OT: Things You Just Shouldn't Touch

[Neville]

Drinking recycled water? Too many echoes of "Waterworld" there, as you said, Dean. But anyway, if we have to, I'll get used to it quickly, as everybody else. And I don't want to souns alarmist, but it DOES sound like the future, unless seawater treatment becomes so standard that its cost disminishes radically. In my country we've had tow years of draught by now, and there's talks in the media about future water restrictions.

[ulthar]

We already DO drink recycled water.  What do you think, the earth makes NEW water continuously?  

Some yes, but the bulk of the water on the planet has been water for a LONG time...some with fish living (and all that entails) and dying in it, some with cow waste running into it, and some, yes, that has been drunk by a human, excreted, flushed, lived in by fish, evaporated, rained and re-drunk by humans, etc, for millenia.

Oh, and a BIG Thank-You to Peter Johnson for injecting some intelligence and common sense into this discussion.  To add to his point of urine being sterile, there have been many documented cases of sailors adrift at sea who had drunk their own urine to survive.  Maybe it sounds gross to our hypersensitive civilized sensibilities, but there you go.

[Rombles]

I remember hearing a story about a former PM of Israel (not sure if it was Ben-Gurion) who was reported to drink a glass of his own urine first thing every morning.... Australian Prime Minister at the time (back in the 70's) Gough Whitlam apparently said when told, "I've heard of getting on the p**s early but thats ridiculous!".

My personal hatred is public toilet doors that open inwards.  ALL public toilet doors should open OUTWARDS. That way irrespective of the hygiene levels inside/outside/your own/the other persons, you have the option of getting out without having to pull on the door handles.  At work I reach up and open the doors using the arm on top of the door (designed for what, closing it gently?) and then hook it with my foot to get it the rest of the way.  Several other people have commented that this is a good idea, but if I ever see someone else doing it, I'm screwed - I won't be able to trust that the arm isn't being used by someone else who may not have washed their hands - and therefore will never be able to use those toilets again! (unless I stand there and wait for someone else to come in, maybe?)


btw Dean - I would be surprised if Adelaide would have a problem with recycled water - no-one drinks the tapwater here anyway, so that issue just wouldn't be enough to block it!

[dean]

Yeah, Adelaide water sucks!  Gotta love your sense of humour about it all though!  You hear rumours/jokes that they couldn't have Disney on Ice happen there properly because the ice was just brown and looked too odd...

Anyways, on the similar point of recycled water.  I wonder what Vegans would have to say about that when you really think about it...

[Yaddo 42]

......jellyfish. Never ends well. Just kidding.

But freaking out over the time clock, Ash? Sounds like a little much to me. Then again we went to a swipe clock using our combo time card/ID badge/key card several years agowhere I work. You never touch anything but your own card, the slot it passes through might pick up a few germs but surely nothing that could live for long unless someone was cooking up something sinister, where you'd have bigger problems anyway. Although whenever I think I'm getting sick, I joke about going around the building and coughing on every door knob, phone receiver, toliet handle, time clock, coffee pot, cup, water fountain, snack machine button, first aid kit, etc. I can find to "spread the misery".

I was raised by my parents to flush public toliets with my feet, still do usually but I'm aware that there are worse dangers of infections. I agree thanking Peter Johnson for some injection of reason into the topic. To go along with the common sense theme (I hope), avoiding close contact with people who practice bad hygiene seems obvious. Several years ago, we had a guy at work who could not stop picking his nose OR scratching his privates and backside. The general opinion was that he probably had crabs. I eventually gave him the nickname "Scabby Hayes", which stuck to him for the rest of the time he worked there. There was also the guy who was another "scratcher" who could not stop playing with his tongue piercing. Yet when he one day swallowed the thing he spazzed out wondering what it would do to him.

But years ago, I handled lots of change after my mom's boyfriend had us help him count the donations he had helped collect when he worked for the sheriff's department. Hundreds of dollars in coins and small bills. Our hands were a dark sickly green color afterwards. We all washed several times before we did anything else. Made you think just how often money got touched, by how many people, and where all it went.

[Neville]

One thing I never, ever want to touch again: a fridge packed with food gone bad.

About a year ago, my grannie went to live with us, following our grandpa's death, and for a while I took care of her old house. I inmediately threw away anything that could go bad in a short term, but kept the rest of the stuff in the frisge, and didn't switch off the electricity.

And a few months ago, my father decided he would take care of the house. Anyway, he comes back and I asked him: "You didn't switch off the current, did ya?". And of course he had. For some reason, it took us several weeks to come back to the house, and guess who had to clean the damn fridge. The smell was so putrid I vomited, and then I still had to pick up, with my bare hands, all the soft stuff that had been forzen vegetables and meat, pack it into dripping plastic bags and throw it away, which meant several trips. Most of the stuff was already boiling with multi-colored fly larvae.

I haven't gone back to the damn house in a couple of months, and I've told my family I'm not doing this kind of stuff again. It wasn't even the first time, as I once had to do it in our other apartment, but that time there were only some eggs and fruit gone bad. This time was much worse.

[Ash]

Neville Wrote:
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One thing I never, ever want to touch again: a
> fridge packed with food gone bad.

Food gone bad...
Sounds like a really bad reality television show like "When Animals Attack!"

Open the fridge...all you hear are screams and puking sounds!
I can just hear the TV announcer talking about tonight's upcoming episode...
"They thought the fridge was safe...they had no idea how bad it really was!  Tune in tonight for the season premier of Food Gone Bad!

[Ash]

ulthar Wrote:
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Oh, and a BIG Thank-You to Peter Johnson for
> injecting some intelligence and common sense into
> this discussion.
Yaddo42 also said the same thing in his post.

You know guys, by saying that, you've pretty much insulted every person that has responded to this thread whether you meant to or not.
That's not a very nice thing to do.

[Ash]

Yaddo 42 Wrote:
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But freaking out over the time clock, Ash? Sounds
> like a little much to me.

Dude, you obviously haven't seen the time clock at my job.
It's been touched by so many fingers that all of the buttons on it have this glazed over look.
(they look like they're wet)
From all of the sweat and God knows what other bodily fluids have touched them.
It's sick.  Really sick.

[Amanda]

Yes, urine is usually sterile.  But you have to take into account the people that are fighting bladder and urinary tract infections, etc.  Feces, on the other hand.....ugh.

And last, but not least, just think about women for a second.  We have periods, ya'll!  The women where I work are trolls, and there are hundreds of them, just in the front of the building, all using one restroom with 4 stalls.  On a DAILY BASIS, I enter that freaking restroom to find traces of BLOOD on the toilet seats, the floor, and the walls.  Just tiny smatterings, but just the same.  

I don't freak out about this kind of thing.  I find another stall that appears clean, and wash my hands thoroughly afterward.  I know that it's far worse to never touch germs than to collect a few along the way.  "Sterile" environments spawn multi-resistant bacteria.  But, I think blood is perfectly acceptable and logical thing to have the heebie-jeebies about.  

What is it about public restrooms that makes people act SO differently than they would at home?  People also smear boogers on the stall walls.  Gross, people.

[Acidburn]

I cannot remember where I read this, but I know I saw somewhere that the common office desk has like 10 times more germs and bacteria then a public restroom.
I will see if I can search around and find that source.


Here we are and I was wrong, it is hundreds of times more germs then a public restroom.
Link Below

Nasty Office!

[Andrew]

The water cycle, ah, worship it now.  Really, I have drank plenty of recycled water and when properly handled it is much better than water from a well.  Especially a shallow well - which in places like India often means water tainted with arsenic.

Katie and I were just going over our emergency pack today.  I intend to get a new water filter system, to backup our purification tablets.  The one I had been looking at was a pure ceramic filter.  The only problem is that, while it can be used to strain up to 15,000 gallons - removing even viri, it does not help at all with lead, arsenic, or anything else like that.  So, I am getting their second best model, which has a carbon filter as well.  Only good for 800 gallons (or something like that) before you need a new filter, but the fact that the carbon will remove some dangerous chemicals from the water is worth it to me.

Two of the greatest things ever created for quick sanitation.  Bleach wipes and Purell hand cleaner.  Bleach is the chemical of choice for pretty much killing anything that is tiny and out to reproduce in or on you, while Purell is awesome in that you do not need water.  I have also used alcohol wipes.

[Yaddo 42]

No offense intended toward anyone, Ash. I guess I'm just inured to getting too grossed out by regular heavy use of everyday objects after having to confront the showers and the toliet in my high school gym the year I took PE. No one ever went near the showers and the toliet was clogged for half the year so badly and got so rank that part of the daily "hijinks" was to try to shove unsuspecting people into the bowl, no stall just a brief cinderblock wall. I had a locker closer to the funk trap than anyone in the class so I had to stay on guard for myself as well as watch for potential victims trying find someone to push in front of them as a last line of defense.

But you're right I haven't seen your time clock. Is the "wet" look to the buttons dirt, grime, food particles, dead skin, etc built up like "keyboard grime" or shower mildew; or is it possible the time clock is so old and well used that the coating or finish on the buttons has worn smooth making it look "slick". We had electronic keypad doorlocks that that happened to due to constant use.

Neville: the compressor or the freon for my fridge in my old apartment went bad hours after I had bought a week worth of groceries. Half a day later I open the freezer to a blast of warm air and see everything all gooey and leaking (including a huge bag of garlic and herb seasoned chicken breasts that you could get a faint whiff of when the bag was sealed and properly frozen). Tossed everything between rounds of swearing. Cleaned and aired out that thing numerous times, never did get the last of the odor out of the freezer, the old landlord finally got me a new-ish fridge two weeks later, just my luck the thing died the week the building was being sold.

On a lighter note, "a fridge packed with food gone bad": not fun in real life, but the major plot point of a classic episode of "Cowboy Bebop."

[LilCerberus]

That reminds me: I need to defrost my fridge.

I dunno how old the thing is, but it's a really weird lookin' thing that predates frost-proof fridges.

I've got some batteries & cigarettes in the freezer that I can't get out because they're buried under a foot or so of ice.

I put one of those Damp-Rid thingies in there, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything so far.

[Yaddo 42]

When I was growing up we had a huge standing freezer (so big that an uncle who wanted to buy it said, "you could stack bodies in that thing") that we had to do that with twice a year. Guess who had to climb it the thing with the bucket, the dull knife, and towels.

My mom may still have it, she bought it, for $27 IIRC, almost 40 years ago from a trade school where the students had repaired it - so its true age is unknown to us- and painted it the ugliest shade of brown, even by the standards of ugly appliance colors from the 60 & 70s.