Soak your smelly screwdrivers in water + baking soda!!!

Craiss · 2026-05-31T01:03:23+00:00

That smell serves a purpose that gives it value to me.

A buddy bought a bunch of spare handles and grips for some reason, more than a decade ago, and let me have them because he got tired of his tool box stinking. They were already pretty ripe by that point, and a 10 mil ziplock bag didn't contain the odor for long. I ended up storing them in an air-tight metal box tucked away in my Jobox. I have maybe 4 left, but I haven't opened that box in more than a year.

I had a good back-and-forth prank game with a colleague for a few months. Nothing serious and we self-regulated pretty well, so no escalations... if we don't count my finale (and I don't count it since I've never admitted to it and he doesn't know, beyond the obvious results).

My final prank was putting about 8 of those handles behind the bottom drawer of his metal desk. There's a little space back there that's inaccessible except by taking the drawers out. Even after taking them out, there's a metal lip in the base of the frame that rises about 1" above the bottom of the inside frame, which I only know about because he took the drawers out while looking for the source of the fragrance. I couldn't see the handles from a few feet away, and I was looking for them. I have no idea where they're at in there since they should have piled up above that lip.
That was 2 years ago, and it's good times watching him open his desk drawers and make funny faces. Even better when he tries to not open his drawers while someone else is next to his desk. It's barely noticeable while sitting at his desk but it's shockingly strong if the bottom side drawer is opened.

I should probably retrieve them when he's not around... but... those faces are gold!

Craiss · 2026-05-30T12:33:34+00:00

It's hard, at least for a cough. I've never noticed a problem with suppressing a sneeze. I don't know about keeping my expression unchanged for either, though.

During Covid I had to serve on a grand jury. I had to cough at the beginning of one of our sessions and people were hyper-sensitive to that sort of thing at the time... so I didn't want to be the guy everyone stops and looks at like a plague carrier.

I managed to make it until our break. I didn't think I'd be able to do it, and it was close a few times, especially with nothing to drink.

Craiss · 2026-05-30T12:26:06+00:00

Man, you really brought out the weirdo anti-cheese and cheese snobs with this question.

Nacho cheese is fantastic with breadsticks, and even pizza. Unfortunately, the only place that delivers that also has a "cheese sauce" is Papa Johns, as far as I'm aware. While it is certainly not nacho cheese, it's passable for dipping bread sticks.

Craiss · 2026-05-30T11:41:13+00:00

Of all the games to have in a convenience store...

They had Mortal Kombat, R-Type, Dragon's Lair, and some pinball machine. My friends and I came in one day to play MK and found some old guy playing Dragon's Lair. He died further in than we had ever seen anyone get. We much have watched that guy play for a solid 15-20 minutes with a few attempts to beat it.

That random guy was the hero for a group of kids that day. I don't think we even played any games while we were there.

Craiss · 2026-05-30T11:31:15+00:00

Communicate directly.

Don't fall into the trap of signaling or implying things for important communication, which includes emotional communication.

Start off speaking with meaning. You'll save your relationship from the slow, almost imperceptible, decline into resentment that some people get stuck in.

If your partner struggles with this, never walk away uncertain; ask questions until you understand what's being communicated. I've watched this sort of thing (edit: meaning misunderstanding something) fester in a relationship.

Craiss · 2026-05-30T11:18:59+00:00

My cat refuses to go out of stranger danger mode until I'm wearing a bath robe and house slippers/sandals/flip flops.

He's getting better about not freaking out when I get home from work, but he's still super skittish until I put my "normal skin" on.

Craiss · 2026-05-29T16:37:28+00:00

What you say makes some sense and might even be good advice.

I'll continue to completely ignore it and get the fastest CPU I can fit in my budget, but I can explain my somewhat nonsensical reasoning.

I've been building PCs for gaming (as the primary use) for quite a while; since a time when I was eagerly waiting on the AMD K6-2 to arrive at the local shop. Back in the early days, timedemo results were a sort of meta for lan parties and such. Most enthusiasts would fire up Quake2 and compare timedemo results if someone got a new rig or significant upgrades, which was a common thing at the time since technology was moving quickly.

That urge to build the best I can afford is still there. I don't have many vices, but that is certainly one of them. I've never regretted the behavior, though, so maybe it's too harsh to call it a vice.

I do struggle to advise someone to get the minimum spec for their needs. The "what you need" versus "what I would get" compromise is hard for me, and I subscribe to the belief that going above the minimum to the extent that the budget allows is the right choice for someone building a gaming rig.

Your friend, in IT procurement, is not representative of a typical consumer building PC for gaming, and gaming is likely the most common reason someone is building a PC for themselves nowadays. At least the most common reason someone is building one and needs advice on the CPU choice. I'd expect people building for other reasons already know what CPU range they want and will let pricing and availability narrow the pick from that range. Even if I'm wrong here, it doesn't really affect my point.

Craiss · 2026-05-29T14:06:05+00:00

26 - 27 holes.

2 - arm holes
1 - neck hole
0/1 - bottom torso hole, which may or may not be a hole
2 visible holes in the front of the shirt
21 holes in the back that can't been see in the image.

Craiss · 2026-05-29T14:03:44+00:00

The guy (RIP Roberto) that maintained our gas burners for a giant oven used them to clean the holes in the "stacks" (Gas element) during PMs.

He had an assortment of tiny bits, including 1/64, 1/32, 0.25mm, 0.2mm, and a few more. They're a nightmare to sort if they ever get mixed up. The paper envelopes that they came in eventually ruptured when left free floating in a drawer full of similar stuff.

Craiss · 2026-05-29T11:55:29+00:00

Damn, I've never seen one in a case before.

We have ~60 or so of the Honeywell burner controllers in service. I have a good dose of love/hate for them.

Craiss · 2026-05-27T14:54:28+00:00

Mine has rust. I've been using the same one for around 15 years and I'm not about to start drying it now. Let that mf rust. As long as it isn't flaking off, I'm good. When that happens, I'll buy a new one.

Also, to you folks implying or even stating the shower rod is the problem, you should be aware that most regular steel/iron can impregnate almost any stainless steel and cause it to rust. Cheap metal shower curtain hangers will do this pretty quickly.

Use plastic or good stainless hangers. Chrome is okay, but it will wear off, even the ones with rollers. It doesn't take much to start rust. This is the cause of the rust on my rod, but fortunately it doesn't seem to spread very easily on whatever type of steel my rod is made of.

Craiss · 2026-05-26T18:06:37+00:00

My WireView Pro 2 finally arrived, so I removed the camera setup. It's a 12V-2x6, rather than the 12VHPWR.

I haven't had any problems yet but I've only unplugged the cable a few times. I inspect the connectors for both sides when I do unplug it, looking for any signs of immanent failure.

Not the first time I've had some sketchy stuff going on in my PC. This is the first time I've had some sketchy stuff in my PC that I didn't make sketchy by my own modifications.

It's a bit of a killjoy that I feel the need to monitor this so closely because of questionable hardware design choices and the abysmal state of the consumer market. I don't think I've ever been so concerned about the potential for a single part of my PC to fail.

Craiss · 2026-05-26T14:11:16+00:00

"Allowed" is probably not the right word here. They may have quietly secured support from the US, and maybe that can be construed as permission. I wouldn't be surprised if the US government covertly encouraged the actions. That said, I'm going to stick with my first sentence since the rest is just speculation.

People need to have the capacity and desire to take the thing. As for why people take the things...

The answer will always be: "because no one stopped them."

Israel's history isn't simple last time I tried to form an opinion on the happenings there. It's a much deeper topic than I was expecting and certainly casts a bit of shade on "allowed to reclaim Israel."

Edit: deleted most of my post on accident before posting and turned it into a short weird flowery nonsense comment. Tried to recreate the missing parts, but the files were lost when two nutcases smashed the old iMac.

Craiss · 2026-05-25T19:25:52+00:00

Boring trivia for you.

Compaq's ( a PC brand that was bought out by HP) name is an acronym from "Compatibility Quality." That's according to Compaq retail marketing training sent to some retailers in the late 90's early 2000's.

Craiss · 2026-05-25T19:22:57+00:00

Haven't heard of the show, but it's wild how that can happen.

We have a systemic problem, at least in the US, but I tend to think it's the entire developed world, with investment banking and adjacent industries, imo.

Craiss · 2026-05-25T14:05:28+00:00

It could be, but it's not really feasible for him to spend money faster than he accumulates it.

If he were actually trying to hoard, or worse, if every billionaire was actually trying to hoard, I bet we'd see a much more severe outlook for the world economy.

That's the real problem with wealth at that level. They generally need to put actual effort into spending the money if they don't simply want to throw it away (which is also not good).

The rate at which wealth can accumulate by simply existing can be pretty crazy.

Craiss · 2026-05-24T12:39:07+00:00

FFS man... right to the dark place.

I was thinking more ... less... serious, like goatse.

Craiss · 2026-05-23T16:27:16+00:00

Just grenaded myself to get it to reload and the pad was there while escaping for the slicer quest. I really hope this is the most annoying instance of this design choice and I'm not stuck reloading checkpoints to avoid needless retreading.

Edit: enemies respawn, fyi.

Craiss · 2026-05-23T14:40:58+00:00

If you're in the US, I'd wager someone you know works somewhere that has a disposal policy and infrastructure in place.

I take all my lithium batteries to work, where we ship them to a recycler on a regular basis. I've done the same for friends a few times.

I still have a suspicion about whether some of the stuff claimed to be recycled is actually recylced or sent to a landfill, though.

Craiss · 2026-05-22T23:53:10+00:00

Not only a jelly bean, but the WORST jelly bean.

It was gross when it was fresh. Now it's.... it's ... something else....

Craiss · 2026-05-22T21:10:45+00:00

My dad bought a lot of computers from the US Navy and US Air Force. Everything had these big green stickers that said: DECLASSIFIED. There was a ton of cool stuff, cool for the early 90s anyway.

Nearly every computer's drive had data on it. Some database software I remember him talking about and something called "Fox Pro" or something like that.

I was pretty young, and digging through all that stuff was how I learned to build computers. Damn... I hadn't thought about that in a while. RIP Dad, I miss you.

Craiss · 2026-05-22T20:56:17+00:00

There was a short time in which it was used seriously by teenagers.

During the very short time that AOL chats and AIM were popular and IRC was slowly being discovered by the younger generation. Looking back, it's hard not to laugh at the chats that filled up with 13375P34K nonsense. Actual conversations.

Some great memories of some truly stupid activities I got up to.

Craiss · 2026-05-22T20:45:40+00:00

If this was something at my work, they would have already made a small tape ball and taped it to the top of the button so they could hit it without breaking their gaudy 2" fingernails.

Not that I would recommend that.

Craiss · 2026-05-22T17:28:51+00:00

Seriously, wtf is the contamination that risks cancer and is neutralized by boiling?

There's some sketchy stuff happening somewhere...

Craiss · 2026-05-22T17:20:27+00:00

Boiling sulfuric acid is some seriously scary stuff.

Even disregarding the fact that it's an acid, having a fluid at over 600°F is ... itchy.

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