PSA: My grocery store's clearance rack saved me $80 this month

I was at the Kroger on Elm Street, just grabbing milk, when I saw the manager marking down a ton of meat. I got a whole pork shoulder for $5 and froze it. How do you guys find the best markdowns in your area?

Warning: I spent $60 on a 'precision' coffee scale and it's just a tiny scale

It measures to the tenth of a gram, but my $12 kitchen scale did the same thing. Has anyone found a real use for these besides feeling fancy?

Honestly, I was sharpening my knives wrong for like five years

Tbh, I always thought a quick pull through a sharpener before service was good enough. The tip off was when a new guy, fresh from culinary school, asked to borrow my knife and winced. He showed me his Shun and the edge was a completely different world. I spent a whole Sunday with a whetstone, following a video, and it took me over an hour to fix my main chef's knife. The difference in how it cuts through a tomato skin is insane. How many of you actually use stones versus just hitting the steel?

Shoutout to the drafter who saved my week with a tip about layer states in AutoCAD 2024.

Vent: My buddy called my route planning 'a spreadsheet, not an adventure'

Honestly, I used to plan every single mile and campsite for my trips, like a 5 day loop in the Wind River Range last August. Ngl, I had it all mapped down to the hour. Then my friend Mark said, 'You're just following a spreadsheet, man. You miss the cool stuff you don't know about.' Tbh, it stung, but he was right. I started just picking a general area and a final destination, leaving 2 or 3 days totally open for side trails or local tips. Has anyone else switched from super strict planning to a looser style? What was the first trip you tried it on?

I know everyone loves those fancy titanium sporks, but my $35 one bent in half on some frozen chili

I thought those new foam-backed carpets were just a cheap gimmick, but a job in a Denver condo building changed my mind.

Spent $400 on a new silt curtain for a job near the river bend

We were working in a real sensitive spot and I figured the cheap one would hold. It tore on day two and we got slapped with a fine from the state, cost us way more in the end. Anyone have a brand of curtain they trust for fast current?

Shoutout to the weirdest plumbing call I ever got in Boise

Got a call about a 'smart toilet' that kept flushing on its own at 3 AM, scaring the homeowner's cat. I show up, and it's one of those new models with a motion sensor and an app. Turns out, the owner's sleep tracker wristband was sending a signal the toilet read as a hand wave from across the bedroom. We fixed it by just turning off the auto-flush feature. Honestly, are these things a real upgrade or just a fad waiting to glitch out? Has anyone else dealt with smart home stuff causing more problems than it solves?

My professor told me to always check the spoil heap first

I was working on a dig in Cornwall last summer and we were stuck. My old professor, Dr. Evans, always said 'the real story is in what they threw away.' So I spent a morning sifting through the spoil heap from the main trench. Found a perfectly intact Roman coin that had been missed, which totally changed our dating for the site layer. Anyone else have a piece of advice from a mentor that actually paid off big time?