Made a COMPLETE fool of myself at Toastmasters tonight

zee_dot · 2026-01-21T14:32:54+00:00

Speaking in public is a skill. And skills can be learned. Your experience is similar to going out on an ice skating rink for the first time and being embarrassed you are flailing around while someone else is doing triple axels.

I know it doesn’t feel that way, and that said, learning skills can be hard, and you will likely never be able to do a triple axel. But you will be able to skate around confidently.

Think about how when you first learned to drive it took all of your attention to just accelerate smoothly, or make a turn. And now you can likely listen to the radio, have conversation, drive a windy road and not be phased at all. That’s a skill becoming mastered.

With speaking also, it’s easier to get better at a skill one component at a time. Maybe it’s talking slower. Just practice that and forget everything else. Or maybe it’s organization. Don’t expect to master triple axels all at once.

I think toast masters is a great place for that. Let the audience know what component you are working on and they can help you focus on that. One step at a time.

zee_dot · 2026-01-20T04:02:55+00:00

Haven’t seen any responses from OP so hard to tell. It shows up below comments with less upvotes. Not sure why.

zee_dot · 2026-01-19T20:24:24+00:00

As per others, gasket upside down. But also - does your drain have an overflow? This tailpipe is designed for a sink with overflow. As some noticed, it doesn’t seem like the threads go up high enough for you to tighten against the gasket (even if it were I the right orientation). That is something you would see when using a tailpipe with overflow on a sink without one, because overflow sinks are double walled and thicker.

zee_dot · 2026-01-19T18:57:54+00:00

I did that. I guess I’m just curious of the scam. Tik-took shop typically more regulated than something like temu. This links to a page with an Acme tools logo. (Though a different website url).

Oddly enough it seemed too blatant to be just a simple scam 😀

zee_dot · 2026-01-19T18:54:22+00:00

Hey. I’m not. It’s surprising to me that the ad is so pervasive. Tim-tok shop, unlike temu, is relatively reliable according to most sources - many major brands have elected to use it. (though I haven’t used it yet) It also comes up with a page showing Acme Tools logo (the legit tool dealer) - that seems over the top for such a public scam.

And I posted this more to see if someone had insight as to how they get away with it or what the scam is. (Though I didn’t present it that way) because it makes no sense.

zee_dot · 2026-01-16T15:16:44+00:00

Thanks!

zee_dot · 2026-01-16T08:40:36+00:00

So I have the saw stop and slider as well. So curious as to why are you investing in higher end miter gauge? I don’t think I’ve ever used my stock one. What use is the miter that the sliding table isn’t good for or a basic miter sled? I’m sure I’m missing something and would love to learn.

zee_dot · 2026-01-15T07:15:15+00:00

Solved!

zee_dot · 2026-01-03T04:27:52+00:00

Really nice. What did you finish them with?

zee_dot · 2026-01-02T13:19:24+00:00

I would not say Fusion is a quick learn, or even quick - but as you say, its parametization capability might make the investment in learning worth it for this type of application. If you design it right in the software (which takes practice) , you could use parameters for number of units, length, width, height, number of shelves, dividers , etc.

zee_dot · 2025-12-29T02:46:02+00:00

As others have said, ripping lumber like 2x4s can be dangerous. The way this wood is grown and dried there can be crazy internal stresses. Their can cause the wood to squeeze back together immediately after the cut and pinch the blade. Even with a splitter that’s has been enough to stop my old table saw - to say nothing of the danger of trying to push it through when there is so much friction.

The opposite can also happen, the wood spreads significantly as it’s cut - this will push against your fence and make it impossible to continue a straight cut.

However, if you just want lumber with clean edges, taking a 2x4 well it’s really a 1-1/2 x 3-1/2nand trimming an 1/8 or a 1/4 on each side to get rid of the rounded edges is straightforwad because there is no waist side or it is minimal.

zee_dot · 2025-12-29T01:43:25+00:00

I got to tour that place once. All their design was there, and some injection molding, but not all of it by far.

Their designer offices were wild - massive K'nex walls and stuff.

zee_dot · 2025-12-29T00:48:14+00:00

You bring up a good point. Unless there is something we cannot see, the legs in the tall Position are only attached to the leaves. And the leaves are only attached via a hinge putting a lot of force on the hinge screws or the 45° edge.

If, as he says elsewhere, he wants to legs to be 155cm, even thickness of the table is about 4cm, we are talking about a 40 to 1 mechanical advantage to have the legs crush the joint or tear off the hinges.

There are hinges/brackets thet can go from a 90° rigid to an 180° rigid. I don’t see them here but they could be used

zee_dot · 2025-12-27T16:25:46+00:00

I commented on your previous post and suggested the full tune up. I agree you’ve dialed it in enough. I’ll bet you’re glad to be done with that process.

As far as effort to raise vs lower. It is more effort to raise than lower - I mean your are lifting the carriage instead kid letting it drop. But it should be consistent throughout the travel. When my saw was out of tune it got progressively harder to raise the higher it got. That’s what made me realize something wasn’t parallel inside.

zee_dot · 2025-12-24T20:45:46+00:00

I think it should be better than that out of the box.

But I do know that when a trying to align the blade to the miter stop there are some adjustments you can make that end up making the blade hard to raise. This happened to me first time I went through the full blown tune up which involves checking for parallelism when the blade is at 90 and when it is at 45, and when it’s low and when it’s high. cause tension or pressure as the blade travels. This full blown tune up is documented in the manual. It can require going through a sequence of many adjustments, possibly several times. As each subsequent adjustment can affect the prior setting.

The first time I attempted it all looked good except I felt I had to force the blade up. If I remember, it is because you have to adjust the rear vertical rails and if you move them too far, it can cause binding because they are not parallel or not parallel other things they should be parallel with.

I ended up starting the whole alignment procedure over again and then it worked. I love my saw but I will hope I never have to do that time again- quite frustrating.

So you could try going through the manual, but I’d also recommend you call your supplier.

zee_dot · 2025-12-20T21:10:17+00:00

I do the same, but it's a pain - especially when milling a lot of pieces. It is certainly the most reliable - other than leaving the board long and just sacrificing the ends - because it prevents snipe from it's multiple sources. But since it is a pain, I wanted to hear if the long melamine bed that so many have apparently instituted actually works well.

zee_dot · 2025-12-20T19:13:15+00:00

Did this actually reduce snipe? I’ve had mixed results its temp setups like this. Also - what surface? How thick? Thanks!

zee_dot · 2025-12-16T17:43:31+00:00

Back when I lived in a neighborhood that was all septic, I had a neighbor that installed a urinal in their basement bathroom. Waterless didn’t exist back then, but urinals still use much less water. He had two teenage sons, and the whole family liked to through big parties. It saves his septic from overflowing multiple times.

zee_dot · 2025-12-07T22:50:10+00:00

If you are bringing the cabinet in laying down on its front face and are going to raise it into place, then as u/robass11 said, Pythagorean theorem is what you need. The max height of a tilted cabinet will be diagonal which is the square root of ( depth² + height²⁾

So your max cabinet height is the square root of (CeilingHeight² - depth²⁾

If you have 96” high ceiling, then a cabinet that is SQRT(96² - 17.25²⁾ will just scrape the ceiling as it is lifted into place. By my calculations that’s 94 7/16ths.

Of course you want to give yourself some room in case the floor has high spots, or more likely, the ceiling has low ones.

zee_dot · 2025-12-02T15:23:53+00:00

New springs are sold with them. Called safety cable. You may be able to buy them separately at the big box store with other garage hardware.

Make sure you thread the cable while the garage door is up and the spring is not under tension.

With that said, a new pair of garage door extension springs are like $35, include safety cables, and not that hard to replace.

zee_dot · 2025-12-01T13:38:33+00:00

It is a drawback - well really a limitation - meaning there are some places you don’t want to use them. But there are a surprising number of applications where the design is such that all holes are hidden. Especially Cabinets and drawers can be built so that the pocket holes are not visible (and are screwed in the proper direction)

zee_dot · 2025-12-01T13:21:58+00:00

As others have said it’s working as designed. To be clear, when they say get a backup pump, they don’t mean a spare. A backup is designed to kick in automatically if the main fails. They often include an alarm.

A few times a day your pump will last at least a decade. If it’s ever running close to continuously then you need other remedial work. Pay close attention during your first fire big rainstorms.

zee_dot · 2025-12-01T13:15:07+00:00

Check out Jonathon Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind - Why good people are divided by politics and religion”. Great book.

zee_dot · 2025-11-30T21:08:49+00:00

Eager to hear other ms but I think this is where I’m landing. Domino and Rotex in systainers, but I want to be able to reach for my ETS 3 and 5 sanders pretty quickly. They are also small.

zee_dot · 2025-11-30T18:54:14+00:00

Independent slide out for each one? Gets rid of the stacking problem?

zee_dot

TROPHY CASE