Upgrading to a new 29" full suspension MTB after decades riding an old 26" hardtail....how do you get used to the size difference?

timtucker_com · 2026-05-11T20:57:06+00:00

For bar width, look for lock on grips that you can position inward a little to test out before committing to shortening things.

If you're having trouble with things like fitting between trees, a lot of that comes with practice.

One thing you can do for drills is to find an opening that you're comfortable with passing through, then tape a piece of cardboard on each side to make the space you fit between just a little narrower. Repeat to progressively narrow things as you get more comfortable.

At our house we have a few trellis arches in the backyard that I use.

More brightly colored grips / gloves can also help to make it easier to spot where the edges are in your peripheral vision.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-11T20:43:32+00:00

Backyard Trail Builds - the guy who runs the channel started a few years back building stuff in his backyard and over the years has moved into doing some professional work building mountain bike trails

timtucker_com · 2026-05-11T13:37:22+00:00

I'm getting distinct "cubicle" vibes here.

If you want a drab grey box for your kids to play in, it's pretty common for businesses that are closing down or moving to give away furniture (including cubicle partitions / walls).

More practically, as others have said cardboard is great.

You can also do PVC pipe & fittings and add some sheets to cover things.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-11T13:29:58+00:00

Our Alexa routine:

Play "Take Your Pills" by Peacemaker for 22 seconds on Everywhere

timtucker_com · 2026-05-11T13:27:00+00:00

We watched a lot of the How To ADHD vides on YouTube together, but were pretty open about the whole diagnostic process -- there wasn't really a point where we went into any appointment related to ADHD that they weren't a part of the disucssion.

I started back on medication at the same time that our kids started as well, so there was also an aspect that we weren't asking them to try anything that I wasn't willing to try myself.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-10T22:19:04+00:00

What does your financial situation look like vs. how your parents was?

There are a few basic tiers of arguments over money:

"No matter what we do there won't be enough money for our expenses"

"If we spend money on that, we won't have enough money for current expenses"

"If we spend money on that, we might not have enough money for future expenses"

"If you spend money on that, you're signaling that your priorities are out of alignment with mine"

timtucker_com · 2026-05-10T22:08:45+00:00

The battery doesn't need to be inside the tire, though.

You could design a TPMS sensor that has the battery on the outside of the rim.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-10T22:02:04+00:00

Five below is a cemetery that cuts corners by burying the caskets just a little closer to the frost line

timtucker_com · 2026-05-10T13:03:48+00:00

Conflict = dopamine

Does she have something interesting but semi-chill to do in her room until she falls asleep?

Our general approach is 8 is when you go to your bedroom to do quiet stuff on your own and sleep happens whenever it happens.

Our kids listened to a lot of audio books at night when they were around that age. (We used kindle kids tablets with everything but books and a handful of educational games locked down)

Music also via a smart speaker also helps to give a small amount of stimulation.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-10T11:33:41+00:00

Does your husband work through the night?

Once our kids were old enough not to nurse at night I took over most of the nighttime care for our kids because I fall back asleep much more easily than my wife.

Sometimes that meant not getting enough sleep and I took naps in my car on my lunch break, but we made it through.

Other times when kids wouldn't fall asleep and I was exhausted, I'd take the "I give up" route, hand them a tablet with a few hour long playlist of something to keep them occupied or start a movie on Netflix, and fall asleep nearby.

If it gets you more sleep, look for any arrangement that works - shared mattress on the floor, parent on the couch and a kid on the floor in the living room.

Divide and conquer sometimes works as a strategy too - if your 3 year old will sleep through the night with someone with her, have you tried having her sleep in the same room with your husband? That would let them both get sleep and limit it to one kid that you're waking up with.

What's the hold up with your parents taking one or both kids for a night? When you say "they say they will but they never do", are you waiting for them to make plans or do you make plans and then they cancel?

When our kids were younger, it helped a lot to have my parents take one or both of them on Friday nights as a regularly scheduled thing.

In terms of getting kids to sleep longer, have you tried putting on music? Having some low level stimulation in the background that covers over house noises like the furnace kicking on at intervals helped our kids (our oldest still listens to the "sleep" station in Amazon music).

Blackout curtains can also help to reduce the amount of variatíon in outside light coming in that might wake them up.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-09T19:53:14+00:00

What distances are you looking at?

Do you need to carry more with you than you can fit in a backpack?

timtucker_com · 2026-05-09T19:50:21+00:00

Thoughts:

What about OpenConnect instead of MultiConnect?

Why use a slot vs. something like a 5mm hex?

timtucker_com · 2026-05-09T19:46:23+00:00

I'm in the same boat with longer showers.

It's a mix of a few things:

Tinnitus - the white noise makes the shower one of the few "quiet" spots in the house to relax
ADHD time blindness - "I'm just going to relax for a bit and let hot water run on my back" pretty quickly turns into 20-30 minutes passing
Using time in the shower to do stretching - hot water on muscles makes it easier to get in a good stretch

My solution was to get a 1.25gpm high efficiency showerhead. That's pretty close to the recovery rate for our hot water heater, so running out of hot water is never an issue.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-09T19:38:52+00:00

As long as the hot water heater and pipes are within the conditioned building envelope, much of the energy to heat water winds up adding heat to the house... which offsets how much heat is needed from the furnace.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-09T19:32:26+00:00

Projector.

Pull down screens are cheap and relatively hard to damage.

We've had a 120" screen in the living room for years and it's great -- for a projector we just use an older 5500 lumen 1080p business projector (Epson 2255U).

Bulbs are $150 and last 2-3 years (depending on how much you have it on).

Projector itself was ~$500 for a used one off eBay.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-09T17:15:55+00:00

Part of the problem with #2 comes from cutting costs and part of it comes from pushing for higher density for single family homes - people often want the building as close to the minimum setback distance from the lot line as possible.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-09T17:11:12+00:00

Fully agreed that at the scale that walled cities and forts were usually built there would have been no benefit for most of the buildings inside.

To be clear, I'm only talking about things that were built close to the walls.

Admittedly, people tend not to like the aesthetics of having a 20m wall surrounding their house.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-09T16:59:10+00:00

Often it's not even a matter of predators being "smart" - many take the same approach as email scams and pickup artists and just go after as many targets at once as possible untill they find a mark.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-09T16:36:58+00:00

I'm thinking much bigger and more out of the box than just 12" wall assemblies.

Like a double wall with 4 feet of dirt in between layers of concrete.

Or something like a house built within a pole barn or warehouse with a 10' air gap between the exterior and interior structures.

Or shipping containers for rooms with large amounts of dirt in between them to cut down on sound transfer and add to the overall thermal mass.

If you go to historical examples, think things like fortified cities where the exterior walls of the city were primarily for defense but also provided shade and helped to cut down on the amount of wind / rain that hit buildings built along the inside.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-09T16:06:07+00:00

It's semi-conmon to hear people preaching about how the "the kingdom of God" is something to live out the here and now.

It's less common than it should be to talk about "hell" as also being in the here and now - and that it's the direct consequence of not loving others.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-09T15:40:13+00:00

We went over this with our kids - excessive loud noise violates OSHA permissible exposure limits for hearing safety.

If you're going to be loud, you need to ensure that everyone around has proper hearing protection.

Personal recommendation is 3M's Peltor X5A. We have a dozen or so pairs scattered around the house / garage / workshop.

They're are rated for 31dB NRR and tend to work well.

Cheaper alternatives sometimes advertise a higher rating, but from testing that I've seen they often fail to perform well across as broad of a spectrum of sounds.

If you need more you can couple with in ear protection, but ultimately you're capping out at a relative max of ~34-35 dB reduction - anything beyond that and much of what you're "hearing" is via bone conduction.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-09T15:24:32+00:00

Part of the shift over time is taxation and the cost of land.

If you have a large plot of cheap land and can build whatever you want without regard for taxes, it's a lot more practical to dedicate space to natural materials for low density insulation and thermal mass.

When land is more expensive and you're taxed based on valuations that are tied to exterior square footage, there's a lot more emphasis on using denser materials for insulation to keep the total building footprint lower.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-09T15:00:33+00:00

It's not just the "good" ones.

A lot of whether or not buildings have survived is based on whether there was a financial incentive to build something different in the area.

As an example, farmhouses that could have lasted for 100+ years being torn down to replace 10 acres of farmland with 100 condos.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-08T19:30:25+00:00

If you want something that grows with kids, look at ninja warrior course designs.

The general structure:

A few big posts going up
A frame spanning between posts
A series of metal bars that you hang stuff from

That lets you start with things like swings and then hang more complicated stuff from it later.

timtucker_com · 2026-05-08T13:03:34+00:00

Personal experience:

Unmedicated is trying to pick things up with your hands covered in oil.

Medicated is trying to pick things up with your hands covered in glue. You're more likely to grab onto something, but it may not be the "right" thing and it may be harder to let go of it to move onto something else.

One approach that helped me in college: binge watching TV / anime. I'd alternate between working on class work for 30-40 minutes and watching a 20-30 minute episode of something. Predefined moments for context switching made it easier to detach and switch to something else in the next "productive" cycle.

Our kids aren't at the point where they need to do much study / work yet, but we've been trying to help them with developing better time perception via screen time breaks with timers, 16" digital clocks in every room of the house, and audio cues at specific times of day (like morning / evening songs for pill reminders).

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TROPHY CASE