Wasted $200 on a shady VPN service that logged everything

I signed up for a VPN last year after seeing an ad promising total privacy. Paid for two years upfront. Then I found a forum post showing they kept connection logs and sold data to advertisers. When I tried to cancel, they made me jump through hoops and refused a refund. Has anyone else fallen for one of these and found a reliable alternative?

Spent 3 hours chasing a bad grind on my new bandsaw blade yesterday

I was cutting some pork shoulders and the blade kept wandering no matter what I did. Adjusted tension, checked the guides, even swapped the blade out. Turned out the weld on the blade had a tiny bump I could feel with my fingernail. Had to file it down smooth and it cut perfect after that. 3 hours because I didn't check the weld first. Has anyone else dealt with a bad factory weld on a new blade?

Overheard a guy at the hardware store say 'cedar mulch is for show, not for soil' and now I'm rethinking my whole garden plan

I was picking up a bag of lime last Saturday and this older fella was talking to the cashier about how he stopped using colored mulch years ago. Said it just sits on top and does nothing for the ground underneath. I've been dumping bags of that red dyed stuff on my flower beds for 3 seasons now. My soil is still like clay. I never once thought about what the mulch was actually doing besides looking nice. Has anyone else just kinda assumed mulch was helping and then found out it wasn't?

Hardwired vs wireless motion detectors - found out the hard way

I swapped out a bunch of old hardwired motion detectors for wireless ones on a job in Austin last month, thinking it would save time on running cable. But the wireless units kept triggering false alarms from a neighbor's garage door opener, and I spent three days troubleshooting before switching back to hardwired. Has anyone else had trouble with RF interference messing up their installs in dense neighborhoods?

Ran a lathe into a chuck face back in 2019 and learned a lot that day

I was running a late night shift on a Mazak at a shop near Akron. Got distracted by a text from my fiance and cranked the Z way too fast. Crashed a Kennametal boring bar into the chuck body, bent the tool holder and left a nice mark on the chuck face. How do you bounce back after a big crash without letting it rattle you the rest of the shift?

Shoutout to the guy who showed me a thermal camera for board hunting

Used to spend 20 minutes probing caps and guessing what was heating up before I borrowed a $200 FLIR from a buddy last September and found a bad MOSFET in under 30 seconds - has anyone else had a cheap thermal camera pay for itself on one job?

Had a client's dog bite me because I didn't read the notes right (wrist still hurts 4 days later)

Just realized my phone's mic is always listening on purpose

I used to think the targeted ads for stuff I talked about were just coincidence. Then last month I mentioned needing a new vacuum to my neighbor in my apartment kitchen, and four hours later I got an Instagram ad for a Dyson. It freaked me out enough that I went into my settings and turned off microphone access for most apps. Has anyone else had that moment where an app creepily predicted what you wanted to buy?

Old IT guy told me never to use thermal paste on CPUs, argued it was a scam

I followed his advice for 2 years until a PC I built in July hit 95C under load and I finally caved, added paste, and now it idles at 35C - so was he totally wrong or did thermal paste just get better recently, has anyone else had an old timer swear by this?

I finally finished a book club pick that took me 3 months longer than everyone else

Our group picked 'The Priory of the Orange Tree' back in January and I just finished it last week. It's 800 pages and I honestly didn't expect that massive world building part in the middle where nothing happens for like 200 pages. I kept putting it down to read lighter stuff and then felt guilty every meeting. The discussion was long over by the time I got to the ending, so I couldn't even talk about the dragon plot twist with anyone. Has anyone else lagged way behind on a chunky fantasy book and just had to accept you'll miss the group chat?