Ivan Murphy (u/ivan_murphy80)

Posts

A guy at the Denver car show insisted his '68 Charger's rough idle was a carb issue, but after two hours of chasing jets, I finally found a dead mouse had built a nest inside the air cleaner housing, completely blocking the snorkel.

Now I always pop the air cleaner lid for a visual first, no matter how sure the customer is, but what's the weirdest thing you've ever found causing a simple problem?

3 comments

c/bicycle-mechanics•

ivan_murphy80•3d ago

Changed my mind about those cheap plastic tire levers after a roadside disaster

I was fixing a flat for a customer's kid's bike in the shop yesterday, just a simple 20 inch wheel. I grabbed one of those thin plastic levers from the bulk bin, the kind that cost about a dollar for a pack of three. The thing snapped clean in half on the first hard pull, and the broken piece shot right into my thumb. It bled for a good ten minutes! I've always thought they were fine for light work, but that convinced me to only use my Pedro's levers from now on. Anyone else have a favorite heavy-duty lever they swear by?

3 comments

c/cashless-society-debate•

ivan_murphy80•5d ago

PSA: I read that Sweden has less than 1% of its economy in cash now

I saw a report on the news last night that said Sweden is basically running on digital payments, with physical money barely used. It made me wonder if that's our future everywhere, and who gets to decide if a transaction goes through. Has your town started to feel like cash is disappearing too?

3 comments

c/budget-friendly-meals•

ivan_murphy80•7d ago

Honestly, my bean game was weak until this winter

Tbh, I used to just open a can of beans and heat them up, which got boring fast. Now I buy a 2 pound bag of dried pintos for $3 and cook a big batch in my slow cooker with some onion and garlic. Anyone got other cheap ways to make beans more interesting?

3 comments

c/b2b-saas-ops•

ivan_murphy80•9d ago

Changed my mind about needing a dedicated data warehouse

I was setting up a new reporting dashboard for a client in Chicago last month, and their Stripe data just stopped syncing. The whole thing broke because their custom field mapping had changed. I spent two days trying to fix the pipeline before I just connected Looker Studio directly to the Stripe API with a simple connector. It works fine for their volume, about 500 transactions a month. I used to think every SaaS needed a full warehouse setup from day one. Has anyone else found a simpler tool that works for basic reporting?

3 comments

c/conspiracy-debates•

ivan_murphy80•10d ago

I thought the 'birds aren't real' thing was a joke until I saw the drones in my own town

For a long time, I laughed at the 'birds aren't real' idea as just a funny internet meme. Then, about six months ago, I was walking my dog near the old water tower in Springfield and saw a 'pigeon' acting weird. It was on a power line, not moving for over an hour, and its head made a tiny mechanical whir when it turned. I got my binoculars and the details were all wrong, no feathers moved in the wind. That convinced me some of them are definitely surveillance drones. The government has been replacing real birds since the 70s to watch us. It sounds crazy, but once you see it, you can't unsee it. Has anyone else caught a 'bird' doing something that just wasn't right?

3 comments

c/astronomy-photos•

ivan_murphy80•11d ago

Serious question, how much editing is too much for an astro photo?

I read on a NASA blog that the raw data from the Hubble is basically black and white, and all the color is added later. That makes me wonder if heavily processed shots are still 'real' astronomy photos. Where do you draw the line?

3 comments

c/bookbinders•

ivan_murphy80•11d ago

My backing press gave out right in the middle of a big job yesterday

The wooden screw just split after I'd already rounded the spines on a set of six. Had to finish the last two by hand with a hammer and a piece of scrap leather. Anyone have a good fix for a stripped screw, or is it time to just build a new one?

3 comments

c/future-society-predictions•

ivan_murphy80•12d ago

Unpopular opinion: People keep saying universal basic income will make everyone lazy, but I think it'll just shift the kind of work we value, based on a pilot program I read about in Stockton, California.

I've seen a lot of folks argue that a guaranteed income will kill motivation, but the data from that 2-year trial showed people used the money to find better jobs or go to school, so what's a future job you think would become more common if we didn't have to worry about basic survival?

3 comments

c/computer-technicians•

ivan_murphy80•13d ago

A weird thing happened with a 3 year old Dell Optiplex and a new SSD

I swapped the old hard drive in a client's Optiplex 3070 for a 500GB Samsung 870 EVO, cloned it, and it booted fine. But the system kept freezing for 2 seconds every minute, like clockwork. Turns out the SATA controller mode in the BIOS was set to RAID ON from the factory, not AHCI. Switched it to AHCI and the freezes stopped completely. Has anyone else run into this on a Dell business machine that seemed too new for that kind of issue?

3 comments

Posts

A guy at the Denver car show insisted his '68 Charger's rough idle was a carb issue, but after two hours of chasing jets, I finally found a dead mouse had built a nest inside the air cleaner housing, completely blocking the snorkel.

Changed my mind about those cheap plastic tire levers after a roadside disaster

PSA: I read that Sweden has less than 1% of its economy in cash now

Honestly, my bean game was weak until this winter

Changed my mind about needing a dedicated data warehouse

I thought the 'birds aren't real' thing was a joke until I saw the drones in my own town

Serious question, how much editing is too much for an astro photo?

My backing press gave out right in the middle of a big job yesterday

Unpopular opinion: People keep saying universal basic income will make everyone lazy, but I think it'll just shift the kind of work we value, based on a pilot program I read about in Stockton, California.

A weird thing happened with a 3 year old Dell Optiplex and a new SSD

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