Stopped at this weird roadside diner in Kansas and the pie case was full of pickled eggs

My quick-dry towel trick saved space on a 2 week trip to Portland

Last month I packed for a trip to Portland with just a 30L backpack. I brought a thin microfiber towel instead of a bulky cotton one and it dried in like 2 hours on the hotel rack. That freed up enough room for an extra pair of shoes. Has anyone else tried these for long trips or do you stick with regular towels?

My foreman dropped a brick measurement fact on me that I never knew

I was laying out a wall last Thursday and my foreman said that a standard brick's bed depth is actually 3 and 5/8 inches, not the 4 inches I always assumed. He pulled out a worn old chart from the 1970s showing how modern bricks shrank a quarter inch for easier handling. Has anyone else run into older specs that threw off their mortar calculations?

Showerthought: I thought networking events were a waste of time until last month

I always figured those mixers were just people handing out business cards and making fake small talk. But last month at a local startup meetup in Austin, I ended up chatting with a guy who runs a small dev shop. He mentioned they were looking for a junior dev and I had just finished a bootcamp. Three interviews later I got the job. Has anyone else had a random conversation at an event actually lead to something real?

Ran 12/2 wire through an attic in July and learned what heat does to the insulation

Last summer I had to pull a new circuit in a house in Austin. Attic was probably 140 degrees. After about 20 minutes I noticed the Romex outer jacket felt sticky and soft. When I pushed it through a joist hole, the insulation kinda peeled back in a spot. I had to scrap that run and start over with a fresh roll. Anyone else had attic heat mess with cable like that?

Spanning tree took down half our floor after a switch loop I didn't catch

Last Tuesday around 2pm, the network on floor 3 just died. Phones, computers, everything. I walked over to the wiring closet and found a junior tech had patched two ports on the same switch together while tracing cables. The STP priority was set wrong on that switch so it didn't block in time. Broadcast storm took about 4 minutes to fry the uplink. Took us 20 minutes to isolate which switch it was because the logs just showed CRC errors everywhere. I reconfigured the priority and added loop guard on all access ports after that. Has anyone else had a loop bring down more than just a single closet?

Had my bag searched in Tokyo because I rolled my clothes wrong

Last trip to Narita airport security pulled me aside to check my carry on. Turns out rolling jeans and t shirts makes a dense shape that looks weird on the x ray lol. Anybody else get flagged for rolling?

The argument over pressure treated vs cedar for deck boards after my neighbor's deck rotted out in 18 months

After my neighbor up the street had his whole cedar deck turn to mush after just 18 months because he didn't seal it right, I'm wondering if pressure treated is the smarter move even though it looks worse. He spent $1,200 on cedar and now it's trash, but people swear cedar lasts forever if you maintain it. Has anyone else dealt with this trade off on a deck build?

Was dead sure the 5G towers were causing my headaches until I tracked my symptoms for a month

Turns out my headaches matched up perfectly with my neighbor's wood-burning stove kicking on every evening, not the cell tower down the street, so has anyone else had a health scare turn out to be something totally mundane?

Old timer swore by ATF and acetone as penetrating oil, I laughed. Then I tried it.

My neighbor, a guy who's been turning wrenches since the 70s, told me to mix automatic transmission fluid with acetone for rusted bolts. I figured he was full of it (you know, old guy stuff) and kept using my $12 spray can. Finally tried his mix on a seized exhaust manifold bolt on a 2002 F-150 last Saturday, and it broke loose in under 10 minutes. The bolt came out clean, no snapped studs. So now I'm torn: is this magic actually better than the store-bought stuff, or did I just get lucky? Anyone else actually test this side by side on something nasty?