PSA: I thought those 'forge welding in a coffee can' videos were a total joke

Saw a guy on YouTube from Boise do a full weld in a homemade can forge with just a hair dryer. Tried it myself with a 1/4 inch piece of rebar and a bag of charcoal, and it actually worked for a basic join. Has anyone else tried a super low budget setup that surprised them?

Why does nobody talk about cedar posts splitting after a single season in dry climates?

I mean, I had a whole line of them in a Phoenix job last fall start cracking by spring, so now I'm switching to pressure-treated pine for anything out there and wondering if anyone else has a better fix.

TIL Edmonton has a specific rule about how many trees you can plant on your boulevard

Found it buried in the city's 'yard and boulevard' bylaws online. Anyone know if they actually enforce this?

Overheard a customer say all repair techs just swap parts until something works

I was grabbing coffee yesterday and the guy in front of me was telling his friend his fridge was fixed. He said, 'They just throw parts at it until it runs again, it's all the same.' Man, that got under my skin. I spent like two hours last week on a Samsung RF28 fridge with a weird defrost issue, tracing voltages and checking the board with my multimeter before I even touched a part. It was a bad sensor, not the board or heater. If I just started swapping, I'd have cost the guy over $300 in parts he didn't need. It's not guessing, it's diagnosing. Stuff like that makes people think our job is easy and overpriced. How do you guys explain your process to customers so they get it?

I accidentally used fixer before developer and my photos vanished

I was so proud to set up my first home development station. Followed a blog post step by step, or so I thought. Grabbed the bottles, mixed the chems, and started the process. Only after I poured the fixer in did I realize my mistake. The whole roll came out completely clear, like I never shot anything. I just sat there in the dim light, staring at blank negatives. Lmao, all those shots from my vacation, gone in a flash. Now I label everything with big bright tape so I don't mix them up again.

Wondering if new tech is making us forget the basics

I was fixing an old desktop and remembered how we USED to swap parts manually to diagnose issues. Today, diagnostic software does most of the work in minutes. On one hand, this is FASTER and lets us help more people. On the other hand, I fear we're not learning the deep hardware knowledge that comes from hands-on work. It feels like we're trading skill for speed. Do you think this shift is good for the trade in the long run? Let's debate!

Can we move past shipping and discuss anime themes? The constant pairings talk is stale.

TIL my cousin's rail alignment trick isn't worth it

He swears it speeds things up, but every fence ends up crooked. I do it the long way now.

Vent: My boss thought pottery shards were just broken cups from lunch.

I mean, we had to explain the difference between ancient artifacts and modern trash.