I hit 37 condiment bottles in my fridge and I'm not proud of it

I was cleaning out the door shelves and actually counted them all. There's everything from three kinds of mustard to four nearly-empty hot sauces. It explains why I can never find the soy sauce and why my partner gets mad when the door won't close right. I think I just keep buying new ones instead of finishing the old ones. It's a real problem. Anyone else have a condiment collection that's gotten out of hand?

Why does nobody talk about the co-op game section at the Portland Retro Game Expo?

I went last weekend and the whole area was packed with people playing old SNES and Genesis beat 'em ups on CRTs. It made me realize modern games have totally forgotten how to make a simple, fun 4-player brawler. What's the last new couch co-op game you played that actually felt like that?

Working on a dock in Savannah, I saw a diver using a new kind of lift bag

It was a small, bright orange bag with a built-in pressure gauge on the hose fitting. The diver said it saved him a bunch of time on a recent salvage job because he didn't have to keep surfacing to check his air. Has anyone else tried these integrated gauge bags, and are they worth the extra cost?

Showerthought: my grandpa's old toolbox had way more universal parts than my modern one

I was reading an article about planned obsolescence and it said a 1970s appliance had about 70% generic, replaceable components, compared to under 30% now. Honestly makes me miss when you could actually fix stuff with a trip to the hardware store instead of ordering a whole proprietary assembly. Anyone else run into this trying to repair something recent?

Shoutout to the guy who told me to just buy the damn mandoline slicer

I was stuck between a cheap $30 model and a $150 professional one for prepping veg. Went with the expensive Benriner and it cut my prep time for a 50-pound case of potatoes in half. Anyone have tips for keeping the blade sharp?

Showerthought: The Sharknado movies got worse on purpose and it ruined the fun

I watched the first Sharknado again last week, then the sixth one from 2018, and the difference is night and day. The first one was a dumb, charming mess where they fought sharks with chainsaws. It felt like a real try at a B-movie. By the time they got to 'The Last Sharknado: It's About Time', it was just a parade of cameos and self-aware jokes. They stopped trying to make a bad movie and started trying to make a 'so bad it's good' movie, which is a totally different thing. The magic was in the first one's honest stupidity, not the later ones winking at the camera. It went from a fun bad movie night pick to a chore in about 5 years. Has anyone else felt a series lost its charm once it knew it was a joke?

Question about using a 1/4 inch backing plate on a 3/8 inch weld joint

I was working on a boiler repair in Toledo last week and the spec called for a 3/8 inch fillet. I was short on material and tried using a 1/4 inch backing plate instead of the proper thickness, thinking it would be fine for the root pass. The weld cracked under stress testing after 48 hours. Has anyone else run into this and found a workaround that actually holds up?

I thought that new Milwaukee cordless pipe threader was just overpriced hype.

My foreman insisted we try one on a job at the old paper mill in Kalamazoo last week. It cut perfect threads on 2-inch schedule 80 in under a minute, no hoses or compressor. I've been lugging that old Rigid machine for 15 years. Anyone else made the switch and found it actually holds up on heavy pipe?

Watched a guy try to tap a hole with the spindle still running at 2000 rpm, said he saw it on a YouTube short.

Question about using a 3D model for a permit set

Last week I was working on a permit set for a small office addition in Charlotte. For years, I've always done my permit drawings in 2D, thinking the extra time to build a full 3D model was a waste for something the city just stamps. My coworker convinced me to try it on this job, saying it would help catch conflicts. I built the model in about 4 hours, and it actually showed a duct run I'd drawn clashing with a new beam. I fixed it before it went out. It didn't just check a box, it saved me a revision. Has anyone else switched to modeling for permits and found it worth the upfront time?