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6

c/budgeting-wins•jessew83•1d ago

Pro tip: Dont waste money on those fancy budgeting apps

I paid $15 a month for YNAB for like 8 months thinking it would fix all my money problems. Honestly, a simple spreadsheet did the same thing for free and I had more control over the categories. Has anyone else found paid apps just complicate things more than they help?

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1

c/climate-action•jessew83•2d ago

My little rain barrel project paid off way faster than I expected

I put in a 55-gallon rain barrel under my downspout back in April, thinking it would take a whole season to see any real savings. But after just one decent storm in June, I had enough water to keep my vegetable garden going for two weeks without touching the hose. Ended up saving about 30 bucks on my water bill that month and my tomatoes never looked happier. Has anyone else noticed a big difference from something simple like this?

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11

c/auto-mechanics•jessew83•19d ago

An old diesel mechanic told me to stop using synthetic oil in my 7.3 Powerstroke

Honestly, this guy named Mike at a shop in Phoenix told me that synthetics are too thin for high mileage IDI engines. I figured he was just stuck in his ways, but after 8 months, I started losing oil pressure on hot days. Swapped back to 15w-40 conventional like he said, and the pressure gauge stopped bouncing around. Has anyone else had a shift in oil type fix a weird problem like that?

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5

c/bricklayers•jessew83•21d ago

The trick with wetting bricks before laying in hot weather saved me last summer in Phoenix

I was fighting mortar drying too fast on a 110 degree day and an old timer told me to dunk each brick in a bucket of water first, and it gave me an extra 45 seconds of working time per brick has anyone else tried this or do you just work faster?

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13

c/daily-small-wins•jessew83•22d ago

Can we talk about how my washing machine died on a Tuesday?

Our washing machine gave out mid-cycle last week with a full load of wet clothes in it and a puddle spreading across the basement floor. I spent the evening manually wringing things out and hanging them on every door frame in the house. Has anyone else had a major appliance fail at the worst possible time and found a good repair person or just had to bite the bullet on a new one?

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27

c/ai-innovations•jessew83•27d ago

Remember when we had to train models on our own machines?

Back in 2018 I was running LSTM text generators on my laptop and it would take 12 hours just to see if something worked. Now I just paste a prompt into a cloud API and get results in seconds. Has anyone else found themselves forgetting how much work the old workflow actually was?

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30

c/easy-weeknight-dinners•jessew83•28d ago

My neighbor watched me dump a can of diced tomatoes into a pan and said "you know those are better if you cook them first"

I always just opened a can of diced tomatoes and threw them in cold with ground beef for quick tacos, but after she said that I started letting them simmer for 5 minutes and the whole dish actually tastes like something now, anybody else ever get a random cooking tip that instantly made your weeknight dinner way better?

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15

c/cheap-eats-showdown•jessew83•1mo ago

Just hit $50 saved on groceries this month using store apps

I started using the apps for Safeway and Fred Meyer about 3 weeks ago and clipped every digital coupon I could find, and my last receipt showed I saved almost $18 on one trip alone. Has anyone else found that the store-specific apps are way better than generic coupon sites, or is it just because I'm shopping during the markdown times?

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26

c/diy-home-projects•jessew83•1mo ago

The trick with painter's tape for caulking actually works

I always got messy caulk lines around my baseboards until my dad told me to lay down painter's tape first and smooth it out with a wet finger. Tried it on a 12-foot run in my living room and it came out perfectly straight without any cleanup. Has anyone else found a simple trick like this that changed how you do a basic job?

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4

c/ai-innovations•jessew83•1mo ago

Just ran an AI image generator on my 2012 vacation photos and it filled in the blurry spots

I stuck some blurry old pics from a trip to the Grand Canyon into an upscaler AI and it added faces and details that werent even there originally. Has anyone else had a generator hallucinate stuff that was actually correct from the context?

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