Old timer at a supply house told me I was using too much foam

I was grabbing some Great Stuff at the parts counter last Tuesday and this retired repair guy just comes up and says 'you're gonna swell that door frame shut'. He showed me how a pea sized dab is plenty for most fridge door seals. I had been laying a full bead around the whole thing like caulk. Been doing it that way for almost 2 years before he said something. Has anyone else been overdoing it on the insulation foam without realizing it?

Hit 500 hours on my dredge pump without a rebuild

Ngl, I was expecting to swap out the wear parts way sooner. Got 500 hours on the same pump and it's still holding pressure fine. Anybody else stretch their rebuild intervals longer than they thought?

Had to pick between a new chain or a cassette last week

My bike started skipping gears on my commute to work in Austin last Tuesday. I popped into the shop and the guy said I could either replace just the chain for $25 or do the cassette too for $70 total. I went cheap and just got the chain cause I figured I could push the cassette another few months. Took it home, swapped it out in my driveway, and the skipping got even worse. Turns out my cassette was so worn the new chain wouldn't bite into the old teeth. Ended up ordering the cassette online for $45 and waiting 4 days to ride again. Has anyone else learned this lesson the hard way with drivetrain parts?

Old carpenter at the lumber yard told me I was overthinking my shed foundation

I was picking up lumber for my 8x10 shed last Friday and this older guy loading cedar next to me asked what I was building. I started explaining my plans for a gravel base with plastic grid and he just shook his head. He said just dig down 4 inches, lay some landscape fabric, and pack crushed stone tight. He told me I probably spent $80 on those grid things for nothing. Has anyone else had good luck with a simple crushed stone pad without all the extras?

My old writing process was all paper notebooks and sticky notes

I used to plot out every short story on index cards spread across my coffee table, but now I just type straight into a blank document on my laptop... started doing that around 2020 when I ran out of index cards during a lockdown. Does anyone else miss the physical act of shuffling scenes around by hand?

My writing group kept saying "show don't tell" so I overcorrected and confused everyone

A guy named Tom in my critique circle told me my first draft was too much telling. So I went back and rewrote the whole thing so every single emotion was described through actions or setting. Like instead of "she was sad" I wrote "she stared at the crack in the ceiling for 20 minutes without blinking." Got three pages of that. Next meeting, everyone said they had no idea what the character was feeling. Too vague. I need a middle ground. How do you guys know when showing is enough without losing the reader?

My water heater pilot light kept going out. Finally figured out it was a spider nest in the burner tube.

The old Miconic 10 controller swap in that 1980s office tower was a night and day difference from start to finish

We pulled an ancient Miconic 10 system out of a 14-story building downtown last spring (the thing was held together with tape and luck). The before was nonstop callbacks - doors hesitating, floors mis-leveling by almost 2 inches. After we dropped in a new G.A.L. controller and re-did the wiring, the first test run was butter smooth. The building manager said he couldn't believe it was the same elevator. Has anyone else here done a controller swap on a unit that old? How'd your commissioning go?

Stop starting every story with 'It was a dark and stormy night'

I used to do that garbage too until a workshop leader in Brooklyn told me to just drop the reader into the middle of the action. Try starting with a character already running or a sentence of dialogue. Has anyone else found a specific opener that always works?

Three years ago I walked out of a job interview halfway through

It was at a marketing firm downtown, and the guy kept cutting me off to answer his phone. I was younger then and thought I had to take whatever came my way. Last month I turned down a similar offer because I knew the vibe was off from the start. Funny how a little experience changes what you'll put up with, right? Has anyone else just known when a job wasn't going to work out within the first ten minutes?