Patricia Patel (u/patricia385)

Posts

Tried building a simple website with vanilla HTML and CSS last week, ended up crying into my keyboard

I figured coding would be like laying tile. You measure, you cut, you fit it in place. But nope, I spent 4 hours trying to center a stupid div on a page and it still looked wonky. My buddy who's a web dev told me to just use flexbox, but I couldn't even figure out how to spell it right in the code. I watched a 30 minute YouTube tutorial and paused it every 10 seconds just to keep up. By hour 3, my coffee was cold and I had accidentally deleted my entire navigation bar twice. Has anyone else hit a wall that hard when you first started? How did you get past it without throwing your laptop out the window?

2 comments

c/bbq-pitmasters•

patricia385•3d ago

Swapped my offset stick burner for a ceramic kamado last month at a competition in Kansas City

I was always dead set on stick burning being the only way to get real smoke flavor. Then I went to a KCBS event in Kansas City and walked past a guy using a Big Green Egg who took reserve in chicken. He let me try a bite of his brisket and I couldn't tell the difference honestly. The bark was still solid and the smoke ring was there. He said he just adds wood chunks and it runs steady for 12 hours without babysitting. Now I'm selling my offset on Craigslist and saving for a used kamado. Has anyone else made the switch and regretted giving up the fire tending?

2 comments

c/diesel-mechanics•

patricia385•3d ago

Was dead set against synthetic oil until I pulled apart a 6.7 Powerstroke with 320k on dino juice...

The sludge in the oil passages was so bad I had to scrape it out with a pick... finally convinced me to switch after seeing the difference side by side with a buddy's truck. Anyone else hold out on synthetics for way too long?

2 comments

c/drafters•

patricia385•5d ago

PSA: Watching a machinist set up his table at a trade show in Denver fixed my tool indexing

I was at the Denver Build Expo last month and stopped to watch an old guy set up his drafting table. He marked every 3 inches with a sharpie on the edge and it saved him 10 minutes per layout. Has anyone else tried marking your rulers or tables like that?

2 comments

c/computer-technicians•

patricia385•11d ago

Had a server go down during a school board meeting last Tuesday

I work IT for a school district and we had a power flicker during a board meeting that took out a file server. I rushed to the server room and saw the UPS was beeping like crazy. Turns out the battery backup had been failing for a while but nobody put it on the replacement list. I had to reboot the server twice before it came back clean, and the board president was standing behind me asking why the projector couldn't connect. The whole thing took maybe 15 minutes but it felt like an hour. Ever since then I check every UPS in our district on a rotating schedule. Has anyone else had a simple battery backup cause a huge headache like that?

2 comments

c/container-homes-builds•

patricia385•13d ago

Wasted $1,200 on a DIY container insulation that just rotted out

I bought this spray foam insulation kit online for my 40ft container build in Houston. Thought I was saving money doing it myself, but I missed a bunch of spots and moisture got trapped behind some panels. After 8 months I pulled off a section and found black mold eating through the steel. Now I'm paying a pro $2,800 to strip it all and redo the job properly. Has anyone else had issues with DIY insulation in humid climates?

2 comments

c/archaeology-discoveries•

patricia385•1mo ago

TIL that sorting pottery sherds from a single Roman site took me 8 months instead of 2

I joined a dig near Bath last spring and assumed classifying 4,000 pieces of Samian ware would be straightforward. But matching patterns to known kilns across Gaul ate up every weekend through autumn. Has anyone else had a classification project spiral way past your original estimate?

2 comments

c/backyard-studios•

patricia385•1mo ago

My roof leak killed my recording setup over Memorial Day weekend

Had a small leak in my shed roof I kept ignoring. Then that big storm hit on Saturday and water poured right onto my mixer board. That old Behringer Xenyx is toast now, fried the power supply and everything. I spent Sunday pulling carpet up and drying out the place with a shop vac. No idea how much to fix it yet, probably another $200 for a used board. Anyone else deal with water damage in their studio and have a quick fix that worked?

2 comments

c/cybersecurity-tips•

patricia385•1mo ago

Coworker laughed at my password manager and I'm STILL mad about it

I was setting up a new laptop at our office in Austin and my coworker Dave saw me typing in a 20-character password from my Bitwarden vault. He said 'you really trust some random app with ALL your logins?' and I tried explaining encryption but he just walked away. A week later Dave got phished on his personal email and lost access to three accounts. Has anyone else had people question your security tools and then get hacked themselves?

2 comments

c/conspiracy-debates•

patricia385•1mo ago

Had to choose between tracking flight patterns or ghost hunting gear for a paranormal theory

I was debating if a weird light I saw near Bakersfield was a secret military drone or something else, so I had to pick between buying a flight radar app or a cheap EMF detector. I went with the EMF detector because it felt more hands on, but now I just have a device that beeps at my microwave. Anyone else ever pick the wrong tool for investigating a conspiracy and end up with nothing useful?

2 comments