After getting burgers on the west side, we decided to go get some ice cream.  The people we were with suggested some local ice cream place that had opened recently in like Wallingford.  We head over to it and when we get there, the line is out the door and down the street. 

Having little else to do, we get in line to see how slow the line is moving.  The line barely moves even after ten minutes.  At that point, we've been waiting long enough that we have to find out why the line is so long.  45 minutes later, we finally make it inside for getting ice cream.  Apparently, this Molly Moon place is known for having interesting ice cream flavors and homemade waffle cones.  They were out of the cones so we were left with the interesting flavors.

For those who know me, you'll know that I'm not really one for too interesting flavors (like a pomegranate curry) so I stuck to chocolate and birthday cake.  Let me tell you, as ice cream goes, it was not worth the wait at all.  The birthday cake was fine but nothing really special.  I'm sure that for some people, tasting the different combination of flavors would be cool and new.  However, the basic chocolate was grainy and bitter as it was an all organic darker chocolate.  I much prefer flavors of ice cream that mix interesting combinations of chocolate and taste rich and creamy.  For the first time ever, I didn't even finish the ice cream that I had in front of me as it had a terrible after taste as well.

This hippy ice cream place may be for some but it was not for me.  I can maybe see how some would like it as an occasional diversion from good ice cream but the line out the door boggles my mind.

For those who didn't know, I've had a mouse problem for about a month.  That was about the time my water heater died so they were likely able to get in because of that.  It's possible that they came in through the door to my crawl space as that was open for a while.  It's possible that they came in through the dryer exhaust vent as the dryer wasn't hooked up.  It's possible they snuck in while the doors were open and the workmen were around.  Either way, there is more than one of them at this point and they must go.

We first realized that we had mice when we briefly saw one in the kitchen and one in the library.  A few days later, we woke up to find a bit of a banana eaten.  The next day, a bit more banana and some chocolate was eaten.  We tried setting up some live traps with little success.  We tried setting up no view kill traps with little success as well and then the mice vanished.  Three weeks passed without a single mouse related incident (no eaten food, unpleasant evidence, nothing).

Last week I had my furnace replaced and they found two dead mice in the filter (the filter was replaced a few months ago.  We figure that maybe they were in the ducts and trying to get back or maybe they just ate something that killed them (like chocolate).  We thought that our problem was over until the very next day had more eaten banana.  We removed the banana and all food from the counter but there was still evidence of them showing up so we got mad (we tried catching them alive and getting rid of the food but neither approach worked).

We searched around and purchased the traditional snap traps as they seemed most likely to kill them quickly (unlike the poison or stick traps) and the humane society agreed with our decision.  This morning, I woke up to find one dead in the trap.  I was a little grossed out but a bit relieved to have finally caught one after a month of working on it.  I thought it was weird that the trap was about a foot away from where I left it but those things are strong so maybe it just moved with the snap.  When I went to move the trap, the mouse turned to me, bared its teeth and claws, and gave out a high pitched squeal.  It was the most unpleasantly shocking experiences I've ever had.  I had to go in the other room and just breath for a while as it was so macabre and surreal. 

Apparently, the snap traps don't always kill them especially if they don't quite catch them right.  Apparently this mouse was just trying to run over the trap rather than eat the food and so was incorrectly.  What am I supposed to do at this point with a terminally injured mouse who's struggling to get out of the trap?  I frankly had no clue.  I was given helpful suggestions of a hammer, a shoe, a book, throwing him in the trash as is, leaving him, or just throwing him outside for a cat to get.  I tried to search the web but found very unhelpful results.  Apparently, people online only feel the need to accuse you of being a killer rather than helping you out (note that the humane society website says that rodent problems almost always need to be addressed with a terminal solution).

Sigh, hopefully my nightmares won't be too bad.

xperienced very much before.  I was forced to use Mac's for about a week straight.  While I'm naturally opposed to Macs because of my job, because of their snooty annoying commercials, and because of their questionable business practices; I tried to keep an open mind.  Note that all but one of these friends were mac people in high school so I wasn't too dismayed to find myself surrounded by them wherever I went.

I specifically used firefox instead of IE just to get the full experience (I know that safari is the default browser but as far as I know, none of my mac friends actually use safari instead).  My initial experience was ok.  It mostly just felt like a normal OS (nothing special, nothing bad) where things were just moved around.  As I used it more and more, things stuck out at me pretty clearly.

Not having a right-mouse button what frustrating to no end.  Having the apple key where it is and having it control all of my normal copy/paste commands was a pain.  That was not designed well at all for someone who actually types quickly.  It's essentially where the alt key is on a PC keyboard and good luck using alt-C often and quickly as it's clumsy and out of place.  Having the OS hide the running programs from me was annoying.  It basically treated me like I didn't know what I was doing.  While I guess this is OK for someone who knows very little, it continued to be frustrating for me.  I accidentally knocked an item off the quick launch bar and it was a pain how to find it to put it back (why is that even allowed that easily).  I also could not use the finder for the life of me.  It was neither simple nor intuitive.  The Vista search capability was just so much better imo that I was surprised as to how many people claim it was copied from mac as the feature comparison is not close.  The home and end don't really do what I wanted them to do and didn't work the same across apps (I thought that mac was famous for that)

Surfing the net seems much slower than on comparable PCs but then I have no way of knowing whether a mac is good or not.  Firefox was ok but on one machine kept crashing (that was a pretty unstable mac).

Obviously, everyone else probably disagrees with how I feel about the look and feel of Macs.  It occurred to me that all of their laptops look the same (I basically used the same looking laptop for seven days and the oldest was many years old).  At this point, I've seen enough of them to think they look boring, bland, and a bit ugly.  People keep tell me about the fine lines and curves but I don't really get it or care.  In particular, I hate the mouse button.  It is huge like the kind of button you see on children's toys.  It also does not respond well to the touch and I found it annoying to use.  Maybe it "looks" nicer than a square button but it definitely felt worse.

Anyway, that is my 10+ hour assessment of macs.  I can see how they are enjoyed by people who don't know much about computers and don't care to know (I also dislike not being able to customize but that's probably just my internal desire for blue LEDs). I can also see how they are enjoyed by people who like curves and complete and utter predictability.  I admit that windows also has its fair share of issues (most notably stability and compat).  However, I will now call anyone who says mac is better than PC without qualifications a child because that's what it was designed for.  :)