Hopefully...
...he's only doing that newfangled Game Programming Engineer stuff.
IT engineer fights spider with improvised flamethrower
An IT engineer who attempted to dispatch a spider with an improvised flamethrower ended up on the wrong end of his own can of deodorant, the Sun reports. Dad-of-two Chris Welding, of Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, explained: "It was about 10.30pm last night. My wife was getting ready for bed and suddenly she let out a scream. She said …
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Tuesday 31st August 2010 15:55 GMT envmod
the old trick eh?
I do this all the time. Most recently to dispatch a large amount of wasps which had congregated in my kitchen one morning after the light had been left on all night. There were nine of the little bastards. Nine!
Anyway, I burst in there with a can of my girlfriend's hair spray, a yellow Clipper and a pair of sunglasses and sent all those stripey fuckers to hell.
Worked a treat.
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Tuesday 31st August 2010 15:56 GMT Cameron Colley
Two fire crews and an ambulance?
For a couple of small burns? Why the fuck was so much time and money wasted on some guy who had an owie?
"In case he inhaled some fumes" is not an answer, by the way, unless they're now using a new propellant which suddenly turns into radioactive thallium. I know, and have read of, many people who have done similar (including myself, many times during my teens) with absolutely no ill effects -- so to my mind taking him in on the off chance something very very rare happened is akin to taking someone random off the street to hospital just in case they're about to have a heart attack.
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Tuesday 31st August 2010 22:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Two fire crews and an ambulance?
> "Why the fuck was so much time and money wasted on some guy who had an owie?"
I'll bite. Someone called 999 and asked for either an ambulance or advice on what to do about a burn. The first thing the handler's going to ask is what the cause was, and when the user says something along the lines of "it was caused from a sheet of fire that came from the bathroom" before hanging up you can imagine their response. 999 has to respond to *every* call, even if it's blatantly a prank call or a waste of time. The fire engines were probably sent because it sounded serious and they needed to guarantee the Health & Safety of the ambulance staff.
Personally, If I were the dispatcher I think i'd be making a quiet deal with the police to dispatch police officers to as many calls as humanly possible under any pretence (like them being faster responding and first aid trained, whatever) I'm sure they could make themselves useful by making arrests for "wasting police time".
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Wednesday 1st September 2010 11:31 GMT Cameron Colley
@Anonymous Coward, Tuesday 31st August 2010 22:41 GMT
You scenario does sound plausible -- but if that is what happened then:
A) The guy is a pathetic, time-whasting, wimpy arsehole for calling 999 because his pinky was sore.
b) I hope to fuck he had to pay for the time of the ambulance and fire crew as people do when they cause car accidents.
I still think this is sad example of money being thrown away due to people being far too cautious. The number of people killed over the years by smoke inhalation from the burning of a few millilitres of hydrocarbons must be minuscule -- heck, some people regularly suck butane flames through paper tubes of cancerous chemicals and nobody rushes them to hospital if they burn their finger in the process.
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Tuesday 31st August 2010 22:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Services havin' a field day
Beats sitting at the station the entire boring night, no? A bit of because we can, maybe? Or is it more sinister, and are we that coddled into incompetence by our (technology|government|...)? Something for the tin hat brigade to stew over.
Anyway, personally I leave spiders be if they keep to themselves, or grab them their thread or perhaps "utilizing" a bit of paper or cloth to catch them, then shoo them out the window. Keep'em at arm's length, for they aren't my friends but they are useful. No need to get scared about that.
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Tuesday 31st August 2010 23:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
very excessive..
I wouldn't have even bothered calling 999 at most just NHS helpline if any advice necessary.. In my youth have had tons of incidents... dumbest of all while bbq in a cave we see a small hole which we couldn't see the end of so numties the lot of us, decide to .. "lets chuck some diesel into it and light it to see how far it goes.." 3 of us standing on top while one of us lights the match... 6 burned eyebrows later... duh... (seem to recall serious amounts of vodka also involved...). Cannot imagine hair spray being worse than this though.. bit of toothpaste on the burn and bob'd be his uncle - use sainsburys basics for 17p a tube and apply liberally.
If they came out at all even, they probably just came to have a laugh and see a numty!!. if it's policy to go out then I want a refund on my taxes please cause that's just stupid...
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Tuesday 31st August 2010 23:01 GMT xj25vm
Definitely done it wrong
Yeah - he must have sprayed a heck of a lot of propellant in there. This stuffs tends to make a bit of a flame - but with an appropriate quantity - it is a fairly brief flame - not enough to burn anything (except some singed hair or eye brows).
It also works a treat for setting the tyre bead on the wheel rim - brilliant stuff. And the effect is quite spectacular :-)
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Tuesday 31st August 2010 23:03 GMT Nick Oakley
fumes and spiders..
I remember that news article about some kid spraying too much Lynx in a small bathroom and being overcome by the propellant fumes.
Also, slightly apropos - I have two large spiders in my bedroom: one is the small bodied-long legged type and the other is just large and thick legged so you can actually hear it running around the floor at night.
Last night I dreamt they both engaged in an arachnoid-duel across the bedroom floor - bizarrely conjoined one underneath the other in a crazy 16-legged beast cavorting wildly around the carpet. It was like a manic little tumbleweed pattering about and, I kid you not, they were emitting little screams as they attacked each other.
I'm pretty sure it was just a dream, but it sure as hell woke me up !
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Tuesday 31st August 2010 23:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
Good grief
What sort of spiders do you have in England that require such extreme measures? In the supposedly armaments-mad US west I've known men to deal with black widow spiders (poisonous enough to put you in the hospital) with a shoe or even a shampoo bottle.
I look forward to hearing what this gent does the first time he finds a snake in his garden, and hope that the wife, kids, and neighbors are safely outside the blast radius.
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Wednesday 1st September 2010 08:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
It was an Essex spider - the deadliest known to good taste!
In in Melbourne (Oz) we squash first, ask questions later. Flames are to be avoided, as you want to be able verify your kill before it verifies it's kill.
Although generally only if it's black. The brown ones are huge and would make an awful mess.
Icon: what else?
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Wednesday 1st September 2010 08:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
UPDATE: According to the Telegraph...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7973024/Man-blows-himself-up-trying-to-kill-a-spider.html
...the bathroom light was out and he tried to kill it just with the contents of the aerosol THEN lit the lighter to see if he'd hit it or not. That explains the fire engine and ambulance then. Still seems a bit odd though...using it as a flamethrower would be the obvious first choice to anyone who works in IT.
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Wednesday 1st September 2010 09:00 GMT Huntsman
What a wimp!
He should have done what a real man would do (like me), and ran downstairs screaming for his missus to put it outside.
It's a win-win for all parties, the spider lives to fight another day, and I don't have to go anywhere near it.
The only time a man should burn his own knuckles is during a vigorous shuffle with said knuckles.
Pint icon to restore my manliness quotient. And a packet of McCoys. And a Yorkie.
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Wednesday 1st September 2010 10:02 GMT Eden
The reason for not using a flamethrower
I imagine he didn't want to flamethrower it to death if it was behind the loo as that would inevitably melt/weaken the plastic pipes and cause considerable problems and leakage.
So problably thinking himself very clever decided to gas it to death instead, I've done this to the occasional wasp that got into the house and refused to use any of the open windows/doors and had to be disposed off.
Sadly this appears to have exhausted his daily intelligence quota leaving him to then check the results of his deed in an enclosed space with a naked flame.
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Wednesday 1st September 2010 10:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
aerosols...
aerosols nowadays use namby-pamby butane and other boring hydrocarbons. In the good old days we had CFC-powered antiperspirant flame throwers that would etch glass when you lit it. I made a frosted circle on a window pane, with a small transparent bluebottle-shaped silhouette of where the fly stood.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
