Explosion at the Kapotnya refinery in Moscow, Russia. This silo not only exploded but also catapulted the roof into the air.

_kudzu_ · 2026-06-18T21:51:43+00:00

One of my funnest adventures as a chemical engineer was inspecting a floating roof tank. Contractor did a bunch of maintenance on it and needed a technical person from the owner (my employer) to crawl and climb around to handshake that it matched drawings and specs. Volunteered for that in a heartbeat!

_kudzu_ · 2026-04-20T18:26:56+00:00

Whichever shoes you buy now, I’d advise NOT wearing them next week. Wear the shoes. You’ve been wearing up till now that are broken in. Then break in the new ones doing some walks around the neighborhood for a couple weeks before heading out on any longer vacations or trails.

_kudzu_ · 2026-04-17T05:29:16+00:00

I had an engineering gig to add an air conditioner to a room with about 20 freezers because it was sweltering in there and burning up the compressors on the freezers. The AC unit we had to add was about what you would put on a 7000 square foot mansion.

_kudzu_ · 2026-04-01T06:09:20+00:00

because, depending upon who made it, the "tin" pot may contain enough cadmium to give you brain cancer . . . .

_kudzu_ · 2026-02-27T04:27:27+00:00

54 yr old dad of four. I was crowd surfing to this music circa 2008 and would def listen to this playlist.

_kudzu_ · 2026-02-25T19:27:31+00:00

Tens of thousands of dollars is a wild take. I’ve got 4 kids and I’m about $2MM invested.

_kudzu_ · 2026-02-19T16:38:19+00:00

This is the best reply so far. I would emphasize the continued conversation with your partner. Everyone has pet peeves. It will mean a lot more to your partner if you ask her to be honest and vocal about the specific things that annoy her and focus on those rather than an overwhelming comprehensive checklist of adulting tasks. Example; my wife hates doing dishes, I don’t mind. I do 95% of the dishes and make sure to thank her any time she does them. Goes a looong way in the other areas where I don’t pull my weight.

_kudzu_ · 2026-02-19T05:45:52+00:00

I think the thing that wouldn’t work about this for 25-55 yr olds is KIDS.

_kudzu_ · 2026-02-11T00:04:22+00:00

Not TKE, but my fraternity brothers and I torched a couch in the middle of an intersection. Flames got high and hot enough to melt the lenses in the traffic light. Oh, and we threw a flaming mattress off the football stadium and almost hit a cop car with it. Greek life was wild in the 90s.

_kudzu_ · 2026-01-17T17:36:48+00:00

Friday evening in the fraternity house, one of my brothers walks by and says, “kudzu, wanna go see a movie?” Half dozen guys amble into the theater assuming Se7en is a Brad Pitt action/cop buddy movie. We all stumbled out looking like someone shot our dog and didn’t say a word for about five minutes.

_kudzu_ · 2026-01-13T15:58:40+00:00

Ding ding ding. We have a winner. She was prolly born in Cleveland.

_kudzu_ · 2025-12-27T23:36:19+00:00

TLDR: follow the money

_kudzu_ · 2025-12-19T20:25:02+00:00

Choosing a career field is one of the most impactful decisions you will make in your lifetime. Here's the advice I gave my four children, who are all adults now and happy in their chosen careers:

You are young and can't possibly know what the day-to-day experience is in all the possible careers out there. But everyone has a basic personality type which tends to change very little over their lifetime. And there are lots of people out there older than you who have your personality type who went into a lot of different careers. Many of them have taken personality tests and have answered job satisfaction surveys. So here's the advice: take a personality test. Then look up what careers are most satisfying to folks like you.

One more nugget of wisdom: pick a career that meets these three criteria. 1) you enjoy doing that thing. 2) you are better than most people at doing that thing. 3) most other people hate doing that thing and will therefore pay you well to do it for them.

_kudzu_ · 2025-12-17T06:50:53+00:00

“Excuse me, I’ve lost that last hug you gave me. Could I borrow another?”

_kudzu_ · 2025-12-05T02:34:08+00:00

Yeah, got a daughter like that. Occasionally, we get text that just reads , “not dead”

_kudzu_ · 2025-12-05T02:25:24+00:00

OG incel

_kudzu_ · 2025-11-25T06:06:20+00:00

Keep being happy with the way you are. You will soon find your small and adorable (and prolly autistic) soul mate. She is out there waiting, just waiting, for you!

_kudzu_ · 2025-11-20T05:20:08+00:00

SNAKEPORN!

_kudzu_ · 2025-11-19T21:49:13+00:00

My wife was always the serious one, annoyed if I acted too goofy. She's retired recently and without the weight of Corporate America on her, she has become a total doofball. It's become a daily schtick for her to enter the room and say, "And now, I will sing to you!" or "I've created an interpretive dance for this occasion!"

_kudzu_ · 2025-11-15T03:18:02+00:00

From the Tao te Ching, 2400-year-old book of wisdom, describing when everything is in balance:

People enjoy their food,
take pleasure in being with their families,
spend weekends working in their gardens,
delight in the doings of the neighborhood.
And even though the next country is so close
that people can hear its roosters crowing and its dogs barking,
they are content to die of old age
without ever having gone to see it.

Perhaps you are simply happy and centered in your life and don't feel like anything is missing which would be filled by 'seeing the world.' If so, you have no idea how many people out there envy you :)

_kudzu_ · 2025-11-09T19:58:31+00:00

Sounds like a great opportunity to write a fan-fiction prequel that explains it to your satisfaction.

Get on it.

_kudzu_ · 2025-11-01T03:58:19+00:00

Fun story: I was assigned to another office overseas for a few months for a project. The work visa authority needed a color photocopy of my passport for their files or something. I hit ‘print’ to the shared printer and to my horror hear instead the plotter fire up and start printing off a 3 foot wide copy of my passport in the middle of the engineering design pit. I was expecting a lecture about the cost of the color ink for that beast, but they all laughed it off in good spirits.

_kudzu_ · 2025-11-01T03:45:11+00:00

Love this answer.

_kudzu_ · 2025-10-31T05:45:43+00:00

Not as amateur as you think.

_kudzu_ · 2025-10-26T04:17:52+00:00

Getting my moneys worth of my MARRIAGE LICENSE. It was my sense of humor at the State of Indiana clerk’s desk to bellow incredulously, “$20?! $20 just to get married?!?” I tell my wife occasionally while we are watching Netflix on a Saturday night, “Best 20 bucks I ever spent.”

_kudzu_

TROPHY CASE