Pro tip: dried beans beat canned for saving money long term

I finally ran the numbers last month after going back and forth on this for ages. A 2lb bag of dried pinto beans costs me $3 at the local grocery in Austin, but that same amount of canned beans would run me about $7-8 and have way more sodium. The tradeoff is you gotta plan ahead and soak them overnight, but honestly the texture is way better. Anybody else made the switch and missed the convenience of cans?

Just got a tough piece of feedback that changed my menu pricing

I run a taco truck in Austin and a customer told me my $12 birria plate was way too expensive for the portion size. They were right - I was serving maybe 3 ounces of meat. I dropped the price to $9 and bumped the meat to 5 ounces, and now I'm selling three times as many plates per lunch run. Has anyone else adjusted their prices based on direct customer feedback like that?

That "smart" thermostat I installed three months ago just locked me out at 2 AM

Woke up sweating in the dark in my apartment in Columbus last Tuesday. The screen said "updating firmware" and wouldn't let me override anything. I had to dig out the breaker panel at midnight and kill power to the whole HVAC to reset it. Now I'm back to using the old manual dial thermostat I pulled out of the basement. It's ugly but it never pulled that nonsense. Has anyone else had a smart home gadget just straight up fail when you needed it most?

Thought swapping thumbsticks would take 20 minutes... 3 hours later

I decided to swap the stock thumbsticks on my old Xbox One controller for some taller ones I got off Amazon. Figured it'd be a quick job like the YouTube videos show. Took me nearly an hour just to get the front shell off without breaking a clip loose. Then I realized the new sticks had slightly different stems and I had to sand them down a bit. By the time I was done I had stripped one screw head and lost a spring under my desk. Has anyone else had a supposedly simple swap turn into a whole afternoon project?

Shoutout to the guy who showed me how to reflow BGA chips without a proper rework station

Last week I was stuck on a laptop that kept shutting down randomly. A retired repair guy at a local meetup in Austin told me to try hot air from the top and a preheated skillet underneath. I set the skillet to 190 degrees and used my cheap 858D on full blast for about 2 minutes. The board came back to life and I haven't had a crash since. Has anyone else cooked up a hack like this with stuff you already own?

I used to scoff at using floral foam for wildflower arrangements

My mentor in Seattle swore by it for keeping stems in place during transport, and after 3 failed deliveries where everything turned into a tangled mess, I finally gave it a shot. Has anyone else found a trick that changed their mind about a tool they originally hated?

TIL the average bullet journal user quits after 4 months based on a survey I found in a productivity blog

I stumbled on that stat while looking for layout ideas and it honestly surprised me since I've been at it for 8 months, anyone else see similar dropout numbers in their own circles?

That 99 cent bag of lentils changed my lunch game this week

I was at the store near my place in Cleveland and saw a 1 pound bag of red lentils for 99 cents. Never used them before but grabbed it on a whim. Made a curry with some onions and a can of diced tomatoes I had in the pantry, got like 6 servings out of it. Anyone got other good cheap meals that start with lentils or beans?

TIL the rubber duck method actually fixed my bug after 3 hours of staring at code

I was stuck on a loop that kept skipping every other entry in a list I was building for a pet project. After trying console logs and googling for like an hour, I grabbed a little duck figure off my desk and started explaining my code out loud to it. About 30 seconds into talking through the loop condition, I realized I was using 'continue' wrong (it was jumping back too early). Has anyone else had that moment where explaining your code to something silly like a rubber duck just instantly clicks?

Chased a subfloor squeak for 3 days and it was just one staple