Spent $300 on a social media scrubber before a job hunt

It found a tweet from 2012 where I made a dumb joke about my old boss. I deleted it, but it made me wonder how many people get caught by stuff they forgot they posted. Do you think companies actually go back that far?

Looking back on how I used to keep plant notes

Back in 2010, I had a single, messy notebook where I'd scribble watering dates for my maybe 10 houseplants. It was a guessing game, honestly. The big change came around 2018 when I got a fiddle leaf fig that kept dropping leaves. I started a simple spreadsheet on my phone, tracking water, light hours, and even the room's temperature. Now, for my 40 plus plants, I log everything there with quick notes and pictures. It's saved so many plants from my old 'wait and see' method. Has anyone else switched from paper to digital for their plant care logs, and what app or system do you find works best?

My shop's 12-valve Cummins just hit 850,000 miles on the original bottom end

We pulled the pan last week for a routine inspection on this old bread truck engine. The owner said it's never been opened up, just regular oil changes with 15W-40. The bearings still had visible cross-hatching and the crank journals looked great, no scoring at all. I've seen plenty of these go the distance, but this one was a shocker. What's the highest mileage you've seen on an untouched 5.9L?

Just got back from a week in Chicago and I'm convinced people are overpaying for airport transfers.

Serious question, has anyone else had a core box just SHATTER on them?

Three years ago at the old Mid-State Foundry, I was ramming up a big gear pattern and the wooden core box literally came apart in my hands. The foreman just shrugged and said 'it happens', but I realized then that checking for dry rot and loose joints BEFORE you start is non-negotiable. What's your pre-pour checklist look like for stuff like that?

Had to pick between two AI image generators for a client project last month

The client wanted a specific style of architectural renderings and I was stuck between Midjourney and a newer one called Ideogram. Went with Ideogram because it handled text in the images way better, like putting a company logo on a building facade. It worked out, but the style control was a bit less flexible than I hoped. Anyone have a go-to for detailed, branded image generation?

Question about using a boring bar versus a reamer for a tight tolerance hole

I had a job last week where I needed a 0.750 inch hole with a plus or minus half a thou tolerance in 4140 steel. The print called for a reamer, but my only good one was worn out. I had to choose between ordering a new reamer and waiting two days or trying to hit it with a carbide boring bar on my lathe. I went with the boring bar, taking really light cuts and checking after each pass with my bore gauge. It took me about an hour to dial it in, but I got the hole to 0.7502, which was right in the middle of the spec. The finish looked great, and the part passed inspection. Has anyone else had to make a call like that on the fly? What's your backup plan when a tool is shot and the clock is ticking?

I thought outsourcing our customer service was a bad idea until we tried it.

Our small software company in Austin was drowning in support tickets. I was sure an outside team wouldn't understand our product well enough. We signed a 6-month contract with a B2B service provider anyway, just to test it. After 3 months, our average ticket close time dropped from 48 hours to under 8. They actually trained their agents better than we could ourselves. Has anyone else had a good experience with a specific type of outsourced support?

Serious question, has anyone else had a resume scanner reject them for a job they were clearly qualified for?

Mine got flagged last week for a data analyst role requiring 3 years of SQL experience, which I have from my 4 years at my current firm, because the algorithm parsed my resume differently than a human would.

Was in a hotel lobby in Charlotte last week and saw the most amazing floral display built into a wall fountain