pileofcrapola

Readers offer their best tips for impromptu coat hooks, making your own swinging door stops, and getting grease stains out of clothes.

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Great discussions are par for the course here on Lifehacker. Each day, we highlight a discussion that is particularly helpful or insightful, along with other great discussions and reader questions you may have missed. Check out these discussions and add your own thoughts to make them even more wonderful!

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Have you ever said "I should really learn how to cook" but still can't bring yourself to do it? You're not alone. Millions of people consistently struggle with the same problem.

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Say hello to Kerry Cooper, CEO of Choose Energy. Most people assume they're stuck with the energy provider they have, but they're not! By understanding regulations and helping people comparison shop, Choose Energy can save users hundreds of dollars a year. Have questions on switching providers, DIY energy saving tips, or the energy industry in general? Kerry is hanging out for the next hour, so ask away!

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Dear Lifehacker,
I've heard that antibacterial soap is bad for you, or at least that I should stop using them. I always thought antibacterial must be good, but now people are saying they're a waste of money and could be bad for me. What am I missing? Should I stop using them?

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If you're like most people, those dry-clean-only clothes sit on their own in a separate hamper or maybe hung up at one end of your closet, just waiting for the next trip to the dry cleaners. The good news? You may be able to wash some of them at home.

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One of the first things we learn about motivation is to keep our eyes on the finish line. We're taught to set goals and be mindful of them while we engage in whatever it is we're trying to accomplish. The trouble is, the very act of visualizing those goals may make you less likely to achieve them.

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Last week, Google announced that Gmail users can email their Google+ connections without knowing their email address first. For some, it's an easy way to stay in touch. For others, it's a ticket to unwanted email. However you feel, here's how to turn the feature off, or set it so only the people you want can use it.

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Target is one of my favorite stores. It’s where you can find all of life’s essentials at deeply confusing prices. You might as well just ignore the price tags, since unit prices are really the only thing that matters.

In the case of this Diaper Genie refill that Tamar found, to be fair, the two packages aren’t just different quantities of the same thing. In the case of the two-pack of refills on the bottom, you have to buy two, but they come in a box. That is apparently a bonus item that costs eighty cents, because your baby is going to like playing with this box better than any of the toys you’ve bought in the last three months anyway.

There’s no similar explanation for these batteries that Matt found. “And I did check the tags,” he notes. “They’re under the correct quantity.”

Well, this is Target: we wouldn’t expect anything else.

Unwanted robocalls are bad enough. But there’s a special place (not a good place, either) for companies that use robocalls to scam the elderly out of their savings. One Orlando-based operation, accused of scamming $13 million from senior citizens, now has a confirmed reservation in that special place.

A U.S. District Court temporarily put a stop to and froze the assets of a company targeting senior citizen with a medical alert device scam, the Federal Trade Commission announced Monday. The court decision to stop the company, which operated under several names including Worldwide Info Services, Absolute Solutions Group Inc., and Global Service Providers, Inc, was granted following a request by the FTC and the Florida Attorney General’s office.

The operation allegedly used robocalls to pitch “free” medical alert devices to seniors by falsely saying it was purchased for them by a relative or friend. Consumers, many of whom lived on fixed or limited income, were told the devices were endorsed by health organizations.

“These telemarketers used illegal robocalls to make a sales pitch that was 100 percent false,” said Jessica Rich, Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “They lied about the product, about whether health organizations had endorsed it, and about its cost.  And all the while, their M.O. was to take advantage of older people’s concerns about their health. We’re so glad to work with our partners in Florida to stop this fraud.”

The FTC complaint charges the company with violation of the FTC Act, the Commission’s Telemarketing Sales Rule and Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

The FTC and Florida Attorney General are seeking a court order to permanently ban the operation from defrauding others and to provide restitution for victimized consumers. A preliminary injunction hearing in the case is set for Jan. 16.

This isn’t the first instance of seniors being targeted with medical alert device scams.

In June 2013, the FTC scolded a Brooklyn-based company for using deception and threats to trick the elderly into paying for unordered medical alert systems. Around the same time, the Better Business Bureau warned seniors of deceptive telemarketing calls offering free medical alert devices.

Remember, the best way to avoid similar scams is to never press any buttons when you receive a robocall but end the call immediately.

FTC, Florida Attorney General Sue to Halt Operation that Used Robocalls to Fraudulently Pitch Medical Alert Devices to Seniors Nationwide [Federal Trade Commission]

Between Christmas and the New Year, lots of Americans strapped on a shiny new Fitbit Force and started to scamper around. It’s the newest iteration of the motion-tracking device, a wristband that records steps, altitude, and how much you move around while you sleep. Now many of them have taken off their wristbands, reporting a weird skin irritation near the charging port.

(Warning: there are large, mildly gross wrist rash photos in this post.)

Reader Kevin was one of these people. He was an early adopter of the new device, starting to wear it in mid-November and noticing a problem at the end of December. He writes that it started with “a red blotch under the device where the battery and charging port sits.” It grew over time. He swapped which wrist he wore the band on: a red spot began to grow there, too.

He sought medical attention, and the nurse practitioner diagnosed the spot as contact dermatitis. When the spot eventually blistered and scabbed over, it became infected. He believes that he may be left with a permanent scar.

It would be easy to write Kevin off as one guy with a weird allergy if he were the only one with this problem, but he’s not. There’s an entire thread on Fitbit’s forums (login required) dedicated to the issue. The thread is a veritable parade of rash photos.

Here’s the progression of Kevin’s wrist:

Fitbit’s solution is to simply exchange the Force for one of their other devices. They admitted in a statement to Consumerist that some customers are having problems: “we already have been taking steps to make this right with any customers who feel that they have an allergy related to their Fitbit device.” Those steps include issuing a refund or exchanging the tracker for a different one. The company points to possible material sensitivity to the charging port or battery metal, allergy to the elastomer material, or bacteria caught in the charging port as the cause of customers’ skin irritation.

They aren’t about to admit a problem with the device, and we don’t know what proportion of customers have reported contact dermatitis or other skin problems on their wrists.

One customer solved the problem on a black wristband by covering the metal bits with electrical tape. Yes, because Fitbit customers are paying $130, plus any applicable sales tax, for a device that they have to tape up in order to avoid a big ugly rash.

“I really wanted to buy into the Fitbit ecosystem and I loved the device — before the injury,” writes Kevin. “Considering I have medical expenses resulting from treatment, and the fact that healing is slow-going and may scar me, Fitbit has done nothing to show me that they care for their customers’ loyalty.”

Here’s the full statement from Fitbit:

We are aware that some of our customers have reported a skin irritation from wearing their Force device. We conduct testing in order to satisfy a variety of internationally accepted standards relating to the safety of the materials in our devices. Fitbit wristbands are made of an elastomer material similar to many sports watches and do not contain latex. The Fitbit Force clasps and casing are made with a surgical-grade stainless steel, which is commonly used in watches, jewelry and other products in contact with the skin.

As with any jewelry or watch, numerous factors could cause a skin irritation, such as nickel sensitivity (surgical stainless steel is an alloy containing traces of nickel), reactions to bacteria that can accumulate in wristbands, or a sensitivity to the material of the band elastomer.

However, our customers are our top priority, so we already have been taking steps to make this right with any customers who feel that they have an allergy related to their Fitbit device including offering a refund or a choice of a replacement tracker. Fitbit will handle all shipping costs and will provide a refund in any difference in price.

How did 300,000 West Virginia residents end up without clean water for five days and counting? A chain of incomplete regulations and bureaucratic hand-offs allowed the massive chemical leak to happen without notice, largely on nobody’s watch, the Wall Street Journal reports.

An estimated 7500 gallons of the chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, called MCHM, leaked into the Elk River in West Virginia from a 48,000 gallon tank. The leak was discovered last Thursday, resulting in a do-not-use order for water in nine counties and the state capital.

According to the WSJ, the tank and storage facility, owned by Freedom Industries, was “subject to almost no state and local monitoring.” Federal programs do not currently track MCHM closely, and a state regulator told the WSJ that environmental inspectors hadn’t visited the site since 1991.

A 23-year gap in oversight could indeed leave a growing hole in the tank unnoticed. As for the chemical MCHM, regulation there doesn’t appear to have been much better.

Freedom Industries did, as required by law, include MCHM on a list of chemicals with “immediate (acute) hazards” that it supplied to the West Virginia Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. But that list, which sounds like it should be used for risk management, threat assessment, or emergency prevention, apparently didn’t go anywhere useful. Spokespeople for West Virginia American Water and for a local emergency management group both told the WSJ they were unaware any such list existed.

West Virginia American Water also told the WSJ that each of the company’s facilities maintains a source water protection plan. However, the most recent plan was completed back in 2002. The tank that leaked was identified in that plan as a potential threat.

Since the 2002 plan was completed, though, the site and tank changed hands. And the site itself, according to the WSJ, wasn’t subject to much in the way of state regulation because it was used for storage rather than for manufacturing or active processing.

The Environmental Protection Agency does not regulate most above-ground chemical storage facilities, says the WSJ. Although the EPA does require plants with permits to discharge chemicals into water to have spill-prevention plans, the Freedom Industries tank, as a storage facility, was not subject to that process.

The state of West Virginia has some regulations in place that required Freedom Industries to provide containment areas to contain spills and to allow leaks to be easily detected, and to prepare and implement a groundwater protection plan. The WSJ reports that Freedom had not yet provided such a plan to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The chairman of a county-level emergency-response-planning group told the WSJ, “I don’t want to overregulate private industry, but this does show that there are some chemicals that fall under the radar.”

One could make a compelling argument that maintaining the potable water supply for hundreds of thousands of residents is a basic protection that doesn’t really cross the line into “overregulation.”

The end of this particular disaster is beginning to appear on the horizon: as of noon today, some residents, zone-by-zone, are starting to have access to water again. Preventing a next time, though, will take the effort and political will to assemble the jigsaw puzzle of regulations to make sure businesses like Freedom Industries and chemicals like MCHM are covered.

West Virginia Chemical-Spill Site Avoided Broad Regulatory Scrutiny [Wall Street Journal]

As much as an old trunk or hope chest can look nice in your living room, it can also be a potential hazard for children if there is no way to open it from the inside. Yesterday, a young brother and sister in Massachusetts died at their home after becoming trapped inside a hope chest in their home.

According to the AP, the siblings appear to have become trapped inside the chest with a lid that could only be opened from the outside.

Authorities say there were multiple family members, including at least one adult, in the house at the time and that the chest was located next to a TV set with the volume turned up. It appears that the deaths are accidental.

While there are manufacturers’ standards for toy chests, older products and some cargo trunks may still be able to inadvertently trap someone inside.

Look at any chests you have sitting around the house. Even something with a simple hasp latch that would require a padlock to keep someone from getting in may be enough to prevent a small trapped child from getting out.

You can usually remove such latches without much trouble. Or you could put a childproof lock on the latch so that the chest can’t be opened in the first place.

Trunks and chests with latches that can’t be opened from the inside should never be used as toy chests and should generally be kept away from areas where children play.

Back in 1996, Lane furniture and the Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled some 12 million cedar chests following the deaths of six children. Even after the mass recall, a number of the trunks remained in consumers’ homes, leading to another suffocation death and at least two additional near-fatalities.

Getting married in an IKEA or a Walmart? So 2013. Instead, why not start your life with the man you love while a gameshow audience screams approval and Drew Carey observes from a distance like some sort of wise life guru?

On a recent episode of The Price Is Right, the final contestant bid her way to winning the Showcase, and was surprised with a bit of a bonus prize at the end.

Baby, I just want to say you already make me feel like the most lucky man in the world. I would be honored if you would have me as your husband,” her now fiancé said, while getting down on one knee and offering up a diamond ring.

A teary nod, an embrace, and Drew Carey just cannot saying “Wow. Wow. Wow!” as if he’s never seen a surprise engagement on a game show before. Get it together, Carey.

Meanwhile we’re sure at least one audience member was yelling, “A DOLLAR! SAY IT’S A DOLLAR!”

While it might be a nice surprise to receive a free, unexpected groceries on your doorstep, some San Francisco residents are a bit puzzled as to why Amazon is pushing its new Fresh delivery service with free bags of very unfresh items. A can of Coke, mushroom soup and fish taco seasoning? Dinner is served!

Amazon is all about promoting its grocery business on the West Coast, but as Re/code points out, its choice of marketing tools is a bit odd.

Included in a bag of free groceries dropped off by Amazon Fresh: dry pasta, fish taco seasoning, a can of cream of mushroom soup and a can of Coke, as well as a jar of jam and an energy bar. Put those all together and what do you get? Perfect stuff for a bomb shelter in order to survive the looming zombie apocalypse.

Sure, it’s nice to get anything for free, and of course it might be tough to deliver fresh fish if the bag is going to be sitting out for who knows how long.

But then again, the service is called Fresh. And none of those things are, unless the Coke suddenly pipes up and says something sassy about your backside.

It’s only a matter of time before someone takes all of those items and combines them into a casserole just for Internet pleasing purposes. Mark my words.

Amazon Tries to Seduce You With Fish Taco Seasoning and Cream of Mushroom Soup [Re/code]

A man convicted of second-degree assault after beating a john’s face to a pulp with his Jordans is now suing Nike from his jail cell — where he’s serving a 100-year prison sentence for his crimes — for not warning consumers that the shoes could be used as a dangerous weapon.

The 26-year-old Portland man was not only convicted of stomping on a man’s face who was trying to leave a hotel without paying the pimp’s prostitute in June 2012, but of also robbing the john and beating the woman he forced to work as his prostitute, reports The Oregonian.

And now he’s suing Nike for $100 million, claiming it’s somewhat the company’s fault that he used the shoes as weapons.

His three-page handwritten complaint claims that Nike, Chairman Phil Knight and other executives were remiss in not warning consumers that Jordans can be used as weapons that cause serious injury or death. Again, if you use them to stomp someone’s face to a bloody pulp instead of just you know, walking in them.

“Under product liability there is a certain standard of care that is required to be up-held by potentially dangerous product …” wrote the man, who is representing himself. “Do (sic) to the fact that these defendants named in this Tort claim failed to warn of risk or to provide an adequate warning or instruction it has caused personal injury in the likes of mental suffering.”

He asks that a judge order Nike to put warning labels on all their “potentially dangerous Nike and Jordan merchandise.”

Nike will now have an opportunity to respond.

Portland pimp sues Nike for $100 million for lack of warning label after beating victim with Jordans [The Oregonian]

Let’s say that you have a clunker of a car that won’t sell for very much money, and there’s a charity you’d like to support. You hand over the car, they take care of selling it, and you get a charitable tax deduction. Seems delightfully simple…until someone steals your car off the lot where the charity was storing it until auction.

What not everyone knows about donating vehicles is that you don’t get to deduct the Kelly Blue Book value of the car that you donated. What you get to deduct is the amount that your car really sells for at auction. That’s fair enough, unless your car gets stolen from the lot before auction. Then what happens?

When this happened to a California man who donated his 15-year-old car to the Breast Cancer Fund, no one could advise him on what to do. The charity’s advice? Check with a tax advisor. He turned to CBS Sacramento consumer reporter Kurtis Ming, who checked into the situation, but couldn’t help, either.

The good news? As long as the man kept his receipt, he can get at least a $500 deduction. Not much if he takes the standard deduction, but better than acting like the car had vanished.

Call Kurtis: What Happens If Your Donated Car Is Stolen Before It’s Sold? [CBS Sacramento]

Last fall, Sprint was the last of the four major wireless providers to launch an early upgrade program that required subscribers to pay full price for their phones in order to be able to upgrade those devices after 12 months. We didn’t think it was such a great deal at the time, and apparently neither did many others, as Sprint quietly “retired” One Up last week.

GigaOm’s Alex Colon noticed that the Sprint.com page that had been dedicated to One Up now redirects to this FAQ page explaining that the service was shuttered on Jan. 9.

If you are enrolled in One Up, Sprint says you’ll continue to receive the $15/month discount until you either cash in your next upgrade or change to a new plan. The only way to continue making annual upgrades after that is if you switch to an unlimited data “Framily” plan.

Sprint introduced the new Framily (friends + family = framily, apparently) shared data plans last week. Rather than giving customers the option of a shared data plan or an early upgrade program, Sprint has chosen to go with the former.

The main difference between Sprint’s shared data plans and those offered by competitors is that it lets customers spread the total data usage out over multiple accounts.

- Is there a guarantee for a heavenly ride?

- Jordan's military court says it has found six men guilty of shooting two Jordanian soldiers manning the border with Syria and sentenced them to jail.

- India is scrambling to protect its beleaguered tiger population after several big cats tested positive for a virus common among dogs but deadly to other carnivores, experts said.

- A strong earthquake out to sea that shook Puerto Rico early Monday is one of the largest to hit the U.S. territory in recent years, cracking floors and causing some power outages, but no major damages or injuries, officials said.

- The maker of classic American liquors such as Jim Beam and Maker's Mark has agreed to be purchased by a Japanese company in a $13.62 billion deal that would create the third largest global premium spirits business.

Candy is the perfect name for this sweet, 2-year-old chocolate Lab mix. She is looking for her forever home.

- The number of pet adoptions and rescues from Frederick County's animal shelter has been falling over the past five years, leading to an increase in animals put to death.

Prosecutors said Monday that the woman who gave birth to octuplets and earned the nickname Octomom has been charged with welfare fraud.

Longtime crossword constructor Bernice Gordon is marking two big ones.

PotomacLocal.com

Water Could Be Discolored Wednesday PotomacLocal.com MANASSAS, Va. – If you live in Manassas, you could soon see your water discolored on Wednesday. More in a press release: The City of Manassas Water Department will be performing valve work on the City's 24-inch water transmission main on ...

Manassas City Schools Elects New Chairman of Board Patch.com The Manassas School Board elected Tim Demeria as the new chairman during an organizational meeting on Saturday, Jan. 11. Loading... x. ×. Next Previous Slideshow Download. A man who has served on the Manassas City School Board since 2006 is ...

While Target and other retailers deal with hackers stealing personal data, consumers may opt to pay in cash. Here's how to protect yourself from getting your personal information stolen at the ATM.