Visited my aunt's place last Sunday and her dishwasher has a literal garden growing in the bottom rack

Ngl, I opened it up to help her figure out why nothing was getting clean and there was mold and a tiny sprout of something growing out of the filter area. Has anyone else dealt with a dishwasher that basically became a planter?

Why does nobody talk about how long it takes to fix a simple CSS alignment bug

Spent almost 4 hours last night trying to center a div in my first real project and it turned out I just needed to add 'margin: 0 auto' with a width set. I was reading all these Stack Overflow posts about flexbox and grid and none of them worked for my stupid simple layout. Has anyone else spent way too long on something that should have been a 2 minute fix?

DIY eviction vs hiring a lawyer, I picked wrong

Honestly, I tried to evict a tenant myself using online forms for my duplex in Austin. Saved $800 in lawyer fees at first, but the tenant fought back with a technicality on the notice date and the judge threw out my case. Took me 3 extra months and $1,200 in court costs to finally get them out. Has anyone else tried self-help legal stuff and ended up paying way more later?

Shoutout to the old guy at the hardware store who fixed my day

Last Tuesday I was in Lowes at 10 pm trying to find a specific washer for a leaky faucet and this old timer walked up out of nowhere. He just grabbed the washer out of my hand and said 'you need a 5/8 inch rubber one, not that brass junk' and handed me the right one. Didn't even say anything else, just walked off. Still think about that random act of helpfulness sometimes lol. Has anyone else had a stranger just absolutely save your project at the last second?

Spent $350 on a power stretcher and it tore my first carpet job

Bought a new power stretcher from Home Depot for $350, figured it'd make life easier, but the adjustment knob snapped on the second room. Has anyone else had their gear fail right out of the box like that?

My seam roller handle snapped clean off halfway through a big job in a new build over in Bayside.

It was a cheap one I'd had for a while, but the timing was awful. The carpet was down, glue was wet, and I had to finish that seam. Ended up using the butt end of my utility knife to press it down, which worked in a pinch but wasn't ideal. What's a solid, no-fail seam roller brand you guys swear by? I don't want a repeat of that.

My friend Jake told me to just delete my half-finished novel file

Honestly, he said it would free up mental space and I could start fresh. Ngl, I tried it and immediately panicked, losing about 40k words I actually liked. Tbh, I had to use a data recovery tool to get it back. Has anyone else gotten really bad advice that almost killed a project for good?

Pro tip: I learned the hard way about mixing paint in a cold garage last winter

I was painting a built-in shelf in my unheated garage in January, temp was about 40 degrees. I mixed a custom color, rolled it on, and it looked fine. The next morning the finish was all wrinkled and tacky. A painter I know in Cincinnati told me the cold made the paint skin over before the layers underneath could dry right. Now I always bring the paint and the piece inside to warm up for a few hours first. Is it better to just not paint in the cold at all, or are there specific products that work?

Getting called out at the Portland Comic Con totally shifted how I collect now

I was bragging about my 200-issue run of a series to a vendor, and he just said 'You know owning them isn't the same as enjoying them, right?' and now I'm selling half my unread long boxes to actually read the stories.

Hot take: Seeing a huge digital mural in a Detroit warehouse last year made me stop caring about perfect layers.