It’s annoying when the vacuum system has a small leak so, over that long road trip, the car is always slooooowly losing speed. It’s such a nightmare to diagnose, at least as a DIYer.

I would add Grist to that list for climate focused reporting.

Yes, there are propane powered mosquito traps that emit heat and CO2. Supposedly they are effective but costly.

Hah, nope. Shrek was made in Glendale, so they probably had everything on site or right next door.

In the early 2000s I worked on an animated film. The studio was in the southern part of Orange County CA, and the final color grading / print (still not totally digital then) was done in LA. It was faster to courier a box of hard drives than to transfer electronically. We had to do it a bunch of times because of various notes/changes/fuck ups. Then the results got courier’d back because the director couldn’t be bothered to travel for the fucking million dollars he was making.

Hmm, interesting question. I would say social media but it’s toxic for so many other reasons. Perhaps an online virtual assistant? Or maybe charge yourself a monthly or weekly fee into some account until you complete the task? Since it’s purely for yourself, whatever act “costs” you should be enough. A friend of mine was a huge proponent of making physical lists at the beginning of each day. He would then move any uncompleted tasks to the next day’s list, and the act of physically writing it was enough for him. He insisted it be on actual paper. This guy was super accomplished so it must have done something for him.

I also work well under deadlines but perform horribly without them. Upon reflection I realized a lot of my motivation is related to not disappointing others and/or embarrassing myself. Neglecting personal projects makes me feel like shit, but it’s missing the public humiliation factor so it won’t get me moving. A possible solution is to create deadlines for yourself and share them with people who will hold you accountable, or to whom you at least feel accountable. I also try to imagine how I will feel in a week, month, or year down the road when I still haven’t done THE THING, and realize that it’s only going to get worse the longer I go. This isn’t 100% successful but it does work sometimes.

This isn’t that rare. It is half the reason people hire personal trainers. The military also uses this technique, by framing failures as letting down your comrades rather than yourself.

This is a tricky thing to balance because using negativity and self criticism can become destructive. My grandma used to have a coal burning stove for heat. She said it was awful because too little coal and it would go out and was really hard to re-light. But too much coal and it would explode and blow coal dust all over their little house. I feel like self hate is kind of like that oven. Unfortunately nothing else has ever truly worked for me.

Also, I should add, one thought that brought me some self-forgiveness was the evolutionary roots of laziness. If you think about it, as an organism, if you’re well fed and in a good location your best bet is to chill under a shade tree until something comes up. As humans we are kind of cursed with extra simulation cores in our brain that can constantly iterate every single permutation of the future, and that leads to anxiety, but laziness is actually a virtue from an evolutionary perspective. So cut yourself some slack now and then.

The couple of times I had to do this I was in a bathroom stall by myself, and I had to put the jar through a little hatch in the wall. There was one of those little liquid crystal fishtank thermometers on the jar, and I couldn’t flush the toilet, but beyond that nothing crazy. I don’t think you get actively meatgazed unless it’s the military or the test is for something really serious.

I was the lowest rung CSR punching bag for many years, so no. I think that whole experience is what conditioned me to do what I’ve always done when I have bad service: cancel, chargeback (if necessary), move on. I’ve probably only left one or two bad reviews in my life, just to warn others of egregiously unsafe practices. One of those business reached out afterwards to “make it right”. Nope, no contact.

Those years also taught me that if you fill out a customer service survey and you give anything less than straight 10’s across the board then you are actively hurting the employee.

For me this was Stone Butch Blues.

If you only care about pipes freezing there are low wattage pipe heating cords (also called “heat tape”) that would use way less energy than a space heater. Also if you have drafty windows the temporary “window insulation kits” that basically shrink wrap the window work surprisingly well.

When things are great, even small things like a cup of coffee with a friend or a quiet morning, take a minute to say to yourself, “this is really great.” Say it out loud. Years later you will realize those moments are as good as it gets, and if you don’t mark them they just disappear. Bad moments stick around in your head regardless, but the good ones need to be memorialized.

I’ve “rolled” a couple 401ks into a Vanguard account. Just set up a Vanguard traditional IRA (or Fidelity is good too) and follow their instructions. In both my cases my old 401k admin sent me a check and I forwarded it to Vanguard within a certain time frame. If you don’t know what fund to choose just pick “Vanguard Target Retirement XX” for whatever year you turn retirement age (Fidelity has equivalents).

The reason I say Vanguard or Fidelity is because they have rock bottom fees and also they are huge so they’ve worked this out with basically everyone.

Repair forum version:

• Here are the exact bolts you need to loosen: <dead photobucket link>
• After that make sure you note this gasket: <another dead photobucket link>
• The replacement part is very hard to find but they carry it here: <404>
• You’ll find the torque spec here: <domain sold to online casino advertiser>

Bonus points if the only schematic you can find is a 256 resolution jpg on pinterest that leads to a wordpress site were a bot only posts random schematics to farm pinterest engagement.

Check your regional Craigslist, mine’s full of them. This is also why the fair exists (besides funnel cake).

Anecdotal, but I grew up in the heyday of malls and my local mall was one of the largest, and is now one of the most famous dead malls. The mall was in decline when Amazon was still in its infancy, mostly still selling books. Buying clothes online was considered lunacy at the time because there was no fitting rooms to try things on. Still, vacancy was on the rise in the mall and once a few violent crimes started happening inside that was all she wrote. “Big Box” stores like Walmart became more of a draw than driving all the way to the mall.

I think the reasons for the death of the mall are more complex, just like the death of the department store. There were lots of weird tax incentives, both for developers, and for (mostly white) residents fleeing the urban core during the 90s. Those were not sustainable. Malls themselves were a bit of a private equity shell game which couldn’t last. The story of dead malls is more about capitalism and land use policy than just Amazon.

I’ll never forget Forest Fair Mall in those first years though. It’s 1.5 MILLION square feet, and it was absolutely packed, especially during Christmas. Humongous fountains, sand sculptures, live music… every single spot of its airfield-like parking lot was full. The only thing today that I think comes close, if younger people want the experience, is the main concourse of a top ten airport.

When I was a child in the 90s I somehow scored a voice role in a hotdog commercial for the radio. I was paid a king’s ransom for this, half of which my parents made me put in savings (wise), and half of which I spent on a brand new Sega CD (not wise).

The magic of postage stamp-sized full motion video took about three days to wear off, at which point all that was left was basically pure shit. They jacked me. At least I learned that lesson early.

The article doesn’t really do Tim justice. He’s a bodger who is basically a genius for what I can only describe as Goblin technology. His projects are as much about fun and experimenting as having a result. In the first windmill video he acknowledged that he could just buy a small electric windmill, but that’s not the point.

I mean, this is the dude who made a narrow gauge railroad and a compressed air locomotive to transport wood to his terrifying biochar chopper and crucible.

Yep, old shirts came out of the wash looking like a fucking Calabi-Yau manifold, even casual wear.

Thank you. It’s a new construction and the builder seems to generally pick really good subs, and I’m pretty sure whoever installed it did the entire house, so they should be familiar with it. I’ll give them a call.

Edit: Update to this. I cut the circuit breaker and opened the unit and something was clearly wrong with the blower motor. Mountings and bushings etc all looked fine, but rotating the blower manually was rocky. It seems like a bad bearing or something but I’m no expert. The tech came out and confirmed in about 15 minutes the blower motor needs warranty replacement. Unit is less than 8 months old, he said it’s rare but he’s seen it before. I kind of want to do a teardown but not enough to buy it. Tech said it was OK to run, and I did that up until yesterday when it sounded so bad I was afraid it was going to grenade the whole box and stopped using AC. Temps close to 100F so hopefully he gets to it soon. I’ll be sure to have him run it before he leaves. Thanks again.