Walking is the real hack for budget travel (and honestly, for actually seeing a place). Public transport can eat up cash fast, plus you miss all the little hidden spots. But I feel for your feet, miles825, mine are still recovering from a trip to Porto where I walked up and down every hill. Skip the bus, but bring good shoes, no joke.

$180 a month? That's legit. Almost pays for the tacos.

Yeah my Hakko was reading 350 but an IR gun showed it was actually around 390. That extra 40 degrees made a mess of a fine pitch QFP package, lifted a couple pads before I figured it out. Bought a tip thermometer the next day.

Well damn, that makes me think about how everything in life has a learning curve that people don't talk about enough. @jennifer_west52 probably noticed the same thing with her first jig setup - you gotta eat some frustration before you see the payoff, same as learning to sharpen a chisel by hand or dialing in a table saw fence. It's like how I see guys get impatient with new shop tools and give up after one try, when really the secret is just grinding through the first few attempts. That dowel jig humbles you quick but once you get the feel for it the results speak for themselves.

It's the same thing I see everywhere, people trying to make things simple but just making them messy. Like my buddy who keeps all his phone apps on one screen cause he can't be bothered to sort them, but then spends twenty seconds swiping back and forth looking for his calculator. Or how my neighbor insists on keeping all his passwords in a single text file on his desktop. Yeah, it's one file, but good luck finding the one you need when you're locked out of something. Kind of reminds me of how people pack everything into a junk drawer because it's easier than organizing the kitchen, then have to dump the whole thing out to find a pair of scissors. Does the quick fix actually save you any time in the long run?