Because ARLO is essentially shelving their “unplugged” service for their outdoor cameras, my wife found new ones to replace them. She installed a new one on the garage and a new one off the back porch. We love the back porch camera because it lets us see wildlife feeding in our backyard over the last four + years of having the backyard camera, we have seen deer, raccoons, and lots of birds.
Tonight, someone went into our backyard and attempted to shoot the new camera with a pellet about an hour after my wife installed it. They knocked holes in my vinyl siding, and luckily missed the camera.
Anyway, I am very pissed off about it. What kind of world do we live in where someone would even think what they just did was OK.
Well, you have video proof of their idiocy. If you so desire you can take it to the police. Not sure it’s worth the headache of dealing with them for however long they live near you.
“This isn’t the way… really, to anything. Figure out something else to do with your time.”
One of my friends when I was a student at the U in the 80s had a brother who somehow got into burglary. Her parents were horrified, of course, it was a family crisis. I think he ended up straightening out.
About 15 years ago we hired a contractor who was exemplary, so we tried to hire him as a full time employee & found out he was an ex-con, an arsonist at age 18. We jump through some hoops to get him on board, the guy was determined to turn his life around, and he did.
Kids can do really stupid things. Let’s hope that’s what this is, and a positive turn gets made.
After our recent move I’ve installed three Ring spotlight cams to watch entrance points to the house. Fortunately nobody has come down the cul-de-sac and tried to take them out with a pellet gun.
Here’s a totally different full idiot neighbor story, though. In October we moved, and we actually only moved four doors away from our old house. A week and a half after we’d moved I was outside and smelled smoke - range fire-like smoke. I went around the back the house and could see my old house and the backyard next door to it. That neighbor, who has a long history of stupid, had intentionally started a fire under a tree house he’d built a couple of years back. This yard is simply weeds in the first place, and being in mid-October it was bone dry weeds. The smoke was crazy. He has some renters in his basement and they told us they were worried about it spreading to the house and were making plans to evacuate. They later found out that he did it in order to cremate his dead chihuahua. Who does that?
As an aside I contacted Taylorsville code enforcement and asked them if they could drop by and tell him to quit starting open fires in his eyesore backyard (it wasn’t the first time), and their response was to call the fire department if it happened again. So, rather than having someone with a badge just drop by to say “knock it off” it’s better to roll a few fire trucks and spend several thousand dollars in response.
Running through vinyl fences is a popular activity among teens nowadays. Don’t know if there’s a way to secure the fence better, but, dealing with the giant holes would cause me to think twice about installing one.
As someone who used to live on the south side of an east-west white vinyl fence, I wish I’d thought to just crash through it myself. No grass or weed would grow within 15 feet of that eyesore due to the intense sun reflection.
This is the 2nd funniest thing I’ve heard today. Sheesh.
First place - so far - is a PhD here at the U who was a hardcore road cyclist for a couple of decades, who used to be a “hustler”, get into bets/contests with young guys who thought they could smoke him to the top of Big Mountain (or wherever).
So, he’d act gassed after a mile, would fall back, and then within a few miles of the summit turned it on and pass everyone. I don’t know if there was any money involved, but a great story for old guys who stay in shape.
(For that matter, Jack Nicholson was a hustler in basketball, way, waaaaaaay back. He was never actually good, but he’d act like he was terrible, lobbing up bricks and then try to hustle bets in one-on-one games, over perform and collect some spending money. File this under “completely useless - but mildly entertaining - Lakers trivia”.)
One of my favorite non-acting Jack Nicholson moments was when Andre Miller (with Denver I believe) had a great night torching the Lakers in a playoff game and when the came ended, Jack (who for many years had courtside seats in the Forum) walked out onto the court to give Ander a hearty handshake.
It’s expensive and requires maintenance, but we went with cedar and get compliments all the time. Love how it blends with the lawn and plants and looks great at night.
My neighbors have a motion-activated security light pointed straight at the side of our house. There are very few windows on that side but one is our master bathroom. If you go outside you’ll see the entire broad side of our house lit up like it’s day.
They also pointed the motion sensor at every possible angle so people walking down the street, wind blowing, insects flying by, whatever, turns on the light. All night long, every night.
They are not very bright people and are tremendously lazy so I don’t expect a civil conversation with them will bear fruit. I’d file a complaint through the HOA but I have more pressing plans I might need their cooperation for.
I want to shoot THAT !@#$ing light out with a pellet gun.
Realistically, if I leave on lights in the back, the wild animals won’t go back there. Having the deer show up ro eat the apples, elderberries, cherries, and browse plants is a lot of fun to watch on the video. The raccoons are fun too. During the day, all the birds flying around (and raiding the bird feeders) are quite a show, too. This is what the cameras are really for.
“Jr. Achievement” morons with a new toy pretending their are Rambo…not so much.
I’m in suburbia but lucky enough to have a natural creek (mostly dry) running through the back yard and have dozens of scrub oak trees lining it. I let the trees grow naturally where the rest of the neighborhood severely prunes theirs. Our backyard is a safe haven for deer and I’ve seen up to seven at once.
I actually would prefer they go elsewhere. Too many piles of “black licorice jelly beans” all over my lawn and my dogs go nuts seeing them. They eat all our decorative flowers. They also frequently get hit by cars on the nearby Wasatch Blvd. My wife loves her “deer friends” and no need for a camera. I can stand within 10 feet of them yelling at them to go away and they don’t give a crap. Except for the crap they leave on my lawn.
I have a very tiny side yard, only about 6 feet wide, where I keep my grill. I grill a few evenings per week, even in the dead of winter, and have a motion-activated light. I put it on the house myself, with the light pointed straight down at the grill, and the sensor, also pointed down at the ground. The light is also controlled by the same circuit that the rest of the yard lights are on, so when we’re not in the yard, no lights are ever on. Even though the light is pointed at the ground, it does light up the neighbors yard a little.
I asked my neighbor to let me walk back and forth in his yard while I was installing the light so I could insure that they (and their dogs) would not trigger the light, and he was happy yo let me do so… I was trying to be a good neighbor, and they have never complained. I try to go out of my wayt to be a good neighbor, but your note reminds me that I should take the time to ask and make sure the light doesn’t bother them.
On the other hand, across the street, lives a family (the father is the son of a former US Senator from Utah, who shall remain nameless). There are 4 kids in the family, all of whom live on their in their own homes except the youngest. We have tried to track the number of cars that they collectively own, but are never sure, as they have a cabin property somewhere, and store some of them there during the off season.
At any given time, there are at least 12 vehicles on the property or on the street in front of their house and many of the neighbors homes. Their cars come all the way out the driveway to and often over the sidewalk. If anyone on our block has a social gathering at their home, their guests are parking along way off, as there is usually nothing available close by. I just ignore it, but several of the other neighbors are fit to be tied, call the city looking for help, and are always complaining. Like your neighbor with the light keeping you up all night, some people just don’t have a clue that they are annoying (or they do, and simply don’t care).
Yeah. They had a very obviously broken a/c compressor that sounded like a helicopter. I told them a few times that not only was it loud and annoying for us trying to enjoy our deck it was likely costing them a lot of money to run it. They still took like three years to replace it after attempting cheap fix after cheap fix.
I’m the guy in the neighborhood with a full driveway but it all stays in the driveway (no sidewalk on our side) because the HOA tows us if we park on the street. Last summer I went through a lot of trouble to put in a very nice flagstone side driveway and now I can’t park on it because HOA (I told them it was just a patio but they keep checking on me when I use it for occasional overflow). I don’t particularly like this HOA but we’ve been here a long time and it’s hard to give up the house we’ve customized to our needs.
That sounds like the homes of the polygamists who live in our area. One of my neighbors said he counted 13 homes owned by polygamists in a half mile circle around here. Cars parked everywhere, teens speeding on the narrow, sidewalk less street, and worst of all the mom dropping her older kids off at school every morning while using the baby in her lap as an airbag.
