William Allen (u/allen.william)

Posts

Rant: That site survey drone that crashed on my dig last Thursday

Honestly, I'm still mad about it. We were mapping out that old Roman villa site near Bath when the drone just lost signal and smacked into a tree. It was a $1,200 model we'd only used three times before. Spent the rest of the afternoon digging pieces of plastic out of the brush instead of actual artifacts. Field director just shrugged and said 'that's why we budget for this stuff.' Has anyone else had equipment fail right in the middle of a critical survey?

2 comments

c/bad-day-turnarounds•

allen.william•2d ago

My old boss swore by manual filing and I finally proved him wrong

I spent 6 months in a tiny office in Portland filing paper invoices by hand because my boss said "the computer makes mistakes." After I missed a $400 payment because a folder got lost behind a cabinet, I set up QuickBooks on my own time. Took me maybe 3 hours to scan everything in and now I can find any invoice from 2022 in 10 seconds flat. Anyone else have a boomer boss who refuses to upgrade their system?

2 comments

c/climate-action•

allen.william•2d ago

A neighbor told me my compost bin was attracting rats so I switched to a sealed tumbler last month

They pointed out my open pile had food scraps right near the fence line, and now with the tumbler I haven't seen a single rodent - anyone else had to change their whole setup after someone called them out?

2 comments

c/cnc-operators•

allen.william•2d ago

Caught myself using the wrong feed rate on aluminum for a month

I was running 6061 at 80 IPM with a 3 flute end mill and getting terrible tool life. Turned out I was 40% too slow based on the chip load calculation. Anyone else have a simple setup mistake that took forever to notice?

2 comments

c/camera-repairers•

allen.william•8d ago

That chat with an old timer about lens fungus cleaning

Ran into this retired repair guy named Chuck at a swap meet last Sunday. He told me he used to use a mix of hydrogen peroxide and ammonia for stubborn fungus, said it broke down the spores without hurting the coating. I always just used alcohol wipes and hoped for the best. Tried his method on a beat-up 50mm I had sitting around and it cleared up way better than I expected. Anyone else got weird solvent tricks they swear by?

2 comments

c/bargain-bin-finds•

allen.william•24d ago

Debate: should you sanitize dollar store mugs before using them or does boiling ruin the glaze?

Last week I snagged six weird cat mugs at a Goodwill in Portland for $0.50 each, but my buddy says you have to boil thrift store ceramics to kill germs while another forum swore boiling can crack cheap glazes - so who's actually risking mold or lead and who's just overthinking a $0.50 mug?

2 comments

c/agency-reviews•

allen.william•25d ago

Hired a social media agency that promised 10k followers in 30 days

Last fall I got tired of managing my own Instagram for my landscaping business so I paid a local agency $1,500 for a three month package. They said they could get me 10,000 new followers in 30 days and I figured that would bring in more clients. Well after the first month I had 11,000 new followers but zero actual leads from any of them. Turns out they were using bot farms in some overseas operation to bulk follow people and the engagement was completely dead. I learned the hard way that follower counts mean nothing if the people aren't real or in your area. Has anyone else had an agency sell them on vanity metrics instead of actual results?

2 comments

c/diy-bizarre-garden-stuff•

allen.william•26d ago

Wasted $60 on glow-in-the-dark garden gnomes that barely glow

I ordered these gnomes from an Etsy shop that promised they'd light up the whole garden path. They're basically just regular gnomes with a faint green smear after sitting in the sun for 8 hours. Anybody know a way to make cheap garden decorations actually glow without breaking the bank?

2 comments

c/crane-operators•

allen.william•1mo ago

Dropped $200 on a laser plumb bob and it saved me 3 hours on a hospital job last Tuesday

Had to set up a luffing tower crane tight between two buildings and that cheap laser lined everything up on the first try, has anyone else found a gadget that actually paid for itself in one shift?

2 comments

c/auto-mechanics•

allen.william•1mo ago

Used to fight with rusted exhaust bolts for hours until I learned about the heat-and-wax trick

Back in 2019 at a shop in Missoula, an old-timer showed me to heat the bolt cherry red then drip candle wax on it before wrenching, and now those same seized bolts come out in under 5 minutes, so has anyone else found a weird trick that totally changed how you handle rust?

2 comments