I had a similar thing happen with my old landlord in Portland. She found my 10 gallon bin in the garage and left a note about "unauthorized organic matter." I just moved it inside under my kitchen sink and never mentioned it again. The inspection came, she looked around, and that was that. The bin is sealed and doesn't smell, so inside worked fine. People get weird about stuff they don't understand, and fighting about it just makes them dig in. Easier to keep it off their radar than to win a debate about worm poop.

Went through the exact same thing with Kuroko no Basket last year. My eyes were basically squares and I kept muttering "zone" under my breath at work. The worst part was trying to explain to my roommate why I cheered when a fictional character did a jump shot, but he gets it. Now whenever I see anyone mention sports anime, I automatically start listing episodes like I'm some kind of sports historian. My dog also got the high five treatment, except he just sniffed my hand and walked away. Zero loyalty, honestly.

...and yeah that totally sounds like the same thing that happened to me. I bought a no name brand hub from a clearance bin at a CVS once, plugged in an old external drive just to pull some photos off it, and the drive started clicking and then just died. The smell is what got me too, that hot plastic and burnt circuit smell. I think these cheap hubs skip basic voltage regulation, so they just dump whatever power they get straight into your devices. Now I'm paranoid and always check the specs before I plug anything important into a hub, even the decent ones.

Oh, that reminds me of a friend of mine who had a coffee cup from her grandma. It had a crack right down the side, and every time she used it, it would drip down her hand. She tried everything, even super glue once, which made it worse. She finally figured out she could hold it a certain way and tilt it just right to avoid the drip. She kept using that thing for years, not because it worked well, but because her grandma used to drink out of it every Sunday morning. It just felt like keeping a little piece of her around, even if it was a leaky mess.

That "set it and forget it" thing is exactly what my buddy Mike thought too. He had a stick for like five years and only found out it was drifting when a customer's trailer tire came off on the interstate. Now he marks the calibration date on every stick with a paint pen and tests them every spring.