Life

[SecretAsianMan]

My grass is starting to get pretty tall, which means I'm not going to be able to put off getting a lawn mower for much longer.  I'm seriously considering getting an electric mower instead of a gas mower.  My yard isn't that big and I don't really don't want to have to deal with getting gas for a mower.  I've only ever used gas mowers and I don't much like the thought of having to do so again.  Anyone ever used an electric?  Any thoughts about gas vs electric?

[Ucantalas]

My family has had all kinds of lawnmowers (except for riding mowers). The electric was fine, except for two things:

 

1)Keeping the cord out of the way was a pain in the ass. (The one we had was fairly old, so I don't know if electric mowers these days just have a battery or something, but ours needed to be plugged in to an outlet the entire time you were mowing. If electric mower tech has improved significantly this might not be a problem, but I haven't kept up on that kind of thing.)

 

2) Do not mow wet grass. I've heard this is something you shouldn't do with other mowers as it can clog up and stuff, but I mention it here because mowing the lawn after a rainy weekend was how my dad finally killed that electric mower once and for all.

 

How big is your lawn? If it's not too large, you might be able to save quite a bit of money with something like this:

(That's what I ended up having to use after the electric blew up...)

[SecretAsianMan]

I'm only looking at mowers with batteries.  Like I said, the yard's not very big so I could probably do it in one charge.  Worst case scenario is I have to do it in halves but I don't think I will.  Mowing wet grass is definitely a pain and something I'll be sure to avoid whenever possible.

[Merus]

You know, it's kind of weird that we don't rent mowers, or at least have a mower shared amongst several people. You generally only need a mower once a week, at most.

[Thrik]

I have the same thought about showers.

[tegan]

I've been sick for the last three days with virtually no change in symptoms or severity. It's not so bad that I can't do anything, just bad enough to be really annoying.

[dibs]

Sounds like the man flu Tegan, but ladies don't get the man flu!

 

 

I just got back from a very enjoyable long weekend visiting friends in Zurich.

[syntheticgerbil]

My family has had all kinds of lawnmowers (except for riding mowers). The electric was fine, except for two things:

 

1)Keeping the cord out of the way was a pain in the ass. (The one we had was fairly old, so I don't know if electric mowers these days just have a battery or something, but ours needed to be plugged in to an outlet the entire time you were mowing. If electric mower tech has improved significantly this might not be a problem, but I haven't kept up on that kind of thing.)

 

2) Do not mow wet grass. I've heard this is something you shouldn't do with other mowers as it can clog up and stuff, but I mention it here because mowing the lawn after a rainy weekend was how my dad finally killed that electric mower once and for all.

Yeah I had an electric mower for a while and all of this rings true. It was used so I don't know how bad it was treated before hand but it lasted me about six months. I suspect it was because I mowed a few times with the morning dew. I also found it to be pretty weak compared to a gas mower as well.

 

I tried a traditional push mower for about 8 months but it really did not go well. I usually had to go over the yard about 2-3 times to even get good results and it was really bad about getting weeds and stray strands of grass. I ended up using the weed eater a ton to just compensate, thus wasting even more electricity than probably the electric mower. I also tried to sharpen this damn thing every other time and still no luck. Also the yard for that place was rough central Texas grass and weeds that were hard to deal with even with the gas mower. Compared to my parents house in Houston where the grass was a nice cushiony bed of Saint Augustine that prevented weeds, it was hell.

[Nachimir]

I've only used one gas mower, but I found it way better than electric. It had a power assist, which really helped getting it up the gentle hill where I used to live. I grew up using flymos and they were nowhere near as good.

[Codicier]

After oversleeping on the bank holiday monday this week, i got up realised i was meant to be doing stuff and then while rushed to get ready skipping my normal morning stretches and managed to pull a muscle in my neck. It been a extremely frustrating couple of days not being able to turn my head more than a few degrees to my left but thankfully, it seems to be dying down.

 

My painfully learned lesson is never ever skip your warm up exercises, even if your in a rush.

[Zeusthecat]

I tried a traditional push mower for about 8 months but it really did not go well. I usually had to go over the yard about 2-3 times to even get good results and it was really bad about getting weeds and stray strands of grass. I ended up using the weed eater a ton to just compensate, thus wasting even more electricity than probably the electric mower. I also tried to sharpen this damn thing every other time and still no luck. Also the yard for that place was rough central Texas grass and weeds that were hard to deal with even with the gas mower. Compared to my parents house in Houston where the grass was a nice cushiony bed of Saint Augustine that prevented weeds, it was hell.

 

I second this. I used a push mower for about a year and it took so many passes to get any kind of decent results and even then there were long strands of grass and weeds everywhere that it just couldn't get. I recently retired that bastard and got an electric mower and it's working great. It has to stay plugged in but as long as I go with the right pattern when mowing, the cord never gets in the way.

[Bjorn]

My experience with the mechanical push mowers is that they are great for a tiny percentage of people.  If you have the right grass, flat ground and do a good job of keeping your yard healthy and weed free, they do great.  So yeah, for most people, not that good of an option. 

 

When my wife and I got together, she swore by her mechanical one.  But she kept an immaculate yard.  Since then we've moved a couple of times, and she's never been able to get it to work well again.  She's put it down to having different types of grass.

[namman siggins]

If anyone remembers, I was going through a really bad break-up and had to adjust to living alone (went out almost five, lived together four).

Good news, everybody! I'm feeling a fuckton better. I've gotten over the I-miss-you-please-come-back hump. I can even look at photos of us and items she left before and not have a wave of melancholy wash over me.

Going to be doing kickboxing in the summer, been working on my reviews, and keepin' busy.

[namman siggins]

Also, Frank Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours is the best album to listen to when after a break-up. Seriously.

[SecretAsianMan]

Good to hear that Vosslerlarry.  Breakups suck but it sounds like you're over the worst of it.

 

I'm definitely avoiding a corded mower and some of the reviews I've read about battery powered ones indicate they're pretty good.  My yard is pretty small without any big hills so I think a battery powered electric one will work just fine for me.

[tegan]

I'm sitting here at 1:30 am listening to Jurassic Park dubstep and I'm not the least bit tired. What is wrong with me.

[Ucantalas]

I have a job interview tomorrow! Finally! It's for a position at a brewery, which I expect to be fairly hard work, but is probably one of the last places I expected to get called back for.

[ariskany_evan]

I have a job interview tomorrow! Finally! It's for a position at a brewery, which I expect to be fairly hard work, but is probably one of the last places I expected to get called back for.

 

Good luck!!  All the tours I've done at breweries (Ommegang, Allagash, Saranac, next weekend The Bruery) people seem pretty happy!  Though it does seem like a physically demanding job depending on what you'd be doing.  I've got too much of an addictive personality/weak constitution to work at a place like that.  

[clyde]

I want to hear about your tour of Ommegang. Where does the magic happen?

[ariskany_evan]

It's a beautiful barn-like structure in upstate New York, outside of Cooperstown, a town only notable for the fact that it has the Baseball Hall of Fame.  They still seem like a pretty small operation, and they do everything in-house.  Thanks to the Duuvel ownership they have access to a nice bottling line and distribution, hence why I seem to find them everywhere these days.

 

The one notable thing from the tour compared to my other tours was that they do open fermentation for a few days (or weeks?) when it's fresh out of the boiling kettle thing.  That allows yeasty foam to build up, which they skim off the top and reinsert during the bottling process, which is I think what is the source of their bottle conditioning...  My beer cooking science is pretty rough, though, so I may have mixed that up.  

 

Allagash is still my favorite.  Tiny operation in Portland, Maine. Tons of experimenting with recipes and aging in different kinds of barrels.  Which meant that the tasting at the end of the tour had all sorts of stuff you can't find for sale.  The Ommegang tasting was just of the stuff you can get regularly and didn't even include their new Game of Thrones brew. Not that I'm complaining.  Trying all their beers at once side-by-side is still interesting!

[SecretAsianMan]

My electric mower arrived today.  I didn't have time to do the whole lawn but I cut a small portion of the front.  It seems to work pretty well.  I'm glad I got a self propelled one because my lawn is uneven.  Next week I'll have to see if I can do the whole yard in one charge.  One thing I'm liking a lot about it is that it's really light compared to a gas mower.  It also came with a bag and can mulch too.  So far it seems like a good investment.

[tegan]

I bought my ticket to the comic convention weeks ago, and even bought a book to ask Kate Leth to sign, but now that it's almost here I don't feel so good about going.

[Roderick]

Going to a convention is always more than a little exciting, but you can totally approach it on your own terms. Don't know if you have a hotel or resting place nearby? It's fine to hit the floor for whatever short amount of time, have fun and then retreat to recharge for an hour before going back.

[eot]

I'm sitting here at 1:30 am listening to Jurassic Park dubstep and I'm not the least bit tired. What is wrong with me.

There's some alright JP dubstep

[ariskany_evan]

What do you with 9-5 desk jobs do when/if you have downtime?  I struggle with feeling guilty and nervous about my time use when I have nothing pressing to work on.  (And this might just be me), but I also find that prolonged periods of downtime in a day makes me feel detached and less capable of communicating when work/phone calls do pop up.  Any tips?