• AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works
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    44 minutes ago

    I just got a 765cfm battery-powered leaf blower and…

    …it’s so much fun. Mindlessly entertaining. I don’t even care if I just blow the leaves back and forth, it’s just…weirdly fun.

    Also fun to blow random things around the house until someone gets mad.

  • randon31415@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Either the boss said he had to do it, our his homelife is so bad, that blowing leaves is an improvement.

  • Krudler@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Honestly, it’s just fun to blow leaves or snow. It’s a mindless puttering activity that lets you improve your home area and be mildly active.

    Unfortunately what happens is people’s general tendency to think about themselves and nobody else. So they’re self-satisfied in their reasons for being out there, not thinking about the dude next door that works nights and can’t sleep, and even his construction-grade noise headphones don’t help. Or the dude that just wants to listen to jazz quietly.

    The leaf blower people are well-meaning people with mild mental illness who are just selfish enough not to realize their home/self care is annoying others. e: A lot of times the guy just needs to get the F away from their spouse. I’ve lived near leaf blower people and they’re invariably older married (sometimes retired) men. Never women.

  • yesman@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    If a genie told me I could erase all land-mines or two-stroke leaf-blowers, I’d choose landmines, but the silence while I considered would be uncomfortably long.

  • EndOfLine@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    You’re having a rough day. Seems like everybody wants a piece of you and they aren’t kind about it. So you put on some ear protection, grab your leaf blower and step outside. Nobody bothers you out there. The leaf blower yells nonstop the way you wish you could and even though you aren’t doing the yelling, there is still something cathartic about the noise. It creates a bubble where you are left alone. As the minutes pass and the debris collects into neat little piles, you can slowly regain your calm. The urge to explode, unleashing your anger and frustration, in an irreparable way ebbs and you feel like you can hold your shit together for a little while longer.

    Or they are in a feud with their neighbors and are trying to piss them off.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      Huh…apperently I have natural leaf blower bubble going on.

      See, the trick is, other people try to push me around, and try to tske their anger out on me, and I look them dead in their eyes, with my cold dead inside eyes, and I say…

      “You could die tomorrow and I wouldn’t even notice that you left”.

      See, the trick to life is to not cause hassle for others, but otherwise not give a shit about anyone or anything. To truely become at peace with the idea that none of this matters. Your life, others lives, the elections, the results of things, none of it matters. People don’t matter. Media doesn’t matter. Life doesn’t matter. And once people realize that you are an unfeeling, uncaring, enempathetic to anything miserable piece of shit who wouldn’t feel a thing if an atomic bomb went off, they generally tend to leave you alone. Because you don’t want to piss off the guy who doesn’t feel anything, with nothing left to lose, and nothing to gain. I am the Milton of my universe, and one wrong move could cause me to burn this tinderbox to the ground. Then walk away without remorse.

      • Krudler@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        Help is available. I mean it and I will help you find more help. You don’t deserve to suffer in the way you’ve described.

  • FeloniousPunk
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    6 hours ago

    I had a neighbor for a while that ran his gas blower for a couple hours EVERY DAY. I think he had some sort of PTSD trauma and it soothed him.

    He also dug holes in his backyard to bury leaves. Quite a …… character.

      • FeloniousPunk
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        4 hours ago

        I don’t think so. And it was a LOT of leaves. We’re talking big holes. He would dig a hole, put in the leaves, and stand there with a string trimmer, blasting away at them. Then cover them up. It was especially odd because the city collects them for free. All you have to do is blow/rake them into a pile on the street.

  • YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca
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    9 hours ago

    One of my neighbours sometimes hoses down her driveway in the pouring rain. Who knows why neighbours do the things they do.

    • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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      9 hours ago

      Are they ex military? Are they an ASVAB waiver? Did they used to get told to mop up the rain too?

    • RBWells@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      Yeah we saw one of our neighbors watering the storm drain. But also recently she drove from her driveway to ours - literally got in her car, backed out the driveway then immediate turn into ours, to come ask a question. Then got back in her car, backed out of our driveway and immediate turn into hers. So I think she is just crazy.

    • RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      I once inquired about this very practice. I’ve been told it’s because:

      • Water restrictions are generally lifted when it rains
      • Easy rinse/prepped surface

      That all make sense to me if these idiots had a pressure washer, but its always a normal hose with a nozzle…

  • litchralee@sh.itjust.works
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    8 hours ago

    As it happens, it’s about 10 C (50 F) near me and raining, and I did actually think about using my leaf blower for a very specific purpose: blowing the leaves clear of the road gutters.

    I saw outside my window that the autumn leaves formed a dam in the gutter, impounding an amount of water which started diverting onto the asphalt and the sidewalk. From what little I know about road construction, water intrusion is the greater enemy so I didn’t want to let the small pond sit there.

    In the end, I just picked the leaves up by hand to remove the obstruction. But if I had a lot more streetfront, leaf blower would be the first tool to come to mind. But it would take no more than 10 minutes total.

  • shalafi@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    What is with the leaf blower hate around here? Must be a Yankee thing, never hear them around here.

    And if you live in an apartment complex, they have to clear the leaves. They get slippery. You do the math.

    • Drusas@fedia.io
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      4 hours ago

      If you live in the suburbs, during the fall, you can’t have a peaceful weekend because there will always be at least one person using a leaf blower nearby. And they’re loud and bad for the environment.

      • undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch
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        2 hours ago

        Where I live, gas ones are illegal but that doesn’t stop all the leaf blowers choking the air with gas fumes. I literally have to turn on an air purifier to get rid of the smell.

        Granted my apartment isn’t exactly a commercial workspace, but nothing is more infuriating than having to close all the doors/windows to my apartment when I’m in the middle of some huge programming problem. It instantly breaks apart the 10 things going on in my mental queue.