the cutlery drawer, the TV turns back on. I'm nowhere near the remote and across the room from the TV. On two further occasions it's turned on when I've briefly stepped into another room. On a fourth I head to the bathroom in the early hours and hear it on downstairs, even though I know I switched it off earlier; no lights are on, and no-one else is awake.

There's no pattern I can see. It's not switching on at a set time, and nothing else noticeable happens concurrently that might somehow be acting as a trigger. As I said, it's very minor, but it just won't stop niggling at me, not least since it does only seem to happen at night...
 
a TV that persists in turning itself on at night.

An assemblage of possible technical reasons for this occuring:

(1) Faulty remote control: due to unwitting ingress of cough syrup/other liquid contaminants shorting-out the printed keypad, or indeed prolapse of the switch contacts themselves. Whilst remembering that a number of different infra-red remotes will awaken your tv from slumber, put them all inside an optically-isolating box overnight (shoebox, good candidate you are for this exorcism). Battery removal is only for the brave, as amnesia may result (I seem to remember)

(2) Detection, falsely, of varying signal/programme content, via eg HDMI connection. These cabled connections are now very multivalent, and will often insist that something is ahappening based upon no real-world corresponding instancy, and on-turn an off-turned telly. Mark/note/disconnect so as to experimentally isolate this/these, as a possible vector for your vexation.

(3) Brownouts. Near power-cuts that are deeper dips than the utility company would claim ever happen, but do. So I'm a tv....I'm sitting in my one-eyed redlit world of somnolent standby. And suddenly the power dips (maybe an electrical supply glitch, countryside powerline hiccup &etc). I react by coming to life, because I think I've been asked to awaken. Try testing for this by flicking-off, then back on (at the wall-socket), your standing-by, redlit, half-off, TV. Do I fully re-energise? Yes? Eureka. Case closed.

(4) Smart tvs (or indeed TVs) made semi-sentient via the insertion of connected computer capability. This includes platform games eg X-Boxes/Nintendo devices, and also Chromecast dongles, Apple TV and other streaming receivers. But I'm going to make a presumptive leap of faith, and vest in you an expectation that your television does >not< possess any of these magical multimural media manifestations. No integrated WiFi internet capability (cough, cough, cf "Wake On LAN"....actuation thereon so as to receive operating systems upgrades whilst the biological world sleeps) and that you most emphatically do not have a co-habiting smart speaker (eg Google Home Assistant, Amazon Echo Dot &etc) nor any (even unwitting) home automation going on.

All this, and more, must we eliminate from the frame of potential suspicion, long before invoking the trope of bell, book, candle & priest.

Which is damned annoying, as we'd all like a demonically-possessed household appliance at least once in our lives (sorry, perhaps that's just me...desirous of a possessed-by-spirits hi-fi, I mean)
 
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. . . A few months back, I was surprised to find a small, mummified mouse on the window sill of my library. . . . I would have found it earlier but this one had produced no detectable odour! :rolleyes:
Did you mean detectable or delectable?

The family cat must have thought this visit was noteworthy and decided to offer the guest a rodent delicacy for breakfast.
The family cat had already eaten the best part!
 
But seriously, are these all recent problems?
Cyanobacteria producing neurotoxins, oak processionary caterpillars causing asthma, ash dieback causing falling branches and old trees on the point of toppling.
Trees are stressed everywhere. I'd like to see some asphalt die-back for once, and lots more trees. Then it wouldn't be so hot. :hapdan:
 
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Can I ask the forum for advice? How on earth do you post something (that is not a reply to another post) as all I can seem to do is tag someone's post if i wish to write anything? (Please forgive me if this makes no sense whatsoever as my probably incorrect terminology is down to my complete ignorance of technology!)
Edit: I have no idea how I've managed to do what it is I'm asking advice on hiw to do it!
Not sure if i understood this right, but do you mean you have to quote a post before you can post what you want to, if so, just scroll down to the bottom of the page there is a big box, post in that click post reply and thats it
 
You have several options (apologies if this is not the answer anyone was looking for or if it sounds condescending or anything):

Then find the post you want to quote. To "grab" the text, you can:
1) click "+Quote"
or
2) click "Reply"
or
3) highlight the text you want to quote and use the black box under it to chose +Quote or "Reply".
or
4) highlight the text you want to quote and copy it using your computer's keyboard shortcuts.

This makes the text available in the quote format. A message appears at the top of the page that says "Message added to multiquote."
Once this appears, go to the bottom of the page and where you'll find the box with your icon next to it.

Click in the empty box with your icon next to it. That activates/places your cursor. This is where the quote will go. You can put the cursor as far down the page as you want if you want to write a bunch of stuff before the quote, or whatever you want to do. Put in a picture of fluffy kittens for Escargo before quoting JamesWhitehead, whatever.

Chose "Insert quotes" at the bottom of that box.
A "pop-up" box, a window "on top of" the web page, appears with the option to "insert quote." Click on that.

Before you finally post your reply, the quote looks like this:
[ Q o u T E = "member name, post #, member #"] blah, blah this is a quote, a quote to last till the end of time.[/ Q O U T E ]
You can modify the quote, which I sometimes do by putting certain parts in bold or deleting the middle in order to focus on relevant parts:
[ Q U O T E="member name, post #, member #"] blah, blah this is a quote . . . [/ Q O U T E ]

When I delete a middle part, I always put in the three dots to show part is missing. Don't want to misrepresent anyone!
I hope this works -- and if I've messed up the directions at all, please correct me! (Glory be, what a long post!)
 
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Can I ask the forum for advice? How on earth do you post something (that is not a reply to another post) as all I can seem to do is tag someone's post if i wish to write anything? ... !

If you wish to quote someone else's post and add your response, click on "Reply" in that other member's post.

If you want to post something without quoting anyone else, simply scroll to the bottom of the page to the text entry box, enter your post text, and hit "Post reply."
 
......... a TV that persists in turning itself on at night. .........even though I know I switched it off earlier...........

Erm.....you see the bit at the wall where the plug is plugged in....have tried switching it off entirely with the switchy switch thing and also removing said plug from socket?
I'd be extremely surprised (nay worried/concerned) if it still powered up then!
 
Do modern TVs still use a lot (relatively) of power on standby? It used to be a thing to berate those who used too much electricity, but I don't hear it so much these days. I got into the habit of switching off at the plug because of it!
 
Do modern TVs still use a lot (relatively) of power on standby?
The official politically-correct answer to this question is "Yes" insofar as an infinitesimally-small value multiplied by a vast quantity of instances equates to a Large Amount Of Wasted Power. Officially.

And let's just treat that as a value of shame, in isolation to any aspects of avoiding additional energy requirements implicated in starting a large power-hungry television from total cold. Or factors such as total costs of ownership in terms of replacement & repair (mitigation thereof).

Because that's the way we must think, behave and believe.
 
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Does leaving the set on standby "wear it out"? I don't know how else to put it!
 
@Ermintruder - many thanks for the in-depth reply! We do have a dongle plugged into it, for streaming and catch-up services, so that's definitely a possibility, though I believe we've had that dongle a fair bit longer than the TV's been turning itself on. Power issues occured to me, too, since our utilities are rather outdated and overstretched - new houses built, but no utilities upgrades to match - and thus we do have blips and dips and cuts; it could simply be this TV is more sensitive, for want of a better word, to such things than the rest of our technology. I don't doubt there's a prosaic explanation, it's simply elusive at the moment, and I've certainly yet to see any lank-haired, twitchy ghost girls emerge from the set. Rest assured that if I had I'd be in another county right now, and still running!

@Trevp666 - basically, we're lazy. :p And it is, courtesy of the location, a little bit of a faff to get to the plug.

@GNC - I imagine it would depend on the TV. My personal set spends a lot of time on standby, only fully turned off during power cuts and when I'm away, and it's lasted at least 15 years. Another might not.
 
[USER=48905]@GNC - I imagine it would depend on the TV. My personal set spends a lot of time on standby, only fully turned off during power cuts and when I'm away, and it's lasted at least 15 years. Another might not.

Yes, it might depend on the brand, even. I do know my parents always leave their TV on standby, and it was one I got them that lasted for a shorter amount of time than the one I bought around the same time (it's still going). But I don't leave mine on standby, so... I dunno, it's probably not as simple as that.
 
Does leaving the set on standby "wear it out"?
Precisely the reverse. But we officially are all meant to unplug such devices, irrespective of the flea-power they draw from the grid.
 
Can I ask the forum for advice? How on earth do you post something (that is not a reply to another post) as all I can seem to do is tag someone's post if i wish to write anything? (Please forgive me if this makes no sense whatsoever as my probably incorrect terminology is down to my complete ignorance of technology!)
Edit: I have no idea how I've managed to do what it is I'm asking advice on hiw to do it!
Just go down to the bottom and use the entry field.
 
Minor but it freaked me out: last night I took a shower, using a bar of soap. This morning I took another, and the bar of soap had disappeared. I live alone, and there is literally no reason I would have absent-mindedly moved the soap from its habitual place. A search of the house turned up nothing.

It is the festival of Hungry Ghosts, for what it's worth - perhaps some of them like eating soap.
 
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