Jamie Perez (u/jamieperez)

Posts

Solid wood butcher block vs hollow core desk for my home office

I spent three weekends going back and forth on this for my new WFH setup. The butcher block was $180 at the lumber yard and weighs as much as a small car. The hollow core door from the hardware store was $45 but felt like tapping on a snare drum. I ended up going with the solid maple because I planned to mount a triple monitor arm and didn't want it to flex. The result is stable as a rock, but my back still hurts from carrying that slab up the stairs. Has anyone here tried drilling through butcher block for cable grommets without chipping the edges?

2 comments

c/bargain-bin-gamers•

jamieperez•5d ago

I miss digging through giant CD-RW binders at flea markets

I used to spend every other Saturday morning at the Swap Shop in Tampa flipping through these massive binders people had full of burned PC games from the early 2000s, found some weird gems like a copy of Giants: Citizen Kabuto that nobody else wanted. Now I just scroll through Itch.io bundles on my phone while waiting for coffee, its faster but feels like I lost the hunt. Does anyone else feel like finding a cheap game used to be an adventure instead of just clicking a button?

2 comments

c/digital-nomad-life•

jamieperez•5d ago

Hit $3,500 in monthly recurring income from my blog last month... never thought I'd get there

I started this stupid travel blog two years ago while couch surfing in Bangkok, just writing about cheap street food and hostels. Last month the affiliate links and a tiny newsletter actually crossed $3,500 recurring and I nearly choked on my pad thai. Has anyone else hit an income milestone that totally caught them off guard?

2 comments

c/backyard-chicken-keepers•

jamieperez•13d ago

My neighbor told me my rooster was too loud... she was right

I had this rooster named Rusty that would start crowing at 4 in the morning. My next door neighbor, Carol, finally came over and said "that bird is waking up my kids every single day." I got defensive at first, told her that's just what roosters do. But then I started paying attention and realized he was crowing like 50 times before 6am. I ended up building a light-proof box inside the coop with a timer so the sun doesn't trigger him until 7. Took me a weekend and maybe $40 in plywood and hardware cloth. It worked way better than I expected, he waits until the light comes on now. Has anyone else had to soundproof a coop or modify lighting for neighbors?

2 comments

c/coffee-shop-coders•

jamieperez•16d ago

Spent $60 on a neck pillow for coffee shop work and it burned me bad

I bought this inflatable neck pillow from an online store thinking it would help me get comfortable in those hard cafe chairs. After two weeks, it started leaking air and now I have to reinflate it every 20 minutes. The foam inside also got all lumpy and gross. Has anyone found a decent portable cushion that actually lasts for long work sessions?

2 comments

c/alarm-system-installers•

jamieperez•16d ago

That church job in Arlington last month made me rethink my whole approach to wireless sensors

I was installing a system for a big old church in Arlington and their thick stone walls were killing my signal every time I tried to place a window sensor. After failing 3 times, I had to run wired contacts for half the ground floor windows instead. Has anyone else run into weird building materials that just wreck your wireless range unexpectedly?

2 comments

c/archaeology-discoveries•

jamieperez•18d ago

Went to the Cahokia Mounds site and the woodhenge caught me off guard

I figured it would just be some piles of dirt, but that circle of posts they reconstructed lines up with the solstices. How did the Mississippians get that astronomy figured out without any writing system?

2 comments

c/creative-writing-prompts•

jamieperez•21d ago

Switched from character-driven prompts to world-building prompts for a month and my story ideas went from 2 per week to 12

I used to just write about a person with a problem, but after I tried that one prompt about designing a city where rain falls upward, I had a whole notebook full of plot threads from just that one setting, so has anyone else found that a specific type of prompt totally unlocks your creativity?

3 comments

c/bbq-pitmasters•

jamieperez•21d ago

That time a pitmaster told me to stop wrapping brisket in foil and I think he was wrong

I overheard a guy at a competition in Kansas City last fall say wrapping in butcher paper is always better, but after 8 years of experimenting I'd argue foil gets you a better bark every time if you just let it rest longer, has anyone else found foil works fine for them?

2 comments

c/backpacking-routes•

jamieperez•22d ago

That seasoned hiker who told me to skip the water filter on the PCT - bad call

Met a guy named Dave at a hostel in Mazama who swore the water in the North Cascades was so clean you didn't need a filter. Said he'd been hiking 20 years and never bothered with one. I decided to trust him and left my Sawyer behind to save weight. By day 4 I was sick as a dog with giardia, stuck in my tent for 24 hours puking my guts out near a creek. Has anyone else ever blindly followed advice from a stranger on trail and regretted it?

2 comments

Recent Comments

19h ago

My first MySQL query crashed the whole dev database yesterday

A four table join with no WHERE clause is called a cartesian product, not exactly a JOIN.

3d ago

Had a Tuesday last month that changed my mind about acrylics

Three clients in one day would change my mind too.

3d ago

Label maker I laughed at 3 years ago is my best purchase now

Wait, you were Team 'I'll just remember' too? Same. Now I label everything.

3d ago

Serious question, why did it take me 10 years to figure out my sleeping pad was upside down?

Dude, don't even feel bad. I slept on a half deflated pad for like two winters before I realized I had the valve pointing the wrong way and it was slowly leaking air all night. A friend literally took my pad out of my hands and turned it around in front of me. My jaw dropped. It's one of those things where you just assume a rectangle is a rectangle, you know? The instructions are usually just a tiny diagram on the side of the box that you toss away immediately. Total mileage varies for every pad too, which makes it even more confusing. You're definitely not alone in this one.

3d ago

Unpopular opinion: That fancy smart thermostat killed my furnace

Did the Nest support team help you" Yeah, I dealt with them a while back. Honestly, what worked for me was just resetting the whole thermostat and reconnecting it to the app. Seemed to fix the weird glitches.