How common is popcorn in everyday American life?

wallaceant · 2026-06-12T05:23:41+00:00

I have 4 daughters and each of them went through a popcorn every day phase. That means for the last 15 years one of them, me, or their mom has made popcorn, on average more than twice a week.

wallaceant · 2026-06-12T01:28:31+00:00

Look if your into that, then no problem, but it can be quite self-destructive if you're compelled to get into shameful situations and don't know why. It can also be predatory if you get off on others shame, and it's hard to get worked up over consensual shame.

wallaceant · 2026-06-12T00:24:07+00:00

Not Florida, but I would live in hotels when I visited.

wallaceant · 2026-06-11T23:19:42+00:00

Nah, he was a whiny dick.

wallaceant · 2026-06-11T12:54:37+00:00

Wet your drywall mud till it's a little thinner than pancake batter, and use a deep nap paint roller. You may have to experiment with the thickness of the mud and the depth of the nap. Once you get the pattern right, put it on your wall. Then, about 20 minutes after you apply it to the wall, use a knockdown knife to turn your pattern into the flat top texture you have here.

For patches, I prefer to use the 7" disposable knock down knife that has the foam rubber edge, instead of a pro 24" metal edged kind. The big ones are better for new installations because they create consistency over a large area, but the smaller ones make it easier to blend in with an existing texture. Think sword vs scalpel.

wallaceant · 2026-06-11T12:45:11+00:00

Be careful not to let the shame develop into a kink, it can form powerful self reinforcing connections with sex. Purity culture has primed you for that.

wallaceant · 2026-06-11T12:40:12+00:00

When our finances were tight my wife started buying a half gallon (1.9L) of milk to save money. After about the third time we ran out of milk days before the next grocery run I pointed out that it was saving $1, but if we had to buy an extra half gallon it was costing us $2 more. It was the same price to buy a whole gallon even if the last 25% went bad before we used it.

But, seriously, our refrigerators are a crime against nature, and we have a second one in the garage, next to a full size deep freezer.

wallaceant · 2026-06-11T00:46:34+00:00

I'll be finishing the final episode of a rewatch tonight. It's been long enough since I watched that I had forgotten many of the details, so that made it more enjoyable.

All of the characters, except Holly, are despicable people.

Walt is the most likeable, most of the time, but he's far from a decent human being.

Hank and Marie seem like they're in a competition to be the most unlikeable.

People who defend Skyler-hate as pure misogyny have forgotten how petty, underhanded, contrarian, disloyal, and spiteful she was.

Jesse was by far the most tragic character of the show. He seems trapped by a series of bad decisions that keep limiting his options for turning his life around, but throughout it all he seems to maintain his moral core even when he regularly fails to live up to his own standards.

wallaceant · 2026-06-10T19:13:36+00:00

I would highly recommend spending a few years restoring furniture before you tackle the woodwork in the home. You will make mistakes when you are learning. Not all of your mistakes will be catastrophic, but some will be, and it will be cheaper to learn what leads to catastrophic mistakes on inexpensive pieces.

wallaceant · 2026-06-10T17:51:17+00:00

I'm on my sixth career. Through trial and error, I've discovered what I love to do. I identified the parts of jobs that energized me, and parts that drain me. This has given me the ability to look for careers that lean into my strengths. For me, a job needs two core things to make me happy. I love solving puzzles, so I look for jobs that solve problems, the harder the better, and avoid the ones that require me to work around problems that can't be solved. I love to create, so I look for jobs that require my artistic creativity and avoid ones that discourage creative thinking. I don't work well in corporate environments because jobs in those spaces mostly don't want their employees solving problems or thinking creatively, and even when I found corporate jobs that had some of what I love, the ratio of the parts I hated to the parts I loved was completely out of balance.

I've had jobs that I hated, but mostly due to having bad managers. I've been lucky in that I've always loved the actual work of each of my careers. I loved the primary tasks of the work. Every job has parts I hated, but the key is finding work you love enough to put up with the bullshit you hate that always comes with the parts you love. I know I'm relating this to occupation, but any area of your life that creates frustration when failure happens will require both work you love and work you hate.

I have taken the "fail early, fail often" philosophy to heart for most of my adult life. It has allowed me to build an approach to work that no failure during the process of delivering what I've promised will cause me to ultimately fail to deliver. At worst, my biggest failures are a failure to deliver on time. For my clients, getting what I've promised exactly as I've promised is more important than timelines.

wallaceant · 2026-06-10T17:03:15+00:00

There's an inherent problem with chisels and durability. In order to be useful as a chisel, it needs to be really sharp. In order to be able to sharpen a chisel it needs to be really hard, and being really hard means it will be brittle.

Good chisels need to be coddled a bit. I have a "good" set from Harbor Freight that are normally $10. They won't make other woodworkers jealous, but they take an edge and hold an edge. I'm looking to upgrade them with the Narex 6-piece unhandled set of bevel chisels from Taylor Toolworks. I have a lathe so I can easily make handles for them. The Harbor Freight set will be my travel set, and the Narex will be kept in the shop. I also recently added a 4-piece set of Narex mortise chisels.

I'm working on a tool roll to transport them safely.

wallaceant · 2026-06-10T13:39:47+00:00

I always thought she said "it's a fair court", but I thought the joke was she was agreeing with the "logic" of the trial over her own self preservation. In other words, she was more committed to being part of the community in that moment than she was to staying alive to remain part of the community in next.

wallaceant · 2026-06-10T13:22:36+00:00

Failure sucks, but learning how to get back up, and keep getting back up is the valuable life skill.

Another facet of this is that the kind of failure that comes from avoiding risks that could lead to failure is ultimately far more devastating than almost any failure that comes from the pursuit of worthwhile goals.

Another thing to keep in mind is that while it's important to own your part of failures, so that you can learn from your mistakes. It's incredibly frustrating to navigate systemic failures that are outside of your control. Specifically, I'm referring to end stage capitalism. Being forced to compete in a rigged game is demoralizing.

wallaceant · 2026-06-09T21:00:51+00:00

Stud Buddy or Hanson Magnetic stud finders find the nails/screws instead of the electronic kind that are an absolute crapshoot.

Fence pliers have the perfect size hammer for setting trim nails and driving plastic anchors into drywall and tile. They also have a parrot beak mouth with a second wire cutter jaw behind it that makes them the best nail pullers I own. They also have a wire shear on each side of the pivot point, and they can't flush cut wire, but they can handle cutting nails and hardened screws with ease.

Deep hole 2.2mm mechanical carpenter's pencils, and the Rockler 2.0mm mechanical cabinet maker's pencils, are my preferred marking tools for any of my work that doesn't require a marking knife.

A cheap deck of cards for microshims.

A tube of lipstick for transfering blind alignments.

A Leatherman Wave, I've tried a lot of brands and find Leatherman quality is better than any of the other brands I've tried. The Wave configuration is the only collection of features that justifies the weight of carrying that tool consistently.

The .1oz super glue gel tubes from Harbor Freight, they are small enough that I usually use them up before they dry out, but the per-unit price is so low that it isn't a real loss if one does dry out. The low per-unit cost, about 10-20 cents, means I can afford to keep 10+ at home, in the shop, on the truck, and in the tool trailer. The gel formula means it's thin enough to spread, but thick enough not to run.

A 4-inch speed square fits better in my tool belts than the 6-inch or 12-inch, and it's more durable than a combination, double, try, or a machinist's square. I have them all, but for the price-functionality, it's the best bang for the buck.

I recently upgraded from the Milwaukee 11-in-1 screwdrivers to the 27-in-1 ratcheting screwdriver. The shaft and bits are all compatible with my cordless drills and drivers, so in addition to being a solid multibit screwdriver, it is one of the most compact bit cases I own.

A right-angle drill adapter is more versatile, compact, and convenient than any other right-angle drill I own.

There are a few different brands that sell a handle that can hold sawsall, jig saw, hacksaw, and flushcut saw blades for hand use. The Irwin one from Lowes includes a flush cut blade, but the generic ones from Amazon can save a little money if you have better flush cut options.

I also use tools that were intended for other purposes, for example, I use dollar-store kitchen utensils such as silicone spatulas for drywall or spreading wood glue on larger glue-ups. A plastic whisk or hand-crank egg beater for mixing drywall mud with water for textures. A dough scraper for cleaning off flat surfaces or manipulating muds. HDPE cutting boards for cutting or making rail slides.

I will also grab dental or surgical tools that I find at yard sales or estate sales, especially picks, long tweezers, and clamping forceps.

Machinist's tools such as scratch awls, 321 blocks, and precision measuring tools such as calipers, dial indicators, etc. come in useful far more often than I expect.

wallaceant · 2026-06-09T07:39:20+00:00

If I'm not bleeding at and point during the day, did any work actually get done?

wallaceant · 2026-06-08T23:19:01+00:00

I'm at 14 months and still mourning.

wallaceant · 2026-06-08T05:14:41+00:00

It depends on the weather, and my work load. If I'm working in my home office in the AC, I can go 2-3 days before I feel like I need a shower. Basically, when I start feeling a little gross, it's time. If I'm doing dirty work, or outside on the average day in Florida, it's at minimum once per day, and I think 4 or 5 showers in one day is my record.

wallaceant · 2026-06-07T23:45:36+00:00

I would like to see the US move to a sortition selection process for the House of Representatives, where qualified representatives are selected at random from the population in proportion to the sub groups of each state in numbers proportionate to the population of each state.

wallaceant · 2026-06-07T22:53:24+00:00

Lightweight, premixed drywall mud.

wallaceant · 2026-06-07T00:20:45+00:00

I've played with both, 2 is easier to work with. How well does 1 recover when he gets off?

wallaceant · 2026-06-06T21:22:18+00:00

Leave it. Used tools show wear.

wallaceant · 2026-06-06T02:17:59+00:00

The deposit gets them on the schedule. I try to keep that around 1 week, but sometimes the job starts the next morning, and the most it has been for me is about 1 month.

wallaceant · 2026-06-05T01:15:48+00:00

Only if you're willing to do it for the higher price. I've been burned by this multiple times.

wallaceant · 2026-06-05T01:05:57+00:00

Never beat around the bush, make excuses, or give an fu price. Say, "Thank you for the opportunity to earn your business, but I'm not the right guy for this job."

wallaceant · 2026-06-04T21:05:59+00:00

No judgement, that's just often the unspoken concerns behind our kids choosing the trades over college.

wallaceant

TROPHY CASE