TIL the elevator at the old Grandview Hotel in St. Louis still uses a manual rope governor.

I was there for a wedding last weekend and the building manager let me peek in the machine room. The whole safety system is run off a hemp rope and a set of flyweights, nothing digital at all. For those who've worked on modern traction units, what's the biggest risk in keeping a system like that operational?

My attempt at a cobalt blue implosion went totally purple instead

I was working with some new frit from a supplier in Portland, and the color shift under the flame was wild. Anyone have a go-to cobalt that actually stays blue?

Had a ladle handle snap clean off during a pour yesterday afternoon, scared the heck out of me.

Appreciation post: My bullet journal took a swim in a coffee shop

I was at the Muddy Cup in Portland, trying to sketch a new weekly layout, when my entire mug of coffee tipped over. It went right across the open pages of my Leuchtturm1917. I grabbed a stack of napkins fast and blotted it, but the ink was already running. I let it dry overnight, then the next day I just went over the smeared lines with a thicker pen and turned the coffee stain into a watercolor-style background for that week's header. Has anyone else had to save a page after a major spill? What did you do?

My 'fancy' bean soup turned into a science experiment

I was trying to stretch a bag of dried beans in my apartment kitchen last Tuesday. Forgot to soak them overnight, so I tried the quick boil method I saw online. Left it for 20 minutes, came back to find the pot had foamed over like a volcano, covering my entire stovetop in a weird bean goo. My roommate walked in and just said, 'Is this dinner or a biohazard?' I managed to salvage the beans and finish the soup, but it was a sticky mess. Anyone have a foolproof way to cook dried beans fast without the kitchen turning into a crime scene?

My worst coding week started with a missing semicolon in line 47

Last Tuesday, I spent 6 hours trying to get a simple Python script to run, only to find out I'd forgotten a colon after an 'if' statement. I was following a tutorial from 'Automate the Boring Stuff' and felt completely stuck. Has anyone else lost a whole day to a tiny syntax error like that?

Can we talk about the show that ruined my whole weekend?

Honestly, I started 'The Curse' on a Friday night thinking it was a dark comedy. Tbh, by Sunday I had watched all 10 episodes and felt like I needed a shower. The way it builds this slow, awful tension between the main couple is just brutal to watch. I didn't leave my apartment for like 36 hours straight, which is a new record for me. Ngl, the final scene of the last episode messed me up so bad I couldn't sleep. Has anyone else finished a show that just left them feeling completely drained like that?

My neighbor's mailbox vanished and reappeared three feet to the left.

This happened last Tuesday on my street in Springfield. I was walking my dog at 7 AM and his black metal mailbox was right by the curb, like always. I took the same walk at 6 PM that night and it was gone, just a hole in the ground. The next morning, it was back, but cemented into a new post three feet to the left of the original spot. No construction signs, no note, nothing. Has anyone else had a stationary object just move on its own like that?

My roommate said my binge method was making shows less fun

I used to watch everything at 1.5x speed to get through more episodes. My roommate pointed out last month that I was missing the music cues and actor reactions that make shows good. I slowed back down to normal speed for 'Shogun' and it was a totally different experience. The tension in scenes actually landed because I could hear the score build up. Now I only speed up recap sections or shows I'm not fully into. Has anyone else tried changing their playback speed and then gone back?

Remember when we had to carry a full binder of driver CDs to every job?

I was at a repair shop in Phoenix back in 2012, and the internet went down for half the day. We had a stack of five machines that needed fresh OS installs, and my binder was missing the network driver for a specific Dell model. Had to send a guy to Best Buy to buy a USB Wi-Fi dongle just to get one machine online to download the rest. Now I just keep a 64GB flash drive with every driver pack I could need. What's the most outdated piece of tech you still keep in your kit just in case?