A fixed doorbell and an unwanted guest

First the good news ... I fixed our doorbell. When we moved in we noticed that the doorbell button was cracked and so one of our first weekend in the new place I went out and bought a new button. Simple thing with two mounting screws and two screws to tighten the wires around. Not even two minutes of work and the things were switched. Great!

Or so I thought.

Our doorbell (the actual "bell" part) is a two tone thing (e.g. diiiiiing doooooong) but after I switched the buttons it was more of a dingg do.......zzzzgnzazx. To the untrained ears, I assumed that the problem was that the power wasn't being supplied long enough for it to complete the "bell" and that there must be some reason for the new button only applying the juice for a second when the old one did it longer.

A few weeks past and I finally got around to googling the problem and after a bit of searching found out that it was my fault. On the back of the original button was a small electrical "thingy" attached to the two poles without any obvious use and which didn't seem to have come with the button. When the new button didn't work I had tried putting it on the new button, but nothing changed so I pitched it with the old button figuring it didn't matter. Well I was wrong.

Evidently it was a diode thats is somehow important to having the power supplied correctly to the "bell" and which I needed to fix my button. After a bit more reading I found this site and several more like it which confirmed this so tonight I was off to Radio Shack. Thanks to the sites helpful hints I found it (part numbers were right on) and installed it. Viola! Now it works like a champ.

One place I read about diodes said they were polar (ie aren't symectrical and have a "flow" to them) so its possible that I had just tried it the wrong way and it would have worked the other way. But either way, its fixed now, I know I need one, I don't know any more about diodes other than that you can pick up a pack of 2 at Radio Shack for 99 cents. :-)

Now the bad news....

My uncle noticed when he was touring the house during the party that in one corner of our backyard on our retaining wall near the fence is several poison ivy plants. GRRRRRR. This is quite a problem in a multitude of ways first and foremost being that I (and my dad) are VERY alergic to poison ivy (e.g. when I was a young lad and in the boy scouts I got it a couple times, the last resulting in bad blisters, horrible bumps all over and my face swelling to the point where I couldn't really open my eyes). Secondly, we really want to get a dog this weekend and we can't have that around if its going to be sniffing around the backyard and coming inside.....

So this week we are going to try and get rid of it. And by we I mean me for moral support and Em doing the work very carefully b/c so far she has never had a reaction to it and we are hoping won't start now.

What I have read so far (aprox 15 minutes of googling) is that we will talkt our neighbor about it and given her consent, proceed to purchase and use a "large" amount of a good herbicide to kill the any and all plants we can find while trying to kill as little of the plants around them. Several people have suggested using Roundup (or other with gyphosate?) which gets absorbed and kills down to the root and then a day or two later soaking the whole area with tons of water to loosen the soil and then wearing protective gear which can be thrown away, pulling out all of the plants, putting them in plastic bags to be thrown away and washing every one and thing after.

So, that should be interesting. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. :-(