An old lead tech back in 2012 told me to stop chasing gremlins with a multimeter first

That $60 "universal" remote I bought failed at the most basic job

Picked up a fancy universal remote from a store in Portland last week thinking it would simplify my setup. Turns out it can't even turn on my 5-year-old TV without going through a 10-minute setup menu every time the batteries die. I ended up digging my old remote out of the junk drawer and just using that again instead. Has anyone else had better luck with a specific brand or should I just accept the clutter?

Vent: Walked through a Target parking lot and counted 6 different agency vans doing the same thing

Why does nobody talk about password managers for families

I had to choose between using the same password for everything or paying for a family plan for a password manager last year. I went with Bitwarden's family plan for $40 a year since my wife and I share accounts for bills and streaming. It was annoying at first getting her to use it, but after 3 months she actually likes it more than me. Has anyone else convinced their partner to switch and had it backfire at first?

That chat with my old boss about float layouts got me thinking

Was talking to my old boss from like 2012 last week and he mentioned how we used to spend hours debugging float issues on IE6. Now I just slap display: flex on everything and move on with my day. Anyone else ever stop and realize how much simpler modern CSS has made things?

Pulled wire with a poly rope for years, finally tried a mule tape on a 200ft run last week

I've been using the same stiff poly rope for pulling wire through conduit since I started with my old boss back in 2017. It always worked fine for short runs under 50 feet, but last week I had a 200ft pull of 4/0 copper through 3 inch EMT at a warehouse near Nashville. That poly rope kept binding up on every 90 degree bend, and I spent 45 minutes fighting it. A journeyman on site handed me a roll of mule tape from his truck and said just try it. The mule tape rode smooth through every bend, no snagging, and the whole pull was done in under 10 minutes. It's way flatter and tougher than my old rope, and it doesn't stretch under tension like poly does. Has anyone else made the switch and noticed a big difference on long or complex pulls?

That $15 Harbor Freight brake bleeder actually didn't suck yesterday

Had to bleed the brakes on my buddy's 2005 F-150 and the bleeder screws were seized up something fierce. Tried the traditional two-person method (you know, yelling back and forth) and it was a mess. Grabbed that cheap vacuum bleeder I've been ignoring in my toolbox for like 6 months and it pulled the fluid through smooth on the first try. Anyone else find a random cheap tool that ended up being way better than expected?

Am I the only one noticing everyone painting their front doors black now?

I was driving through a neighborhood in Austin last weekend and counted 7 black front doors in one block. It felt like 3 years ago everyone was doing this crazy bright teal or yellow to stand out. Last month my neighbor painted hers black and now the whole street is starting to follow. Is this just a trend that's going to make everything look the same in a few years or am I overthinking it?

Just realized I was doing my gap trick totally backwards

I've been using CSS Grid for maybe 2 years now, and I always placed my gap values inside the grid container as a shorthand. Like grid-gap: 20px. It worked fine so I never questioned it. Then last week I was watching a tutorial on grid patterns and the guy put gap: 20px on a child element instead of the parent. I literally paused the video and stared at my screen for a minute. Turns out you can set gaps on individual grid items using grid-column-gap and grid-row-gap separately. I had been fighting with nested containers to make different spacing between rows and columns. Now I can just set a 10px row gap on some items and a 30px column gap on others. Has anyone else found a basic grid property they ignored forever only to discover it later?

Can we talk about color grading between portrait shoots

I noticed a huge before and after difference in my skin tones after I switched to a calibrated monitor last month. The shift was night and day. My old screen had a blue tint, so my shadows looked purple. I spent $200 on a basic calibration tool and it fixed that in about 10 minutes. Now I'm wondering if my lighting setup is still off. Has anyone else dealt with false colors from an uncalibrated screen ruining their edits?