I grew up in LA. The idea of not locking a house door appalls me. For that matter I'm pretty much incapable of leaving a car door unlocked either. My late father when was young owned a small house in East LA in the 40s that he always left unlocked. Special circumstances though. He kept it open 24 hours so friends could crash there, and it was never empty. Anyone who tried to take advantage of the open door for nefarious purposes would have run into a houseful of tough guys with knives.

Attention hivemind!

I just bought a slow cooker at Target (on sale for $15!) What are your favorite slow cooker recipes?

Brenda -- what made you try mint.com? it loos good and useful, but I am trying to figure out how safe it is.

Hmm. I've been using it about a year and a half, and I remember spending a fair amount of time scouring the internets to make sure it was up and up before I did it, but I can't recall the details. I really like it, despite how painful it can occasionally be.

I've never had a hint of anything amiss, and it's really nice to be able to see snapshots of everything all at once. I don't make good use of the budgeting tools, which, obviously, I should look into, but being able to track spending across categories is really nifty. And they'll alert you for things like excess spending when a certain category is out of whack and, probably most helpful, notify you a few days in advance whenever payments are due. With the way the credit card companies have started randomly switching up due dates to rack up fees, that's a godsend.

The one account I had on there that I took off was my 401k - I don't believe in monitoring that one so closely, and that was even before the current troubles.

Check this out: [link]

WTF?

re: Caganers

I loved the German version

In German : Choleramännchen or Hinterlader ("Little Cholera Man" or "Breech-loader")

Ah, the peasant sense of humor.

I grew up in the middle of the woods in rural New England. I don't think I ever even had a key for my house. I've finally gotten my mom to get new locks so she at least can lock her doors, but I'm not sure if she ever does. She certainly doesn't lock them when she's home. Different cultures, for sure.

I was getting worried that Caganer was Catalonian for goatse.

I leave my door open sometimes, but only when I'm awake in the front room. The door faces inwards to the courtyard which is key access only, so I feel okay with it. Simplest way to cool the apartment.

organic oat bran goodness:

I can't believe how tanked my Roomba battery is. After bitching it only got 20 minutes, it now only gets 1 foot from the base. My apartment sucks the life right out of rechargeables. I mean, this can't be typical performance. The market would have tanked.

Now I'm trying to work out which batteries-not-from-Roomba are the right ones.

other than running down the batteries, is the roomba effective? I've pondered getting one.