Spent 3 hours trying to figure out why my solar panels weren't charging

I put up a small 100W panel on my shed last weekend and it barely put out 5 watts all afternoon... turns out I had the angle wrong and a tree branch was casting a shadow I didn't notice. Does anyone else spend forever troubleshooting the simplest things with renewable gear?

Finally got that tube sheet repair right on the first try

Up in Gary, Indiana last month I had to fix a bundle that had me swearing at the drawings for two days. Old foreman just said 'quit chasing the gap and let the weld tell you where to go' and man it clicked. Anyone else get that one weird piece of advice that just stuck.

TIL the hard way that water sources marked on a map can be totally dry by July

I planned a 5 day loop in the Sierra Nevada last summer based on a map from 2018 that showed three creek crossings and a seasonal spring. By day 3 I was down to half a liter and the next marked water was a bone dry wash. Turns out I should have checked recent trip reports instead of just the map. Took me about 6 hours of backtracking and detouring to find a sketchy puddle. Has anyone else had a map totally fail them like that?

Vent: A developer at a meetup last month said AI progress is basically done

I was at a small tech meetup in Portland, and this guy from a local startup was going on about how large language models have hit a wall. He said, 'We're just making them bigger for tiny gains, and the real innovation stopped last year.' He was so sure of himself, but then he admitted his own team's model still hallucinates basic facts about 15% of the time. How can you call it done when the core problems aren't even solved? It felt like he was just trying to sound smart while ignoring all the new research papers coming out weekly. Has anyone else run into people who are weirdly eager to declare the whole field finished?

PSA: I tried a 72-hour ferment on my hot sauce in my Phoenix garage last month and it was a total game changer.

An old guy at the 2012 county fair told me 'the fire tells you when it's ready, not the clock' and I still think about it.

My anvil stand gave out mid-shoe yesterday, sent everything flying.

It was a homemade oak block that lasted 8 years, but the wood finally split. Debating between building a new steel tripod or just buying a pre-made stand this time. What's your go-to setup?

Found out a huge number of Reddit bans are for 'brigading' now

I was reading a report from a tech site called The Verge last week. It said that in 2023, over 40% of all subreddit bans were for 'brigading' or vote manipulation. I always figured it was mostly for hate speech or spam, but that stat really surprised me. It makes me wonder if a lot of people get caught up in it just for posting in a thread someone else linked to. Has anyone here been banned for brigading when you didn't even know you were doing it?