Heard a guy at the supply house say he never uses a vapor barrier on interior slabs

I was picking up some fiber mesh in Tacoma yesterday and overheard a conversation that got me worried. This older finisher was telling a younger guy that putting down plastic under an interior garage slab was a waste of money and time. He said, 'It's inside, it'll dry fine, I've skipped it for twenty years.' That really stuck with me because I saw a job fail just last fall from exactly that. A homeowner called me to look at their new garage floor that was already dusting and had a huge crack after six months. When I asked, they said the previous crew didn't use any poly. The moisture came up from the ground unevenly and ruined the cure. It's not worth the risk to save maybe $150 and an hour of work. Has anyone else had to fix a slab where someone skipped the vapor barrier?

PSA: I used to drive across town for a free couch, now I just check the curb on my own street first.

Appreciation post: My old boss told me to always check the frog first, and it saved a horse in my care last month.

I was working on a big warmblood that was just a little off, and the owner thought it was a shoeing issue. I almost started trimming, but I remembered what he said. I lifted the hoof and found a deep, packed gravel pocket in the frog that was starting to get sore. Cleaned it out, packed it, and the horse was walking fine in two days. What's the best trick an old hand ever gave you for spotting a problem before it gets bad?

My professor told me to ignore the hype around small language models last year.

He said focusing on the biggest models was the only real path for innovation, but the breakthroughs in local, efficient AI like Phi-3 have proven him totally wrong. Anyone else find their old assumptions about AI scale getting flipped recently?

Spent 6 hours chasing a leak on a 4 inch steam line that turned out to be a bad gasket from a new supplier.