Walked through the avionics bay on a 737-800 yesterday and noticed something weird about the DME antenna coax routing

The cable had a sharp 90 degree bend right behind the rack mount and I'm wondering if that's a common install issue you guys see or if this bird was just put together on a Monday morning, has anyone else had problems with signal degradation from bad coax bends?

Can we talk about the real story behind the 'teacher shortage' headlines?

I mean, every news story just says there aren't enough teachers, full stop. But from inside my school in Columbus, the bigger story is why people are leaving. It's not just pay, idk. Last month, a teacher with 15 years quit because she was spending over $200 a month of her own money on basic supplies like paper and pencils for her kids. The district's budget for that stuff got cut to almost zero. On top of that, the new 'streamlined' curriculum they gave us takes about 3 hours of planning for every 1 hour of teaching. The headline makes it sound like a simple hiring problem, but the full story is about working conditions that push good people out. Maybe it's just me, but framing it as a shortage lets the system off the hook for not fixing the actual broken parts. Has anyone else in a school seen it play out like this, where the real issue gets buried?

So I tried using a little bit of leftover blue food dye in my flower food for white roses last week

Found out the first electric chair ran on Westinghouse AC to prove it was dangerous

I was reading up on old electrical history (you know, for fun) and saw that the first electric chair in 1890 used a Westinghouse AC generator. The guy who made it, Harold Brown, picked AC on purpose because he was trying to show the public it was more deadly than DC (which Edison pushed). They had to buy the generator from Westinghouse under a fake name because the company didn't want to be linked to it. Kind of a wild bit of trade history, right? Anyone else come across a weird fact like that from the early days?

A customer in a tiny attic changed how I see my job

I was running a new drop in this old house in Tacoma, squeezing through a crawl space. The homeowner, an older guy, followed me up and said, 'You know, you're the first person to actually see this place in ten years.' He showed me a model train setup he'd built up there, covered in dust. That stuck with me. It wasn't just about the cable, it was about getting into people's lives for a minute. Ever have a simple install turn into something you remember?

Ran into the guy from that 'Chewbacca Mom' video at a gas station

I was just filling up my car in Katy, Texas last week when I saw her. She was buying a soda, looking totally normal. We talked for a minute and she said the craziest part was when the free stuff stopped coming about a year after the video blew up. She said she still gets recognized maybe once a month, but it's just a quick selfie now. Has anyone else met an old viral star years later and been surprised by how normal things are for them?

Just read that a single beef carcass can yield over 600 different cuts and products. Found it in an old textbook at the shop.

Question about using a thermal camera for intermittent faults

I always thought those handheld thermal cameras were a gimmick for our line of work, just another shiny tool to sell. Then, about two weeks ago, I was stuck on a Citation's autopilot that would drop out only after an hour in the air. We spent three days on the ground swapping boxes with no luck. A guy from the next hangar brought over his Flir One and we found a single voltage regulator on a board in the FCC that was running 30 degrees hotter than the rest under load. Replaced that one chip and the problem was gone. Has anyone else had a thermal camera save them from a real headache?

Cleaned out my closet and found 23 of the exact same black t-shirt

I was doing a big clear out last weekend and started pulling stuff from the back. I found 23 of the same basic black tee from Shein, all bought over maybe two years. I just kept buying a new one when the old one got thin or the neck stretched out. It hit me that I spent probably over $150 just replacing a cheap shirt instead of buying one good one. That's a lot of trips for a package from across the world just to fall apart. Has anyone else had a moment like this with a 'basics' haul?

Remember when the Deepwater Horizon story was just 'oil spill in the Gulf'?

I was working on a fishing boat out of Grand Isle, Louisiana, and the real story wasn't the initial explosion. It was the 87 days of failed 'top kills' and 'junk shots' they didn't show on TV, while the oil kept coming. We watched the whole cleanup theater happen from the water, knowing it was barely touching the sides. Anyone else from the Gulf Coast remember how different the reality felt from the nightly news updates?