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Posted: May 30 2009 01:43 am

So I opened up my laptop today and saw an ant. I quickly brushed it off and smashed it for defiling my precious. I turned it on and walked away. When I came back, there were TWO ants. I smashed them both and typed in my password. A SWARM OF TINY ANTS flooded from the space between my keys. I flipped out.

I spent over an hour manually pulling ants from my laptop. I had a bad childhood experience with them so I am still shaking from this. My poor laptop.

This comes after several bad childhood experiences with ants. I was to the point for a while where I would freeze up and become unresponsive at the sight of ants. I got over that with the proper way of dealing with them. HATE. SMASHING, FURIOUS, HATE. But I do still freeze up for a bit when I see them.

So I have two questions:
1) What will this do to my computer if I didn't get them all out?

2) Anything similar happen to you?

Posted: May 30 2009 02:18 am

Must...resist....urge....to post big nasty picture of Siafu ant swarm...mustn't....give in.... Baiting

Okay seriously. I've never had that happen, but interestingly enough I have heard that the whole reason we call computer bugs "bugs" is someone whose computer was ruined by a beetle crawling inside it. From then on, something that caused a computer not to work was a 'bug' in the system.

I've never had 'em in my computer, but I have dealt with my share of highly irritating but fairly benign ant trails in the house. Plenty of fire ants lived on the ranch where I used to live/work. I find them fascinating myself; used to spend quite a bit of time watching them scurry around and built their holes and stuff. The only time I've been truly sickened by insects was the apartment we lived in when I was...must have been 16ish. Place was INFESTED with roaches for the first couple months we lived there. It was godawful. *shudder* I can deal with roaches one or two at a time, but that was just...nuh-uh.

Posted: May 30 2009 02:22 am

We got silverfish and Yellow spiders, on yeah and big ants during the summer .

Posted: May 30 2009 02:24 am

I once noticed a spider crawl into the groove of my PSX's disc lid when it was raised. A few years later I opened the thing up but never saw the spider. I feel ya on the ants thing, even when you're sure you've taken care of them all, you get that phantom swarming crawling feeling on your arms or legs.

Posted: May 30 2009 02:36 am

Lottel wrote:

What will this do to my computer if I didn't get them all out?

My personal guess would be nothing. I never ran into that problem, even when I was doing warranty repair.

Posted: May 30 2009 02:48 am

Uh, you might have a problem if they're raspberry crazy ants; that particular species enjoys packing themselves into electronic devices like computers for some reason (possibly warmth), sometimes burning out the devices they're nesting in from their sheer mass, and are very difficult to get rid of. NASA actually had troubles with them in the past when they took up residence in their very advanced and expensive computers and promptly ruined them.

The Wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_raspberry_ant

Posted: May 30 2009 03:50 am

I for one welcome our new computer-eating ant overlords.

Posted: May 30 2009 11:09 am

I'm sorry if it's hard for you to talk about, but what kind of bad childhood experience does one have with ants?

Posted: May 30 2009 11:14 am

The Lord hath sent a new plague to destroy our porn-filled computers, for He is vengeance. Repent!

Posted: May 30 2009 11:30 am

You could just have a crapload of crumbs in your laptop's keyboard too, if so clean it at once.

Posted: May 30 2009 12:43 pm

I once had a centipede or earwig or something crawl out of my SNES when I pushed down the flap.

Posted: May 30 2009 01:00 pm

Wikipedia wrote:

In 1946, when Hopper was released from active duty, she joined the Harvard Faculty at the Computation Laboratory where she continued her work on the Mark II and Mark III. Operators traced an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay, coining the term bug. This bug was carefully removed and taped to the log book September 9th 1945 [sic]. Stemming from the first bug, today we call errors or glitch's [sic] in a program a bug.

Posted: May 30 2009 03:35 pm

SoldierHawk wrote:

I've never had 'em in my computer, but I have dealt with my share of highly irritating but fairly benign ant trails in the house. Plenty of fire ants lived on the ranch where I used to live/work. I find them fascinating myself; used to spend quite a bit of time watching them scurry around and built their holes and stuff. The only time I've been truly sickened by insects was the apartment we lived in when I was...must have been 16ish. Place was INFESTED with roaches for the first couple months we lived there. It was godawful. *shudder* I can deal with roaches one or two at a time, but that was just...nuh-uh.

You...live in CA...lived/worked on a ranch...that wouldn't be Spahn Ranch would it? Razz

Posted: May 30 2009 04:08 pm

Ba'al wrote:

You could just have a crapload of crumbs in your laptop's keyboard too, if so clean it at once.

Actually a few months ago I spilled Mt Dew on my laptop. Since then typing gets to be tough on the right side of my keyboard, cutting down my typing time.

I suspect the ants knew of this as they ATE ALL THE STICKY RESIDUE. My laptop is actually free of Mt Dew residue. To get it cleaned would have cost me too much money. The ants did it for free.

And I repayed them by killing them in horrible ways.

I love JUSTICE. Fucking insects think they can clean? No! Fuck them! DIIIIE!
*smashes more bugs*

Posted: May 30 2009 05:36 pm

"ANTS ANTS, EVERYWHERE ANTS"
*tries to find obscure snl video*

Posted: May 30 2009 05:47 pm

anorexorcist wrote:

SoldierHawk wrote:

I've never had 'em in my computer, but I have dealt with my share of highly irritating but fairly benign ant trails in the house. Plenty of fire ants lived on the ranch where I used to live/work. I find them fascinating myself; used to spend quite a bit of time watching them scurry around and built their holes and stuff. The only time I've been truly sickened by insects was the apartment we lived in when I was...must have been 16ish. Place was INFESTED with roaches for the first couple months we lived there. It was godawful. *shudder* I can deal with roaches one or two at a time, but that was just...nuh-uh.

You...live in CA...lived/worked on a ranch...that wouldn't be Spahn Ranch would it? Razz

Hahahaha no. I started out at a place called the Rockin' L&D Ranch (that's where I learned to ride and train horses), then got hired at Rawhide Ranch as a 'hand, and an instructor.

...Although come to think of it, the other may have been more interesting, if nothing else... Razz

Posted: May 30 2009 05:53 pm

When I was a young lad, probably 3 or 4, I lived in a house that had a serious ant problem in the basement. I remember waking up late one night and going to the washroom. When I came out and turned the kitchen light on, the floor was COVERED in those big black fuckers. So many god-damned ants.

Posted: May 30 2009 06:20 pm

Lottel wrote:

Ba'al wrote:

You could just have a crapload of crumbs in your laptop's keyboard too, if so clean it at once.

Actually a few months ago I spilled Mt Dew on my laptop. Since then typing gets to be tough on the right side of my keyboard, cutting down my typing time.

I suspect the ants knew of this as they ATE ALL THE STICKY RESIDUE. My laptop is actually free of Mt Dew residue. To get it cleaned would have cost me too much money. The ants did it for free.

And I repayed them by killing them in horrible ways.

I love JUSTICE. Fucking insects think they can clean? No! Fuck them! DIIIIE!
*smashes more bugs*

Lulz, but yeah, cleaning isn't that hard actually if you know how to take your lappy apart.

Joined: Dec 06 2007 Location: Connecticut Posts: 11244

I have found food, bugs, spiders, mouse droppings and more in computers. They are a great little shelter for critters.

Posted: Jun 01 2009 12:29 am

One time I put on my headphones, felt this strange itch on my ear, then took off the headphones and scratched my ear to find that an ant had crawled from my headphones on my ear. Sad

Posted: Jun 01 2009 08:06 am

Oh god. Please stop talking about ants now.
Found them... in my bed. Apparently whatever it was that got them in my laptop, was in my bed. Which leads me to believe... that the ants are after....
that they are trying to devour...

THE ANTS ARE AFTER MEEEEEEE!

D:

Joined: Mar 13 2009 Location: Arlington Posts: 467

Syd Lexia wrote:

The Lord hath sent a new plague to destroy our porn-filled computers, for He is vengeance. Repent!

I for one would like to welcome our new insect overlords and I would also like to remind them that, as a respected media personality, I can be of use in rounding up people to toil in their underground sugar caves

Posted: Jun 01 2009 12:37 pm

SoldierHawk wrote:

Hahahaha no. I started out at a place called the Rockin' L&D Ranch (that's where I learned to ride and train horses), then got hired at Rawhide Ranch as a 'hand, and an instructor.

I imagine it's just like the hit Nickelodeon TV show "Hey Dude".

Posted: Jun 01 2009 06:45 pm

Syd Lexia wrote:

The Lord hath sent a new plague to destroy our porn-filled computers, for He is vengeance. Repent!

That's not fair. He/She/It invented porn!

Adam was doing just fine, before god threw a naked woman before him, and than everything went to shit.

Posted: Jun 01 2009 07:01 pm

Syd Lexia wrote:

SoldierHawk wrote:

Hahahaha no. I started out at a place called the Rockin' L&D Ranch (that's where I learned to ride and train horses), then got hired at Rawhide Ranch as a 'hand, and an instructor.

I imagine it's just like the hit Nickelodeon TV show "Hey Dude".

Actually not far off lol. Except our staff had less transplanted cityfolk, and more raging but lovable rednecks. Seriously, I had no trouble cutting loose and going out on the town with them, but we all had to make an agreement early on to leave politics out of all conversations. It lead to bad staff morale lol. We all did get on really, really well though; it was a good time in my life. I'd probably still be there if the place hadn't gone under.