I saw a local credit union in Portland offering a 4.5% APY on a checking account with no minimum.

It made me realize I've been leaving serious money on the table by keeping my emergency fund in a big bank's 0.01% savings account, so has anyone else found a surprisingly good local rate lately?

I bought a huge batch of supposedly 'acid-free' paper back in 2015 that wasn't

It was a great price, but the whole lot started yellowing within a year. I lost about $300 on materials for a custom order that I had to completely redo. Anyone know a reliable supplier for archival text blocks these days?

A tuk-tuk driver in Chiang Mai gave me the best work advice

I was stuck on a project in a cafe there last month, just staring at my screen. My driver, named Pong, saw me and said, 'You think too much in the box. Go see the mountains, then the answer comes.' I took his advice, spent the afternoon at Doi Suthep, and solved the problem that evening. Has a local ever given you a tip that fixed a work block?

Showerthought: I used to spend 3 days on a standard house closing file, now I'm down to 8 hours.

A guy on the Ohio River last season told me my bucket teeth were spaced wrong for the clay layer. He was right.

Just realized my old way of cleaning aperture blades was making things worse

For years I'd use a cotton swab with a tiny bit of lighter fluid, but last week I tried a proper synthetic brush and a drop of naphtha instead. The blades moved smoother and left zero residue, which was a huge upgrade. Anyone got other tips for sticky aperture mechanisms on old SLRs?

I decided to be brutally honest on my dating profile and it actually worked, but not how you'd think.

That time a $300 laser level turned my simple deck job into a comedy show

I was building a small deck for a neighbor and decided to finally buy a proper rotating laser level. I figured it would save time on setting posts and beams. The thing cost me about $300, which felt like a lot for a tool I might only use a few times a year. I set it up on its tripod, turned it on, and got the beam nice and level across the site. Then their cat, a big orange tabby named Gus, decided the little red dot on the ground was the most fascinating thing ever. He spent the next hour chasing that dot up and down the stringers, pouncing on every post mark I made. I had to keep stopping to shoo him away, and I'm pretty sure he thought we were playing a game. The job took twice as long, and I spent half of it laughing at this cat's dedication. In the end, the level worked great, but Gus was the real star of the show. Has anyone else had a pet or animal completely take over a work site?