Update: My old Detroit 60 series went from 4 mpg to 6.5 after swapping the injectors and tuning the pump.

That was after a full rebuild in my shop over two weeks, but now I'm seeing a slight haze at idle, so should I adjust the timing or check for a different issue?

My cousin in construction says our trade is dying because of new furnace rules

He told me over coffee that with the push for electric heat pumps and high efficiency sealed gas units, the need for sweeps will drop by half in ten years. I argued back that older homes with fireplaces and wood stoves will always need service, plus we do inspections and liner repairs. He just shrugged and said 'adapt or find another trade'. It got me thinking about the long term. For those of you with a few decades in, do you see the work drying up, or just changing?

Overheard a guy at the hardware store rant about how his smart thermostat company sold his heating schedule data

It made me think about how we sign away control of our daily habits for a bit of convenience, and now I'm checking the data-sharing settings on everything from my fridge to my car.

My neighbor's comment about my struggling fiddle leaf fig turned things around

She saw it on my porch in Phoenix and said, 'That pot's way too big, it's drowning,' and moved it to a smaller container right there. Anyone else have a simple piece of plant advice that just clicked?

Three years ago, a facial recognition system in a Detroit apartment building misidentified my neighbor and locked him out for 12 hours.

Changed my mind about using a 4-inch versus a 6-inch suction line on a river job

I was working on a channel cleanout near Baton Rouge and figured the smaller line would be fine for the silt. My boss said to go with the six-inch, but I set up the four-inch anyway. After two days, we were barely moving material and falling behind schedule. I switched to the six-inch line on day three and we cleared the target area in eight hours. Has anyone else had a job where the bigger hose was the only thing that saved you?

I saw a report that 42% of people think a 10 year old tweet should be off limits for firing

That number really surprised me. It came from a survey last month about social media and jobs. I thought more people would say anything you post is always fair game, but a lot of folks draw a line at old posts. Has anyone here lost a job over something they wrote online a long time ago?

A storm in Portland made me rethink my whole climbing setup

I was working a big removal on a damaged maple in the West Hills about eight months ago. The wind picked up fast, and a gust snapped a dead limb I hadn't fully secured. It swung and hit my main line, putting a real bad twist in it. I had to switch to my backup rope to get down safely. That was the day I started checking my gear before every single climb, not just at the start of the week. Do you guys have a specific routine for checking your ropes and hardware?

Pro tip: I watched a guy at the old Hamilton plant pour a 50lb crucible with his gloves tucked into his sleeves, not over the cuffs.

That one habit, which he said he learned after a bad splash 10 years back, is the single best piece of safety advice I ever picked up on a shop floor, so what's the one small thing you do that you swear by?

Walked past the old shop on 4th Street yesterday and saw it's a phone repair place now.

I got my first real haircut there from a guy named Sal back in '98. He had the straight razor and the hot lather, the whole deal. The new place has bright lights and a kid staring at a screen. It just felt weird, like a piece of the neighborhood's soul got erased. Does anyone else have an old shop they miss?