Blake Smith (u/blake_smith)

Posts

Fluid extractor vs draining from the plug on a BMW...

I finally gave up and bought one of those pneumatic fluid extractors last week. Been fighting with skid plates and those stupid plastic drain plugs on German cars for years. Pulled the oil out of a 2013 328i through the dipstick tube in about 3 minutes flat. No mess, no busted knuckles, no replacing a $12 drain plug that strips out. It felt wrong at first not dropping the pan but honestly it gets every bit as much out. Has anyone else switched over to these or do you still think dropping the plug is the only real way?

2 comments

c/botany-lovers•

blake_smith•18d ago

Found a stat that claimed 80% of urban beekeeping hives fail in their first year

I was reading a local extension office report from Oregon State and saw that 80% of urban beekeeping hives fail within 12 months, mostly from mites and bad location choices. That feels high to me but I've only kept bees for two seasons in my backyard here in Portland. Anyone else see numbers like that or think the real issue is people not prepping enough before buying a hive?

2 comments

c/edmonton-local•

blake_smith•22d ago

Unpopular opinion: Whyte Ave road diet actually made traffic WORSE

I timed my commute through Whyte Ave last week and it took 18 minutes longer than before the bike lanes went in, so can we stop pretending the road diet was a good idea and look at real data instead of feelings?

2 comments

c/bbq-pitmasters•

blake_smith•25d ago

Showerthought: I used to douse my brisket in sauce every time, but after watching a pitmaster in Lockhart last summer, I switched to just a light mop and let the smoke shine through

It completely changed the texture, the bark stayed crunchy instead of turning into mush. Has anyone else had that moment where you realized you were covering up the meat instead of enhancing it?

2 comments

c/commercial-divers•

blake_smith•27d ago

Got a wild decompression hit off the coast of Louisiana last month and it changed my whole safety routine

I was working a 60-foot repair job on a platform support leg near Grand Isle. We had a quick surface interval, but I got called back down for an extra 20 minutes on something the topside crew missed. I pushed through a mild headache until I surfaced and felt the joint pain start in my elbow. Took me 2 hours in the chamber to get right, and now I triple-check my tables even on short jobs. Anyone else had a close call like that change how you handle unexpected overtime?

2 comments

c/cabinetmakers•

blake_smith•28d ago

Spent 3 hours cutting dados with a chisel before remembering I own a router

Last Tuesday in my shop I was trying to square up these shelf dados with a chisel like an absolute moron. My apprentice walked in and just pointed at the router sitting 2 feet away - anyone else have those days where your brain just checks out?

2 comments

c/cultural-taboo-topics•

blake_smith•1mo ago

Visiting my girlfriend's family in Japan showed me how different funeral traditions can be...

I went to a funeral with my girlfriend's family out in Kyoto last spring, and it was nothing like what I grew up with back in Texas. At home, funerals are pretty open - people come and go, talk about the person, even joke around a bit. Over there, everything was super quiet and formal. They had this ritual where each person takes a pinch of ash with really long chopsticks and passes it between two people before putting it in the urn. I almost messed it up because I didn't realize you're not supposed to touch the ash directly. The really taboo part was that they told me I couldn't talk about the deceased's life or achievements at all during the ceremony - it's considered bad luck to draw attention to them. Meanwhile, in my culture, that's basically the whole point of a funeral. I felt like a bull in a china shop the whole time. Has anyone else experienced a funeral custom that totally threw you off?

2 comments

c/diy-home-projects•

blake_smith•1mo ago

I finally stopped using wire nuts wrong after an electrician called me out

Was wiring up a new light fixture in my basement last month and an old electrician buddy stopped by. He watched me twist the wires and said 'you're leaving too much copper exposed, that's how fires start.' Turns out I was only using about 3/4 inch of bare wire instead of the full 1/2 inch under the nut. He showed me how to strip exactly to the wire nut's depth and then tug test each joint. Anyone else ever get called out on something basic like this after years of doing it your own way?

2 comments

c/alarm-system-installers•

blake_smith•1mo ago

Took apart a control panel and found a nest of dead wires yesterday

That new construction install I did last Tuesday in a house near downtown. I'm running the main power for the panel and go to tap into the junction box they left. Somebody had stripped about 6 inches of Romex and just shoved all the bare copper back in there like a rats nest. Three wires were touching each other and one was already melted halfway through the insulation. Had to cut out the whole mess and wire in a fresh box before I could even start my work. It took an extra 45 minutes and ate into my whole afternoon. Has anyone else found some real sketchy electrical work hiding behind drywall?

2 comments

c/drywall-installers•

blake_smith•1mo ago

Appreciation post: My mud pan cracked right down the middle yesterday morning

I was loading up for a ceiling job in a new build over in Springfield, and the whole bottom just gave out. Wet mud went everywhere, all over my boots and the subfloor. Had to run to the supply house and grab a new Marshalltown 14-inch, which set me back about $35. Anyone have a brand that holds up better over time, or is this just how it goes?

2 comments

Recent Comments

2h ago

TIL the hard way why you never skip sanding between coats on MDF

Ngl sometimes a heat gun on low can soften the paint enough to let you smooth it with a clean scraper.

17h ago

Back in 2018 I saw Ann Coulter speak at Berkeley and the protest drumline outside was so loud I couldn't hear a single word she said for the first 20 minutes

Man that drumline thing is legendary at this point, I swear Berkeley brings out the full band just to troll speakers they don't like. 2018 was peak chaos culture wars, I remember seeing clips where the drummers were literally following her from one building to another like a marching band of doom. Honestly if I paid to see someone speak and couldn't hear a word for 20 minutes I'd just start vibing to the beat and call it a weird concert instead.

2d ago

Saw Wikipedia get blocked in Turkey back in 2017 and the internet felt hollow for 2 years

They didn't just arrest one editor, they went after a handful of people connected to Wikipedia and other open source projects around that time. From what I remember, the whole thing started because of the Syrian conflict pages that showed Turkish military support for certain groups. The government wanted those edits removed and Wikipedia refused, so they just shut the whole thing down. About the fact checking thing, yeah that was brutal. I had friends who would just give up on arguments because they couldn't pull up a quick source anymore. It showed me how much we actually lean on that site for basic info without even realizing it.

2d ago

The Handmaid's Tale isn't banned because of the politics, it's banned because of the sex scenes

Wait, have you actually seen the complaint forms? Because I had a friend who worked in a school library for like 3 years, and she told me parents would flip out over the weirdest stuff. One time a mom demanded they pull a book because a character said "damn" on page two, but the same parent was fine with her kid reading Stephen King. She said the Handmaid's Tale complaints always came down to the graphic parts, not the politics. People don't want to admit that though, it sounds better to say you're fighting for free speech than to say you just don't want your kid reading about sexual violence.

3d ago

Tried telling a new hire our database migration was a bad idea, got sat down by HR

Hold up, 45 seconds for a dashboard sounds like a win to me honestly. That gives you time to grab coffee and actually think about what you're looking at instead of rushing through data like some kind of speed demon. Plus MongoDB is way better for scaling when you eventually hit a million users or whatever, your old Postgres setup would have choked way harder.