I finally tried a 3/4 inch spiral upcut bit on some curly maple and it changed my game

Last month I was working on a set of kitchen doors in my shop in Bellingham and my usual straight bit was burning the wood no matter how slow I fed it. My buddy Mike told me to grab a spiral upcut bit, so I picked up a Freud one. The cut was so clean and the chips cleared out perfectly, no burning at all. Anyone have a favorite brand for these bits, or is there a specific feed rate you use for really figured wood?

Had a weird tile layout that needed a 3 degree cut on every piece

This was on a kitchen backsplash in a 1920s house, nothing was square. The client wanted a herringbone pattern but the wall sloped. I was about to spend all day with a protractor and a pencil. My old boss, a guy named Frank, once told me to use a speed square and a piece of scrap wood as a jig. I clamped a 2x4 to my saw table, set the square against it at 3 degrees, and locked the fence. Cut every single piece in about 20 minutes, perfect fit. Who else has a weird angle trick that saved their butt?

Rant: I cut dadoes freehand for a built-in bookcase and it actually worked

I was fitting shelves in a 1920s house where nothing was square, so I just marked them with a knife and used a router with a guide bearing. Has anyone else had to ditch the jig and go by eye on an old house job?

My fine-tune of a Llama 2 model crashed after 18 hours

I was running it on a rented cloud server in Virginia, trying to get it to write better product descriptions. The whole thing just stopped and the log file was full of memory errors. I had to go back, cut my training data by half, and start over, which finally worked. Anyone know a good way to guess the right data size before you start a long run like that?

I was sectioning hair for a balayage in my Denver salon and a client pointed out my part lines were crooked.

I realized I'd been relying on my dominant eye for years, which was throwing off my symmetry, so has anyone else found a good trick for checking your sectioning work from a different angle?

I was at a little league game in Springfield and overheard two dads talking about their 529 plans. It made me finally open one for my kid.

Question about the new water-based clear coats in humid weather

I keep seeing guys in our shop rush the flash-off time on these new water-based clears, especially when it's muggy. We had a job in Savannah last week where the humidity was 80% and a guy tacked it after 10 minutes, which led to solvent pop on a whole quarter panel. The tech sheet for that PPG line clearly says 15-20 minutes at 70% humidity, minimum. How do you guys handle the wait time when the schedule is tight?

Shoutout to the random guy at the coffee shop who saw me typing my card number

I was at a Starbucks in Denver last Tuesday trying to pay a bill online, and I was literally typing my full debit card number into a public wifi page. This older dude at the next table just leaned over and said, 'Hey man, you know that's how they get you, right?' I had no idea what he meant at first. He explained that on public wifi, anyone could be watching that data. I've been doing this for years, paying for stuff on my phone at airports and cafes like it was nothing. I always thought the little lock icon was enough. I felt so stupid, lol. Has anyone else had a wake-up call about how unsafe their payment habits are?

A vet in Bend told me my trimming was making a horse's navicular worse

He said I was taking too much heel off a horse with low angles, basically forcing it to walk on its toes. I'd always been told to get that heel down, but now I'm rethinking my whole approach for that type of foot. Anyone have a good method for balancing a low-heeled horse without overdoing it?

PSA: My deck's ledger board was fine last fall, but after the winter it's pulling away from the house. Check yours before grilling season.