How To Get Rid Of Wood Bees, Bumblebees and Wasps

This spring brought a huge swarm of Carpenter / Wood Bees, Wasps, and Bumble Bees into our barn. I started spending a great deal of time with a tennis racket swatting at and missing the invaders. I thought there had to be a better way, so, to Google I went.

I found swatting, wood puttying and chemicals to be the remedies of choice. On one forum, somewhere, I read that Wood Bees don't like noise. Since I didn't want to stand out in the barn and yell all day every day, I plugged a radio in, turned on Rush Limbaugh and cranked his volume up.

The results were immediate, not only do Wood Bees dislike Rush Limbaugh but Wasps and Bumblebees don't like him either. They also don't like Sean Hannity, music, sports or advertising. They don't even like Liberals but since I have to listen to this also, I haven't tested the Liberal theory very extensively.

I haven't seen many flies either but have seen a few, so the jury is still out on fly prevention.

The downside of this for me is having to have the radio on all day. I prefer peace and quiet but certainly, don't like the damage that Wood Bees do.

For more Wasp tips: www.tipsbulletin.com/how-to-keep-yellow-jackets-away

Missing Hens?

My Husband came in last night after feeding my Buck and gathering eggs to say that he thought that perhaps we had a chicken thief. He proceeded to give me a head count. I believe he suspected Barney Google, at least that is what he said.

That set me to wondering, is Barney Google where "Google" got it's name? I have tried to think of any similarities and wasn't able to come up with much. The more I thought about it the more I realized that I wasn't even sure that Barney Google was a chicken thief. I believe that it was his cousin Snuffy Smith that is the chicken thief and moonshiner. But wait, I don't even think that they are cousins, maybe just friends? If I really cared at all, I would just Google them, but I don't really care.

I do care about my chicken population, so, how to figure out if any chickens are missing? I do not keep a written record of how many chickens I have and since many of them look alike, they don't have names. Some do have unique features that I recognize and a few lay odd eggs that I miss in my egg basket at the end of the day but it would be hard for me to say that this certain hen is missing.

Ahhh.... I know how to figure out if any hens are missing! I don't have to Google for the answer, I just have to go back through my old blogs. Sure enough there is a blog with the number of each breed of chicken that I have. Though one has died of natural causes and I have given some away.

I will update my numbers here, so that if this question ever comes up again, I will have a record. 2 Rhode Island Red Hens, 3 Golden Comet Hens, 6 Barred Rock Hens, 7 Silver Laced Wyandotte Hens, 2 Mutt Bantam Hens, 2 D'Uccle Hens, 1 Barred Rock Rooster, 1 Polish Rooster, 1 D'Uccle Rooster and 1 Mutt Bantam Rooster.

I am happy to say that all hens and roosters are present and accounted for. I really didn't think that anything could steal my chickens with Angel and Abby on guard 24/7. My DH even commented the other day on what keen eyesight they have, they can spot a squirrel a mile away. They even watch the sky and bark at birds. They do tend to be a little intimidated by the military jets that fly low over the farm though.

I know what you are thinking, why does she have so many roosters?? You were thinking that, weren't you? This is a question that my DH asks me quite often. I keep Rocky, the barred rock, to father future generations. I keep Rudy, the D'Uccle, for the same purpose. I keep Elvis, the polish, just for fun and I don't have a clue why I keep the bantam mutt but he does have a great banty rooster attitude, I suppose I should name him or give him away. Anyone want a tiny red banty rooster? I might have to do one of those blog giveaways or a contest of some sort.

Google My Life

I guess that I am totally dependent on Google to run my life. I use igoogle for my home page, gmail for my e-mail, Google Reader for my favorite blogs, website articles and my blog comments. Google is my only search engine. Google maps and driving directions help us find our way, Blogger and Blogspot for my blog. I use Google bookmarks. I did use the Google desktop search for finding things on my computer before my hard drive got so bloated that I needed to get rid of some of the excess fat, I also use Picasa2.

I get a little frustrated when I lose something around the house. I sometimes want to sit down and type in the item in a Google search to find out where it is. Then I sadly remember that Google doesn't have my house categorized and indexed, or at least I don't think that they do. Google does know too much about me, it serves me ads about horses, chickens, goats, children, vet supplies, farming, pets, internet technology and electronic gadgets.

It is really pretty scary, they will probably come up with a chip to install in our brains soon to help our memories and give us access to a huge knowledge database. They will have us in a category and index us along with all of our thoughts. We will no longer be human but walking, talking googlebots.

Invalid CTF File

I have been having this problem and getting this error trying to update AVG Anti-Virus 8.

Invalid Update Control CTF File

To fix this:

1. Navigate to:
For WinXP: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Avg8\update\download

For Vista: C:\ProgramData\avg8\update\download

2. Delete avginfoavi.ctf and avginfowin.ctf

I did this a couple of times and the error just kept coming back the next day. So I took the next step of downloading and installing a fresh copy of AVG 8 after removing the original program. Guess what? After spending a grueling 6 hours downloading and installing the new AVG, I started getting the same error. So, I am back to square one and back to deleting the files again.

I have done many searches on Google and find these same fixes time after time. It seems to fix the problem for most people but I guess I am not most people.

**Update** After a few weeks this problem finally went away on it's own with no extra help from me or anyone else. So, if you are still having this come back time after time, there is hope, just keep on deleting.

**ANOTHER UPDATE** Here it is nearly two months later and after thinking that this problem was solved, I got the same error again today on Dec. 17, 2008. Please, if anyone knows of a permanent fix for this besides ditching AVG altogether, post your solution in a comment below.

iGoogle Blogger Gadget

My home page on my computer just got better. I have been using Google for my home page with all of the neat gadgets for a long time now but they just made some really neat improvements.

I love the new way iGoogle is laid out and gmail just got so much easier for me. It was taking so long to access my gmail account that I hardly ever went there but I can get to it quickly and easily on my new personal iGoogle page.

And it gets even better! I can blog from my home page now too. I am writing this with the Blogger Gadget on my home page. The whole system is so much nicer and so much faster. This is not a commercial and I don't work for Google but I wish I did. Actually I am just testing this Google Gadget.

Firefox 3.0.1

I finally got around to downloading Firefox 3.0.1 and a new Google toolbar to go with it. I love being able to access my Google bookmarks from my toolbar but found that they would not show up with the new Firefox browser. The bookmark button on the toolbar kept asking me to sign-in, which I did but the sign-in never worked.

Here is the fix for anyone having this same problem; Just go to "Tools" in your Firefox browser, then select "Options" then click the "Privacy" tab. Under the "Cookies" section, you should have "Accept cookies from sites" checked but I don't accept cookies from third parties and that was my problem with the bookmarks. You just need to click on the "Exceptions" button and then type "google.com" in the box at the top, then choose "allow". This will allow Google to place a cookie on your computer as a third party and will fix your bookmarks.

At first, I didn't like the new Firefox browser. It seemed slower for some reason but after cleaning out my cache and cookies, then rebooting my computer, I think that it actually is faster and I need all of the speed I can get with this painfully slow dial-up connection.

FireFox ~ Timed Out

If you are using the Firefox browser like I am, you may be getting a lot of "The connection has timed out, the server at (website name) is taking too long to respond" messages and have to click the "Try Again" button. I was getting these all of the time and especially on a forum that I visit regularly.

I googled the problem and came up with many different opinions on what was causing this, but this is the solution that I tried and it worked:

1. Open your Firefox browser
2. In the location bar at the very top of your browser, type "about:config" (without quotation marks)
3. A large list will appear, scroll down to find: network.dns.disableIPv6
4. Right click on above item
5. Choose: toggle (this should change the setting to: true)
6. Close your browser and then reopen it, your problem should be fixed, it worked for me.