Man, I was probably stripping wire wrong for a year too. I used to crank down on my lineman's pliers like I was trying to crush a can, and I'd flatten the conductor ends. My journeyman finally asked if I was trying to make little copper spatulas. A lighter squeeze and they stay round, who knew.

Ugh, that graph paper trick is a lifesaver. My friend Sarah had the same exact problem last month. She was trying to do a fancy dutch door layout and her columns were all different widths, it looked like a toddler drew it. She even bought a new ruler, thinking hers was bent. @victor_adams95, it's a real thing! She finally just started using dot grid notebooks exclusively and gave up on trying to make perfect lines on blank paper. Some battles aren't worth fighting.

Disagree completely. A blurry animal wrecking a shot is just a failed photo. I work hard to get the composition right, and some random raccoon messes it up. Those pictures are just junk taking up space on my hard drive. The whole point is to capture what you meant to capture, not some random accident. Keeping those feels like settling for a mistake instead of the real shot you wanted.

Remember that time I stapled my thumb to a tax form, which felt pretty high stakes to me.

Wow, 500 pieces is a huge number, congrats on that. The sawdust really does pile up in a way you don't notice until you stop and look around. My garage floor just disappears under a fine layer of it after a big project, like a weird beige carpet. It gets in your hair, your clothes, everywhere, and you find it for days after. Makes you appreciate how much material you're actually moving, you know?