The carousel at West Oaks Mall finally stopped spinning for good last month

I drove by West Oaks Mall two weeks ago and noticed the carousel is gone. That thing had been running since they opened in 1988, and I used to take my niece there every Christmas just to ride it. They sold it off to some private collector before the mall closes for good in June. Anyone know what other old malls are losing their last original features?

That time a customer pointed out my endbands were backward

I been binding for about 6 years, but last spring a retired librarian came to pick up her journal and asked why my headbands were facing inward. Turns out I had been sewing them on the wrong side of the text block for years. Now I double check orientation before I glue up and it looks way more professional.

The day my son's adoptive mom sent me a video of his first steps

It was a Tuesday morning in April, I was just getting my coffee when the notification popped up. She wrote 'thought you'd want to see this' with a 30 second clip. Seeing him wobble across their living room rug in Chicago, I cried for a solid hour, but they were good tears. It was the first time I really felt like part of his life, not just a memory. Has anyone else had a moment like that, where a small thing from the adoptive family just hit you right in the heart?

I finally switched to a password manager after my Gmail got hit

I used to reuse the same password with small changes for everything, like 'Password123' for my bank and 'Password1234' for my email. After a credential stuffing attack got into my Gmail six months ago, I set up Bitwarden. Now I have a unique, 16-character random password for every single account, and I only have to remember one master phrase. Has anyone else had a good experience with a specific manager, or found a better way to handle the master password?

Appreciation post: My 3-year-old sourdough starter finally got a name after a trip to the coast

Last month, I took my starter jar to a cabin in Oregon and used local well water for a feeding, which made it more active than I've ever seen. I ended up calling it 'Dunes' because it just seemed to fit the bubbly, wild character it developed there. Has anyone else had a location change their fermentation project's personality like that?

Rant: A bad coax connector on a King Air's transponder had me chasing ghosts for a full shift

Got a squawk for a weak transponder signal on a King Air 200. Spent the whole morning checking the box, the antenna, and the wiring runs. Everything tested fine on the bench. The issue was a single BNC connector in the avionics bay that had a tiny bit of corrosion inside the center pin. It passed a basic continuity check but failed under load. Replaced the connector and the signal jumped right up. Anyone else had a simple connector cause a huge headache?

Had a call last Thursday for a stuck car in a 12-story office building, found a frayed governor rope that could've snapped any day

A guy in line at the hardware store told me he uses a 4-foot level for his posts

I was picking up some concrete bags in Tacoma last week and this older guy behind me saw my work shirt. He said he's been setting posts for 30 years and only uses a 4-foot level, never a 2-footer. He claimed the extra length catches the lean better over the full height of the post before the concrete sets. I tried it on a job yesterday with six 8-foot cedar posts and it did seem to save a bit of time on the back-check. Anyone else use a longer level for this, or is it just his personal quirk?