Rant: Tried pouring concrete footings myself and ended up with a leaning deck

Look, I thought I could save a couple hundred bucks by mixing and pouring my own footings for a small deck I built in my yard back in Tulsa. I used a 10-inch sonotube and did the math on how many bags of Sakrete I needed. But here's what I didn't account for, I didn't check if the ground was level before pouring. Long story short, the tube shifted a few inches when I was filling it, and I didn't notice until the next day when the concrete had set all crooked. Now my deck has a slight lean on one corner that I can't really fix without tearing the whole thing out. My neighbor who builds decks for a living saw it and just shook his head. He told me footings have to be absolutely level and plumb, or you're asking for trouble. Has anyone else messed up a pour like this and found a fix that doesn't involve starting over?

Debate: is it worth insulating a 1950s adobe or does it cause more rot? I saw a huge difference in my electric bill after I did mine last winter drop from $280 to $160 a month but my neighbor says his walls started sweating and he got mold. What's the real deal with old ABQ homes?

Wasted $80 on fancy potting soil that killed my seedlings

I spent $80 on this premium organic potting mix from a garden center in Portland thinking it would give my tomatoes a head start. Turns out it was way too dense and held water like a sponge. All 12 seedlings rotted within two weeks because the soil wouldn't drain. I should have just mixed my own with perlite and compost from the local nursery. Has anyone else had bad luck with those expensive bagged soils? What mix actually works for starting seeds indoors?

The guy at the hardware store gave me a tip about PVC glue that saved my sprinkler system

He told me to use the blue can for wet pipe in my backyard trench when it rained, and after 4 months of pressure tests it still hasn't leaked, has anyone else had a pro tip from a random store worker that actually worked out?

Finally figured out why my Python script kept crashing after 3 weeks of head scratching

I was building a simple web scraper for a side project on local real estate listings in Portland. Turns out I was using a list comprehension wrong and it was eating up all my memory after about 100 entries. Learned that .append() in a loop is way safer for big datasets than trying to be clever with one-liners. Has anyone else had a basic mistake turn into a huge time sink?

That old Rolleiflex shutter that locked up on me during a rush job

I was in my basement shop last Thursday trying to finish a Rolleiflex 3.5F before the owner picked it up Saturday. The shutter was cleaning up fine until I tested it and it just jammed at 1/500. Turns out a tiny sliver of old lubricant had dried and stuck the blade stack together. I had to disassemble the whole shutter block, clean each blade with lighter fluid, and reassemble it piece by piece. It runs smooth now but it ate up my whole evening. Anybody else run into old gummed-up lubricant on these German shutters?

Just realized my neighbor has been right about dishwasher filters this whole time

My neighbor Rick came over last week while I was wrestling my Bosch panel off for the 3rd time this summer. He said “you know those self-cleaning filters are a scam right” and laughed at me. I got defensive but he showed me his 12 year old KitchenAid with a manual filter that he cleans once a month. Looked brand new inside. Now I’m wondering if I should ditch this “self cleaning” garbage and get an old school model instead. Anyone else feel like the new tech is just more headaches?

Hot take: people who swear by using the sanitize cycle on every load are wasting money and electricity

I stopped using the sanitize cycle 6 months ago after my energy bill hit $150, and guess what, my glasses still don't have spots and my plates still come out clean, so why are we all pretending 150 degree water is necessary when 120 works fine?

Just realized I spent $87 on rooferooter calls this year for the same damn clog.

Three separate visits at $29 a pop and the guy finally told me it's tree roots in the main line, not the kitchen sink, so now I gotta rent a snake and dig up the yard. Anyone else pay way too much before figuring out the real issue?

Stumbled on a wild stat about how many layers people use in their digital paintings

I was reading through some old threads on a digital art forum last night, and someone posted a breakdown from a 2023 survey. Apparently the average digital artist uses around 80 layers per finished piece, but some horror stories went up to 300 plus. That blew my mind because I usually max out at maybe 15 layers before my laptop starts crying for mercy. The survey was from some art school blog, so take it with a grain of salt. But has anyone else found that their layer count is way lower or higher than that average?