You're tempting me. That could work or it could blow back and cover my face with burning hot glue. At $10 for a new one (and like a dope, I forget to pick one up at the HW store I was at tonight) I think I am going to let sleeping dogs and clogged glue guns lie. Thanks for the input though. If I were on Mars and that was the only glue gun . . .
-- Bobby G.
I am sure you are right. Next glue gun will definitely last longer than this one did and the one before it, that spewed overflow out the feed tube on the inside of my forearm while trying to glue some X-mas stuff to the tree. Flew out of my hand at 100mph and cracked up on the tile floor. That was the last thumb feed gun I ever bought (or will buy). Hot glue burns are outrageous because it sticks like napalm. If I am doing industrial quantities of gluing, I keep a bowl of water around to dunk my hand in just in case.
-- Bobby G.
Nah. You need pure oxygen. You have a welder, don't you?
And a video camera. This one is definitely going to make the Darwin awards!
On Wed 27 Oct 2010 05:21:27p, Robert Green told us...
Seriously, if you're having memory problems, I apologize. The idea of using a timer is a really good idea.
I accept your apology and really wish I could just be offended instead of incipently senile. )-:
I bought out some guy's online inventory of GE 12 hour twist timers that I am mounting in electrical boxes in a number of areas where a "left on" situation could be dangerous. I'm finding I have to do a lot of things that assist me. It takes two electronic timers to remind me to take my pills every eight hours, and even then I bugger it up. I can't imagine what it could end up as. There's already family history. My aunt Columbine didn't know where she was unless she was in a hyperbaric chamber. It was like Jekyl and Hyde.
I probably should start a thread about senility-proofing your home, but I am too depressed to want to think about it much. In the beginning, they say, it's like you feel your brain becoming filled with holes, like Swiss cheese. Then you only remember things from long ago, then not much at all. My friend's mom went from the signs of early onset to full blown in less than a year. That's atypical, they tell me, but it's hard to ignore a case you know about.
I probably should do what I can before the symptoms get to the point where I can't do anything to help myself. The timers should at least limit some damage potential. I have many of my charger-based devices on timers since the newer ones can catch fire if over-charged. I suppose I should get the rest of them there soon. Much of my memory loss is showing in the very short-term memory. Which is why I find myself starting my car twice (I check the tachometer first now) or taking my pills twice or not at all.
Short term memory is a very tricky thing to have an "insufficiency" in. It's especially troubling to patients (like me) who used to have very good recall of small details. It makes you do things twice or not all because you can't remember if you did them or not. I carry a small pocket recorder all the time now, and even have it running during doctor's visits, etc. because I simply can't recall what was said. New stuff just bounces off, but I can remember episodes of "Men in Space" that I saw on TV in the 50's vividly.
FWIW, I ordered two new Surebonder guns that are "pseudo cordless" - they sit in a base that has prongs that allow 110VAC to heat them, and you can detach them from the base and use them for at least a half a glue stick's worth before they cool down too much to melt glue. That's what I had before the Stanley, but my local HD didn't have any so I bought the Stanley. The cordless design will make it even harder to accidentally leave them on since I have to remember to put them back on the stand to reconnect them and I always forget to do that! There's a thread subject: "Making senility work FOR you!"
-- Bobby G.
On Wed 03 Nov 2010 10:22:15p, Robert Green told us...
It's good to know that you're being proactive about problems that could occur. It's amazing how many potential dangers there are in a home where we tend to think we're safe.
I can't even begin to imagine what it must feel like to have this happening. My only experience was with my dad who did not actually have either senile dimentia or altzheimer's. He did begin suffering with short term memory loss which worsened with time, but it was cauwed by severe blockage of the carotid arteries. This was at a time when they hadn't begun clearing or stenting those arteries. He was well aware of what was happening and I know that it increased his anxiety and depression.
It's good that you recognize the problem and are taking as many measures as you can to avoid problems down the road.
This was also very frustrating to my dad. He was both an electrical and mechanical engineer working in the concept and design phase of products, and had always had a terrific memory for minute details. He ultimately reached a point where he thought blueprints were just pictures of something. Very sad.
The Surebonder guns sound like a good choice, especially since it will be more difficult to acidentally leave them on.
Best of luck, Bobby. I hope this progresses *very* slowly for you.
There is some consolation that eventually I won't be aware of what's been lost but it doesn't seem like much of a state to live in. I can kind of fake it with writing because I am free to get the "1000 yard stare" without anyone noticing that 20 minutes elapsed between when I started this sentence and when I finished it and I can't for the life of me tell you what I was thinking about. I think it was how much it's like being in a zombie movie and knowing you've been bitten and are just waiting to turn into a zombie yourself.
The problem is that denial is so powerful that it takes a "landmark" event to change behavior patterns. How many of us know of elder adults that knew they had to stop driving long before the accident that *made* them stop driving?
That happens very quickly in some people. Programmers can no longer write programs or even type, chess players can hardly handle checkers and so on. The emotional toll is especially hard for men because we define ourselves by our occupation, in large part. The oddest experience is the anxiety caused by fast-moving TV shows with moving cameras, changing angles, etc. I can finally understand why reruns of Matlock are so popular with the senior set. Nice, linear plots with people who hardly ever yell. (-:
That's the theory, anyway. What I hate most is all the things I do incorrectly now. I, too, watched my Dad deal with his dementia. He was extremely frustrated and agitated at his own failures, especially perfoming tasks that require many steps and/or attention to detail. I'm trying to see it as just a natural progression of things, at least for some people. My grandfather died at age 39, so I'm doing *way* better than he did.
Thanks. I though I had better mention it so people understand when I start spouting more than my usual amount of gibberish.
-- Bobby G.
Follow-up:
Bought 2 Surebonder CL800 cordless (sort of) glue guns to replace the failed Stanley. The Surebonder is a FAR superior unit. It not only has a neon ON indicator, but an ON/OFF switch, a rubber insulated nose to ostensibly cut down on burns, a base that plugs into the wall (with a little silicone drip pad) which the glue gun plugs into to make it portable and a built-in fold down stand.
I've got in plugged into a huge Gralab darkroom time (looking for something much smaller that would allow me to easily set a 10 to 60 minute ON time) so that it can't easily be left on for a week like the Stanley. The connection between the gun and the base is a little twitchy, but that's good because unless you wiggle it just right, the gun won't make an electrical connection and will shut down. As some of you might remember, that's a minus for people with good memories but a plus for me.
Also has a built in fuse (or so says the advert on the package) and large "wings" on either side of the glue entry hole so that if the glue backs up when pushing the trigger it spills out onto the wings and not directly onto your hands as the Stanley and a few other glue guns do. The only downsides so far is that the base is so long that the whole assembly no longer fits on the shelf above the workbench and the gun tends to "run on" meaning that you have to be careful where you point it after gluing something because there's always a little extra flow leaking out of the nozzle. The trigger lever/pump is larger than most and that gives extra leverage to pump the glue through. Lacks the dual temperature switch of the Stanley, but since I never used it, I don't miss.
Tried to recover the line cord and strain relief on the Stanley but one screw out of the six holding it together is a triangular anti-tamper screw and I can't seem to locate my special set of oddball bits.
-- Bobby G.
-snip-
I always keep one of these in my 'electrical stuff' drawer. About $5 & handy as all get-out.
I've also got one on my $15 Mr. Coffee so coffee is done when I get up. Another on the grow-lights. . .
Jim
Thanks! I'll look into it. I've got a trip scheduled to the local HF so I'll take a look. I think what I will end up doing is using a Lutron switch that has four pushbuttons that I saw the other day. 1 button gives 30 minutes, the next 1 hour, the third two hours and the fourth 4 hours. If I have to remember to spin a dial, well, we'll be back to coked up glue again. (-: Allelectronics sells Mr. Coffee timers for a little less than a whole new coffeepot. The nice thing about the Gralab is that you just push the minute indicator once to get it off zero and it counts down and shuts off from whatever minute setting you had pushed it to. Very easy but very big. About 10" by 10" by 3" deep. Something smaller is definitely called for and there has to be a similar, smaller timer out there somewhere where you just twist it to the number of minutes you want it on, and it does the rest. Now that I think about it, I know exactly what I need and where to get it. A sleep timer for TV's and other appliances with a simple twist dial like my very old Litton microwave oven. Good work!
-- Bobby G.
Get rid of it.
FWIW, I ordered this timer
Thanks for your input!
-- Bobby G.
"Robert Green" wrote in news:ibe8bg$9fo$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:
But surely you can locate an old screwdriver of some sort... then apply the effects of a bench-grinder and a hand-file.
I make all sort of odd tools this way, thus successfully circumventing whatever limit the fastener's maker intended.
Thanks. I could, but it's a dead glue gun, and I don't *really* need another line cord but it makes me feel better to recover at least
*something* from anything I trash. For now, it's sitting in my "Salvage" box so that when I do find my set of bits that has a triangular shaped one I can grab the cord and get a look at the heating element. I am actually glad it failed because the replacement Surebonder guns are far, far superior and less expensive then the damned burned up Stanley.I am familiar with making tools. I just had to make a special jig to unscrew two halves of a stuck CCTV camera - a piece of shelving with finishing nails set so that they fit into the tiny holes in the base. Fortunately, I've watched Tom Silva on TOH make templates, jigs and whatnot so often, it was a walk in the park. I put some paper over the base of the unit, used a pencil sideways to shade out the hole location. I transferred the paper to the wood, put nails through the holes and voila, now I had a wrench that would give me the torque needed to separate the two halves.
Thanks for your input!
-- Bobby G.
On 11/12/2010 4:51 AM, Robert Green wrote: (snip)
Chuckle. I resemble that remark. My relatives and co-workers keep threatening to do a OCD/hoarding intervention on my sorry posterior. Piles of good-but-will-never-be-used-again parts sort of run in my family.
You too? I keep trying to explain that in order to be able to fix broken things, you need broken things around to take parts from. And tools. Lots and lots of tools. Even one-shot tools that were still cheaper to buy than to take the car to a dealer. Of course, when the special tools and manuals are still around and the car isn't, that's a harder (but not impossible!) argument to make.
I, too, have been threatened with an intervention, but I think there's a difference between keeping around stuff that you own that's gone south and actively looking for more string for your 9' diameter string ball. Or 6' stacks of newspaper. Or anything that you drive by on the street that you see on trash day and bring home with you. There really are some bright lines between hoarding and just keeping stuff around. At least that's what I tell my wife.
I really messed up this year because she was working overseas on an assigment and had to come home early before I could corral all my stuff that had spread out into her areas in the house. Breaker panel cover off, dryer spread out all over the basement floor, PC's in the sewing room. I'm still hearing about it. One thing I've cut out is web-based experiments where X says this, Y says that and I decide it's easy enough to measure if I design the right experiment. Dropping that meant far less wire nests around.
Oh, I had to get a separate little fridge for my storage of batteries, chemicals, and what not. I can't remember what it was that I was cooling, but it was not something with very high SAF (spouse approval factor). Oh, I remember, I was testing windshield washer mix freeze points. (-: SAF so low it went negative.
-- Bobby G.
Keep something for 7 years and you will find a use for it. Throw it away and well, you know..........
On Thu 04 Nov 2010 02:04:30p, Robert Green told us...
Yes, there are many ways that a person with any form of dimentia can "cope" with the inherent problems they face...up to a point. From my limited observation, it's that turning point when one is no longer able to cope where the future becomes extremely difficult.
My dad was in, at least presenting to others, in deep denial. However, I think he actually knew and didn't want his family to worry more than they already did. He never did stop driving before he passed away, but his distance of travel grew smaller and smaller, as well as limited to areas that he had been extremely familiar with for many years.
My dad taught me a lot as I was growing up and even as an adult. I would often spend time with him during his mental decline and remind him of these things, which he generally remembered, since it was mostlyh long term memory. I think it made him feel more "with it".
My dad was 81 when he passed away, and his death was actually from congestive heart failure, not dimentia related. I'll be 66 in January. I have some well-managed arterial blockage, but otherwise fairly healthy.
I think you did a damn fine job of helping people to understand what turns your life is taking. The average person needs more knowledge about these issues.
Best alway!
As you note, coping only gets you so far. Right now, it's just scary and a little bit annoying, but it's clear it's getting worse and that the consequences keep mounting. About the only positive thing I can see so far is that I have become a lot more tolerant of dumb people if only because I am becoming one. Last week, I couldn't remember the name of the American Bandstand host, Dick Clark and it really bothered me. This morning, I woke up hearing the music from AB in my head along with Dick Clark's name. A trivial thing, to be sure, but a reminder that my ability to recall things is deteriorating. It's scary and depressing at the same time.
Boy oh boy do I know that scenario. After living a life where I often found myself unable to trust other people to do things they promised or to do them correctly, I am finding I can't trust myself.
I console myself often by remembering that it wasn't very long ago that the average life expectancy was 35 years. We've extended that substantially, but as a result, face a host of new health issues that hardly every plagued the first colonists.
Well, here's to hoping you outlive your dad and avoid the problems he went through with mental decline. There's a lot of research going on in this area, but unfortunately, much of it hasn't panned out. A recent study was stopped in mid-stream when it was discovered that not only was it not helping memory, it was having bad cardiac side-effects.
Oddly enough, I am not sure I would have even noticed the decline had my wife not insisted I get a checkup. I've always been slightly forgetful, but she's noted some serious issues of late. I imagine it was the same with your Dad and people around him noticing the problem long before he did.
-- Bobby G.
Hello Bobby G., and the other guys post> My trusty old Stanley glue gun got clogged after being left plugged in to o
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.