Tearing A Door Down For Dummies
If you ever get caught in a situation, and pray to your God that you don't, where you find yourself stuck outside your locked door (because your LOLzheimer's yet again manifested itself when you forgot your keys somewhere you can't for the life of you remember) and you have tried all means possible to hopefully get it to open, skim along the texts and pictures on this post and Ctrl+D it for possible future reference.
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Recently, my bedroom door acted up and wouldn't let me in, for some weird reason. My homie, who I shall name Tupé (short for "Stupid," in reference to an old post that we shall leave buried in the archives), can only come up with the lamest possible suggestions so, yeah, thnks 4 th memrs (yeah FOB!) and thanks for trying to help. Thirty minutes later, all sweaty but still almost-model-like, I realized I had already exhausted everything I can think of:
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- looked around the door to try to know what its problem is, thinking that maybe the problem is THAT obvious, but it wasn't;
- used a knife on the door's hinge;
- tried using other keys that may possibly fit the keyhole;
- turned the knob to the hilt in opposite directions and timing a Herculean shove with each try;
- turned the knob in one direction and barged onto the center of the door (which only dented my shoulders and collar bones, methinks, so ouch!);
- considered climbing in from the outside through my bedroom window (but that would only get me trapped in the room since I will still face the same dilemma on either side);
- analyzed the construction of the doorknob if there are possible screws left out or openings anywhere so I could start dismantling the blasted object (and there were none for security reasons, bless those doorknob makers for at least seriously considering our safety); and
- tried asking for help (this one had to go since this thing happened a bit late in the evening and I hate my neighbors, to this very day, and they hate me back).
.Something did work in the end. Behold and be enlightened!
(cue in chorus of angels' song here) I could even go so far as say that this post is going so helpful, you'd want to make this your home page! Done bookmarking? Atta boy-bastos!
(SRY, that one's for the spiders. Now, carry on.).Prepare the ONLY thing you would ever need for this process:
long-nosed pliers.
. [Please hover your mouse on an image for the corresponding instruction or refer below for an enumeration of the step-by-step procedure. Also, click on the pictures for a larger view.]
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..1. Hold the pliers firmly with both hands on each of its rubber-gripped handles. Pull the handles at the same time on opposite directions such that the long steel tip opens at its widest..2. Position the pliers firmly (as shown on the image above) and pull the handle towards you with all the strength you have. Be careful though, the door knob might fall on your toes the moment it comes off. As a preliminary to this step, however, do an inverse pull-up by positioning the pliers with the handles pointing downward and the tip pointing upwards. This tends to loosen the door knob and would thus up your success rate with the "pull-down" procedure.
.3. Do Step 2 several times until the door knob gives..4. It would eventually fall off on your second try, or no more than the third try depending on the force you apply to the pliers..5. Remove loose parts from the hole the now-fallen door knob left..6. On one side of the now exposed hole of your door, a metal ring protects the "tongue" portion of the door knob that you would need to take out (pointing red hand is where the "tongue" I'm referring to is at). You would want to bend that ring in order to access the "tongue." Use your pliers. Should there be jagged metal edges in the opening where the "tongue" should come out of, use your pliers to bend the edges outward..7. Pull the "tongue" out with your pliers and gently push your door open...This process leaves minimal or no damage at all to your door if done with the highest level of cool and awesomez00rz! Worked twice for me.
..DISCLAIMER: The procedures outlined here are for educational purposes only. The author will not be liable should said procedures be used for purposes other than tearing down the door of your own room or house or for damages resulting from use of the the same. Although the process has been tested twice, it does not preclude 100% success when applied. Regular check-up and maintenance of your doorknobs still are the best way to prevent door emergencies from happening..Labels: Practical Stuff
Corroborating my door busting skills in under 48 hours
My mobile phone knocked my concentration off as it rang in the middle of a FullMetal Alchemist rerun. On the other line was a friend who had a rough day. She sounded cool with a frantic midtone in her voice asking for help on taking down the door of her apartment she apparently lost the keys to.
It's a Sunday and it's raining and it was just last Friday that I got to tear down the door knob off my bedroom door and the thought of having some emergency situation like this corroborate my new-found skill is just exhilirating, where even the term exhilirating failes to officially describe the thill of getting to do the deed all over again in a span of less than 48 hours!
You see, this series does not mean to show how strong or witty of elligible I am. It may, no doubt about it, but that's beside the point. The essence is to simply share a procedure that has been put to good use twice which warrants sharing if in any case anyone of you gets to be in some far-fetching situation where you are stuck outside a door with an ordinary door knob and you need a way in. Nothing fancy. Granting, of course, that it's your house's door you're tearing down. I figured it would really come in handy given the right situation and the right tool in hand.
I only had a pair of long nose pliers and it is all I ever needed. It is all you'll ever need.
Next post is a step-by-blow-by-blow-by-step account with pictures on how I got it done. Note that my friend's door had a double lock which posed more of a challenge compared to my initial project.
This three-part post should hopefully conclude in the next few days. Until then, be safe.
Labels: Lifestyle, Practical Stuff
Panic! The bedroom door is jammed!
I left home last Friday while our house-cleaner was still doing her magic with the house. The last three instructions I gave her before going to work were: (1) do NOT take the box of comicbooks upstairs again as it gave me itches, (2) take my pillows to the clothes line and let the sun kiss the foul odor from it goodbye, and (3) have the pillow casings washed while she's at it.
Emily, our trusty house-cleaner, goes by once a week to do her home hygiene-stroke-management-stroke-organizing voodoo all over our two storey flat. She'd leave a note for us to brood over should she have concerns. Concerns covering common house-cleaner affairs like prompting us that we're running low on laundry detergent or floor polish or when she took it upon herself and decided to throw away our trash bin as she had noticed it to be at the throes of causing mass hysteria by the new strain of highly contagious, endemic-causing bacteria-virus cross breed that she had observed for it to already contain a colony of.
Her new note below, however, made me panic not only because it said my feather-pillows were still stinky.
Wait, what does she mean by pinto ng room mo?! In a dizzying sprint I lounged three stair-steps at a time to the landing in front of my room. True enough, the door was jammed. It wasn't locked. I just couldn't get the tongue part at the side of the door to go all the way in.
I was frantic. My mind was reeling on what it is I should do. Is there a guide somewhere in the internet that could give a fully detailed instruction on how to take down a door with a jammed door knob? I was telling myself,
"Think. Think! What do you reckon would a boy scout, or McGyver, or Michael Scofield would do had any of them been in your shoes right now?!"
I tried fully twisting the door knob in both directions. That only made the knob turn a centimeter more clockwise and counter-clockwise but it still left the
tongue still protruding a third of the way out. I also tried turning the knob fully in one direction as I lurched onto the door with the free side of my body with zero results other than a nearly dislocated arm.
Dammit!Sweaty and defeated, I went down to the living room and wailed my desperation out by singing the Stone Temple Pilots' unplugged version of Plush as it played from my PPC.
Ten minutes later, the person I'm sharing the flat with arrived, told him to help me with my door, and that I've tried nearly everything.
He went upstairs. I followed suit with my hands now vengefully clasped over a trusty pair of old pliers. Had anyone seen me, it would have looked as though I was plotting on killing my homie. He did the stuff I'd already done, only in a more stupidlike and clumsy manner. And there I was, hopefully thinking he'd deliver results!
My next post will cover how I managed to get the door opened with negligible or no damage to the door while leaving me a dilapidated door knob (afterwards) which somewhat tells me how strong I had become, thanks to wall climbing. To be continued...Labels: Vertigo
The downside to goose down
I slept three nights in a row in unsurpassed comfort, thanks to my recent purchase of great feather-pillows (see post before this). Be warned, though, as there's a downside I discovered just this afternoon.
On the side label, you may read a warning saying the product must be aired out before use. Something that I missed on doing. The result is a seepage of natural poultry smell through the pillow casing. I checked both my pillows and the stench is unmistakeable, having had times with fowls myself in a suburbian farmland. The label also suggested airing out the articles as often as needed. I had been carelessly stupid not to extensively search every nook of the net for cons before buying feather-pillows on instinct. It felt so right, which all the more makes this particular flaw inexcuseable!
I will not lose hope, though, as a customer review of one goose-down feather pillow owner said a day of hanging in an open-air clothes line will help eliminate animal odor. And, since it had been raining for more than a week now, airing them out is not an option at this time. If that does not get the stink off, I hope to God that drycleaning could.
On drycleaning or washing, depending on what the label on your pillows say is appropriate, I have also read that putting in tennis balls with the pillow when having it spun dry would do wonders to not have the feather collect to some lumpy mass inside the pillow casing at the end of the process. Tennis balls (three balls is optimal) or clean tennis shoes, whichever is readily available.
I will make it a point to update you on my struggle to not make this investment regrettable. Bummer!
Labels: Lifestyle, Practical Stuff
Like sleeping in a hotel in my own bedroom
It has been ages since I last bought sleeping pillows. Six years, actually, and they had not been washed since, although I make it a point to replace their casings every one or two weeks. Every other week at the max. No more than that. It leaves me feeling uneasy if I don't. I could bet my Html skills off that at least 80% of humans succumb to the same shamefully disgusting and unhygienic passivity I have towards my sleeping pillows. We sweat our heads off on them every single night, making them a breeding ground for bacteria and, eventually, dust mites who may in turn give us allergies. Dreadful, I know, yet the idea easily escapes the minds of normal, living beings.
Just last week, the inevitable happened. I asked our company doctor to have the sides of my wrists checked for what seems like traces of allergic manifestations. What I did not disclose, however, was the fact that I also had traces of the same micro-protrusions and terribly itchy sores on the insides of both my thighs, albeit barely noticeable to the naked eye. She gave me anti-histamines to hopefully counter the allergens causing my discomfort. She was thinking I got the sores from dust mites, whose portrait I had kindly provided here for your viewing displeasure. Note that this image is magnified several hundred times such that, as DrGreene.com puts it, "30,000 of these tiny creatures [could be found] in one ounce of dust." Just fucking beautiful!
Two days had gone but the itching sensation persisted. I had been controlling the strong urge to scratch but I do not know how much longer I could put the compulsion off. I again went for consultation and asked for a topical cream or anything that could probably provide me faster relief. With a prescription in hand and a firm conviction at heart, I set out to buy the blasted cream cursing that I would, from that moment onwards, do everything I could to analyze what events happened within the last week or two that made me have the allergic-reactions-cum-dust-mite-induced blisters.
Culprit number one was a container-full of my comicbooks our house helper brought in my room which probably had colonies of silverfishes and thousands of microscopic what-have-yous that may have served as a breeding ground for the mites. The said box had not been opened nor aired out for the longest time (read five or so years) making it one perfectly passive agar plate. As she set it down in one corner of my bedroom, the thump may have shifted the box's contents which in turn stirred the mites inside from their reverie. I returned the box back to the living room where it originally was. I then began spraying Lysol all over like a mad death eater in an all-out Adavra Kedavra frenzy. I followed on with a timely anti dust mite solution I had found earlier at the grocery store. It smelt like apple and linen all over my room. I hurriedly went out and closed the door shut behind me to make sure the mist seeps through every crack and covers every square inch of exposed surface area.
That night, right before sleeping, I got my pillows, vengefully slid them in a large garbage bag, and threw them away. Heck, the thought of having a whole network of dust mites inside a pillow placed between my thighs as I sleep gave me the shivers, evidenced by me instantly manifesting goosebumps on my goosebumps.
I slept without pillows that night. A situation that lasted me two uneasy sleep cycles.
Over the weekend, I made an effort to hunt for affordable and dust mite warding pillows (if ever there were any, which at the time I had no clue over) to replace my loss. I got me goose down feather pillows at True Value. You read it right, I now am sleeping like a royalty in the confines of my own room. What more, I could look forward to a pillow-fight where feathers would actually fly around as the casing tears instead of ugly lumps of cotton or polycotton or polyester threads bouncing about. Besides, those queen-sized, sleep-well pillows cost around like P500 when a goose down counterpart would only cost you P700. I got two king-sized ones for a couple of hundred more, each (whose brand, by the way, is Majestic bought from True Value at the Rockwell). It says in the pretective plastic cover that the pillows are machine washable, hypo-allergenic, and dust-mite proof. Plus, words would definitely fail me if I were to describe how my first two nights of sleeping on them felt like.
Thankfully, all traces of allergies on me had gone.
I can now hear my pillows calling my name. I wish you pleasant dreams as off to bed I'll go.
In parting, remember, don't let the dust mites bite.
Click on this link for a DrGreene.com guide on how to care for goose down pillows.
Photo from the Honolulu Community College web site.
Labels: Lifestyle, Practical Stuff
Rumor has it that there's this manblog editor who claims to be a perennially self-deluded and pompous meta-being who'd shove the fact down anyone's throat that his auditory taste and appreciation to a great varied musical genre is extraordinarily over and beyond the comprehension of your common iPod-wielding-and-mainstream-music-listening excuse for musically inclined posers. Wrong! There are nine editors who fit the tab and I'm their king!
For a central theme of this music-inspired article, we'll feature what probably are the better cover versions of old and popular songs. Songs so popular that I'm almost certain everyone has heard of them at least once in this lifetime. Why? I say, why not?! The airwave is thick with artists doing nothing but remakes, moreso bad remakes, that everyone would have probably lost faith in believing that that attribute they call vocal talent was nothing but a myth to begin with, there being no physical evidence to support anyone ever manifested one. Ever.
The track collective below features 5 newer versions of old songs that are so popular, even your senile gramps would recognize them by their distinctive beat from the amps. For you to draw a comparison from, the songs as sung by their original artists are also provided for you reference.
We start off with the instrumental rendition of Like A Prayer (previously mentioned in my String quartet tribute to your favorite bands article) performed by the Da Capo Chamber Players. The album String Quartet Tribute to Madonna where this track is from was released in 2002. Enchantingly transfixing, the melodiously crisp sound of the strings build towards a crescendo of character and power as the quartet takes the listener through this rare and excitingly paced arrangement. Rich and precise, if this doesn't change your view classical music, nothing probably will.
Madonna-LikeAPrayerLucie Silvas lends a chilling breath to the legendary
Metallica's
Nothing Else Matters original
(from the band's self-titled album released in 1991). Hauntingly sincere and unforgettable, the track could make your friends' jaws drop should you decide to give this version a try in a KTV bar with Metallica's original accompaniment in the background. Don't forget to give me credit for giving you that idea! Lucie Silvas is only 25 and is from Leicester in the UK. She
blogs, too.
LucieSilvas-NothingElseMatters
versus
Metallica-NothingElseMattersNext, this
Wonderwall cover by
Ryan Adams may only sound familiar to fans of The O.C. but, hey, the guy's voice gives this Oasis original some pleasantly trippy facelift. Awesome shit, too. A truckload of it. Close your eyes, lay your head back on your recliner, and see flashes of that scene where Seth and Summer did some slow sensual dance while this cover track played. A moment you could only ever wish to want to share with the person of your dreams (for a bit of trivia, this song was played in the episode where the two characters mentioned had a whole day's worth of raunchy, hot sex that was, unluckily, only left for the viewers to speculate. Dammit!).
RyanAdams-Wonderwall
versus
Oasis-Wonderwall
Twenty three years after Depeche Mode did their Just Can't Get Enough song in 1981 and this bossa-sounding cover by popular French pop-duo Nouvelle Vague comes as a sort of redemption for new wave to those who are not too keen on music from this genre (like me). I initially did not expect to be blown away by this cover but its head-bopping beat makes it quite likeable. Make that enjoyable. Too enjoyable even.
NouvelleVague-JustCan'tGetEnough
versus
DepecheMode-JustCan'tGetEnough
Last, I present to you Tori Amos's orgasmic rendition of R.E.M.'s Losing My Religion (from R.E.M.'s Out of Time album originally released in 1991). By orgasmic, I really meant orgasmic. Hers, not mine. I ran short of descriptors for Tori's vocal style in this particular song but the one word I gave is actually more than enough. You'll agree. Listen and relate.
ToriAmos-LosingMyReligion
versus
REM-LosingMyReligion
If you like the tracks, buy the artists' original albums. Don't be a cheap pirate! Show them your love and get their CDs.
Should you really and truly need to just get some free well made cover track, get the remake of the BeeGees' To Love Somebody (done by Eagle-Eye Cherry) from thier official website under the "Rarities and Remixes" section through here, as featured in the soundtrack of the movie Y Tu Mama Tambien.
As I close, bear in mind that your enjoyment is at the top of our objectives. Mine, in particular. Now, praise and thank me, bitch!
As published in the not-so-humble pages of the Man-Blog through here.Labels: Music
