In the first episode of List-en up!, the Angie's List podcast, Marion County, Indiana lead inspector Buddy Compton mentioned that store-bought lead-testing kits can be effective for testing surface paint, but they might not detect dangerous lead in deeper layers. The Consumer Reports on Safety blog tested several of these kits and posted their results here. You might find these results helpful before purchasing a kit yourself or deciding to have potentially poisonous paint professionally tested (hurray for alliteration!)
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I figured I should follow up to the wave of responses I got about yesterday's post, in which I dared suggest that blogs are a waste of time (I actually didn't get any responses... Surprise!)
I do realize that blogs serve some terrific purposes: they're great for podcasting, marketing, and SEO (search engine optimization) (that last link actually has some great reasons to blog). But when every other link in a typical Google Search results in a blog post (seemingly half of which are useless), the very idea of blogs can become quite frustrating.
It also seems that with so many blogs (175,000 created a day, or 2 per second!), the internet will one day implode under the sheer weight of them all, like a black hole. But until that technological armageddon, I'll gladly keep adding my two cents and hope someone decides to pick 'em up.
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It's April's and my six-month wedding anniversary! I can't believe it's already been half a year. I guess time flies when you're having fun :) I've written a new post at the Angie's List publication department's blog that touches on our wedding and home ownership.
Also, the second episode of the podcast is up and running, about customer etiquette. If you order a cheeseburger but are rude to the waiter, you might get some spit along with the beef. Same thing with contractors: if you're rude to the guys doing your roof, you might end up with roofing nails "accidentally" caught in your car's tires.
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