Finally stopped bagging my comics and just went with a binder system

Took my telescope to a dark sky site and forgot my tripod head

Last Saturday I drove two hours to a Bortle 2 zone in West Texas with my brand new 8-inch Dobsonian, all excited to capture the Orion Nebula. I unpacked everything in the dark, set up the base, and then realized I left the tripod head sitting on my garage workbench back home. My buddy who came with me couldn't stop laughing, and I just sat there for 20 minutes staring at the stars through binoculars he brought as a backup. It was honestly pretty funny after the initial frustration wore off, and we ended up just doing some naked-eye observing and talking about life. Has anyone else had a gear fail like this ruin a night of photography but turn into something cool anyway?

My old foreman swore by hand drafting over CAD for layout work

Way back when I was starting out, this guy Gary who ran the shop kept saying you'll never really understand a floor plan if you just click and drag in AutoCAD. He made me lay out a whole commercial kitchen remodel by hand with a scale ruler and a 4H pencil. Took me like 12 hours and I was so annoyed. But then when I imported it into the software later, I caught three clearance issues I would have totally missed. The triangles and sight lines just make more sense when you draw them manually first. Has anyone else had a boss push them toward old school methods that actually paid off?

TIL I was running spindle speed way too low for my smaller endmills

I was getting crap surface finish for like a year on .125 endmills and just blamed the tooling. Finally had a senior guy watch me run a part in Phoenix and he pointed out my chip load was all messed up because I was babying the RPMs. Has anyone else had that moment where you realized you were just guessing on speeds and feeds the whole time?

That time a stranger in the grocery store line told me to stop apologizing for my kid having a meltdown

She looked me dead in the eye and said 'you're not the one breaking the rules, society just hates loud feelings' and I still think about that three months later, has anyone else had a random person flip your whole perspective on parenting in public?

I finally gave up on Ozark after 3 seasons

My buddy kept telling me it gets better by episode 7 of season 2, so I pushed through 30 episodes waiting for that big payoff. Now I'm just sitting here thinking about all the other shows I could have watched in those 30 hours. Has anyone else stuck with a hyped series way too long just because someone promised it would get good?

Hit $50k in monthly recurring revenue last month and it felt totally unreal

I started this little bookkeeping service for local shops in Austin about three years ago. Never really thought about MRR until my accountant pointed out I crossed $50k in January. I mean I knew business was good but seeing that number on paper made me realize I'm not just running a side hustle anymore. Kinda nervous about keeping it going though. Anyone else hit a revenue milestone that changed how you saw your own business?

Had a weird coolant leak on a 6.7 Powerstroke last week

It was coming from the oil cooler housing, but not the usual spot... the leak was actually from the tiny weep hole on the bottom of the housing itself, which means the internal seal is shot. I had to pull the whole unit, which took about 4 hours with all the stuff in the way. Anyone else run into this on the newer Fords, or have a trick for getting that housing out faster?

My coffee scale hit 5000 uses and I had a small crisis

I was cleaning my gear last night and saw the counter on my Acaia scale. It read 5000 uses exactly. That means I've made coffee 5000 times with this thing since I got it 3 years ago. I sat there doing the math and realized that's like 4 or 5 cups a day, every single day. Has anyone else had a moment where a number made you see your coffee habit in a whole new light?

Chatting with a paramedic friend about bike helmets

He told me he sees a lot of crashes where the helmet looks fine but the foam inside is crushed. He said, 'If you drop it from waist height, you should replace it.' That's a much lower bar than I thought. How many of you check helmets that closely after a minor tip-over?