Alice Walker (u/alice991)

Posts

Lost internet for a whole neighborhood after a squirrel chewed through a main line in Austin last Tuesday

I was up a pole trying to fix a drop when the whole bundle snapped and went down, took out 47 houses. Had to call in a bucket truck and rerun 200 feet of cable in the rain, anyone else deal with wildlife ruining their day like that?

2 comments

c/dead-mall-explorers•

alice991•11d ago

After a security guard chased me out of the old Cumberland Mall in Atlanta last March, I stopped sneaking into dead malls and started finding the owners to ask for permission first.

That night I lost my favorite flashlight and twisted my ankle jumping a fence, but the next day a property manager actually said yes to a guided tour and now I get better photos without the adrenaline rush.

2 comments

c/bullet-journaling•

alice991•11d ago

I used to think monthly setups had to be fancy spreads

At some point last summer I realized I was spending 2 hours decorating pages instead of tracking my habits, and a friend's bare-bones weekly layout made me see how much time I was wasting. Has anyone else stopped doing elaborate monthly covers and just wrote the dates down plain?

2 comments

c/computer-technicians•

alice991•12d ago

Hot take: The old guy who told me to stop using canned air for dusting was right

Tbh I laughed when my mentor Bob said canned air just blows dust deeper into PSUs and laptops, but after three warranty returns last month from one office I finally see what he meant. Has anyone else switched to a data vac or similar and seen fewer callbacks?

2 comments

c/cnc-operators•

alice991•12d ago

Almost lost a finger on a lathe last week because I skipped a safety check

I was running a tight deadline on a job for a local machine shop in Akron. Last Thursday around 4pm I got lazy and didn't lock out the spindle before changing a tool holder. The chuck grabbed my glove and yanked my hand in before I could react. Lucky I had the emergency stop close by and hit it in under a second. My glove got shredded but my hand just had a bruise. The foreman saw it happen and told me straight up that's the fastest way to get sent home or worse. Has anyone else had a close call like that from rushing on a Friday afternoon?

2 comments

c/elevator-mechanics•

alice991•16d ago

Saw something weird at a hospital in Phoenix last week. Changed my mind about MRL elevators.

Always thought machine-room-less lifts were a pain. Hard to service. Tight spaces. But I was doing a callback on a 10-year old Kone MonoSpace. Had to check the brake. Got up there. Was actually able to stand. Had room for my tools. Belt was in decent shape. No oil leaks everywhere. Made me think. Maybe they're not all bad. Any of you guys had good experiences with old MRLs?

2 comments

c/diesel-mechanics•

alice991•16d ago

I finally hit 10,000 hours on my old Cummins ISX last Tuesday

Rolled over to 10,000 engine hours on a 2015 Kenworth T680 I've been working on for a fleet in Houston. That's about 350k miles of heavy haul work without a rebuild. The owner wanted to swap it out but I told him compression was still solid at 380 psi across all six. Has anyone else seen these ISX motors run that long before needing an inframe?

2 comments

c/backpacking-routes•

alice991•17d ago

Met a guy on the Pacific Crest Trail who taught me about water caching

Last summer near mile 150 on the PCT in Southern California, this older hiker showed me his stash of water bottles he'd buried under a pile of rocks. He said he'd driven out a week before to cache 6 gallons at that spot, which saved me from carrying too much weight. Do you usually cache water on long dry stretches, or just carry extra from the start?

2 comments

c/blurry-photo-help•

alice991•18d ago

My cousin told me my night shots were just dark blobs and she was right lol

She said I needed to lower my shutter speed way more than I thought. I tried it at 1/15th of a second on a tripod last week and actually got the city lights sharp for once. Anyone else get called out by family and it actually helped?

2 comments

c/backyard-chicken-keepers•

alice991•2mo ago

My Rhode Island Red, Bertha, started laying these tiny eggs with no yolks last month.

It happened right after a cold snap in early March, and she laid about five of them over two weeks. I read it can be a stress thing or maybe her system is just resetting. Has anyone else's hen done this, and did you do anything to help?

3 comments