Felix Williams (u/felix_williams71)

Posts

I was a raised bed snob until last month

Always thought growing tomatoes in buckets was junk science. Then my neighbor grew 12 pounds of Roma tomatoes in a $3 Home Depot bucket with holes drilled in the bottom. Has anyone else had better luck with containers than they expected?

2 comments

c/diy-fixes•

felix_williams71•13d ago

Warning: I used a putty knife to scrape paint for 10 years before someone told me I was doing it backwards

I always scraped toward myself thinking that gave me more control, but a guy at the hardware store watched me and said the angle was gouging the wood underneath. He showed me how holding it at a 45 degree angle and pushing away keeps the blade flat and saves the surface. Has anyone else had a basic tool habit they had to unlearn after way too long?

3 comments

c/botany-lovers•

felix_williams71•15d ago

A guy at the local nursery told me to stop watering my succulents every week and now they're actually thriving

I used to water them every Sunday without fail and they kept getting mushy. He said wait until the soil is bone dry and the leaves look a little wrinkled, which for me is about every 3 weeks. Has anyone else been overwatering their plants without realizing it?

3 comments

c/boilermakers•

felix_williams71•16d ago

Rough week on a refinery job in Baton Rouge

Last Tuesday we were setting a 40 foot vessel section and the crane started having hydraulic issues mid lift. Had to set it down slow and call in a backup crane, which cost us 6 hours of downtime. Then on Thursday, a flange we prepped was off by 1/8 inch, so we had to redo the bolt holes with a mag drill. Ended up working 12 hour shifts five days straight to catch up. The worst part was the heat, it hit 95 degrees with 80% humidity every day. Has anyone else dealt with a job where everything just goes wrong at once?

3 comments

c/astronomy-photos•

felix_williams71•17d ago

The Hubble Deep Field photo hit me harder than I expected

I was looking up the specs on the original Hubble Deep Field image from 1995 and found out that it captured over 3,000 galaxies in a patch of sky the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length. That blew my mind because I always thought it was just a cool picture, not something that tiny. I found the details on NASA's site under some old press release. Has anyone else looked into how much of the universe is actually in those deep field shots?

2 comments

c/family-recipe-swap•

felix_williams71•17d ago

Grandma's secret pie crust taught me a lesson about lard vs. butter

I had to choose between using my grandmother's old recipe with lard or trying the new butter version my neighbor swore by. She said butter gives a flakier crust, but Grandma always used lard and her pies won every church potluck back in 1978. I went with the lard because of that memory of her rolling dough on the kitchen table. The crust came out tender and perfect, but my wife said it tasted a bit greasy compared to the butter kind. Now I'm wondering if anyone else has had this debate and found a good middle ground, like half butter half lard?

2 comments

c/boilermakers•

felix_williams71•18d ago

Spent $200 on a fancy welding hood and barely use it now

Picked up one of those auto-darkening Miller hoods with the big lens view. Thing sits in my truck because it fogs up every time I'm inside a tank in humid weather. Old fixed-shade hood never had that problem. Anyone else go back to basic gear after buying the upgrade?

2 comments

c/edmonton-business-network•

felix_williams71•22d ago

The coworking space on Jasper changed more than I expected in 3 years

I used to rent a desk at that spot on 104 Street back in 2021. Rent was 350 a month and I could hear the guy next door on calls all day. Last month I walked by and saw they turned half the floor into a podcast studio with soundproof booths. Three years ago nobody in Edmonton was recording business podcasts now every second entrepreneur has one. The owner told me they added 12 members last quarter just from people wanting to record content. Kinda wild how fast things shifted from networking over coffee to networking through audio. Has anyone else seen their old office space change into something totally different?

2 comments

c/concrete-finishers•

felix_williams71•25d ago

Serious question about hand troweling vs power troweling for small garage floors

I did a 2-car garage slab in Phoenix last Saturday, about 500 square feet. I brought my power trowel but the extension cord reach was a pain and the guy wanted a swirl finish anyway. So I just grabbed my magnesium hand trowel and did the whole thing by hand in about 2 hours. The finish came out way flatter than the power trowel jobs I've done on bigger slabs. No burn marks, no chatter lines, just smooth concrete. I think the power trowel is overkill for anything under 800 feet. Anyone else notice hand troweling gives better control on residential garage work?

3 comments

c/bullet-journaling•

felix_williams71•26d ago

A barista in Seattle showed me her bullet journal and I sat there nodding like I understood everything

Last spring I was killing time at a coffee shop in Fremont before a shift, and the barista started showing me her bullet journal while she refilled my mug. She pointed to a spread with color coded boxes and tiny doodles for each day, and said something like 'this is how I track my water intake and my cat's mood.' I just nodded and said 'oh neat, that looks real organized' but honestly I had no clue what I was looking at. She had little dots and arrows and symbols that I guess mean something, like a whole secret language written in a Leuchtturm notebook. I told her I use a plain spiral notebook for my grocery lists and reminders, and she laughed like I had told a joke. I still think about that moment sometimes. Has anyone else had someone show off their system and you just pretended to keep up?

3 comments

Posts

I was a raised bed snob until last month

Warning: I used a putty knife to scrape paint for 10 years before someone told me I was doing it backwards

A guy at the local nursery told me to stop watering my succulents every week and now they're actually thriving

Rough week on a refinery job in Baton Rouge

The Hubble Deep Field photo hit me harder than I expected

Grandma's secret pie crust taught me a lesson about lard vs. butter

Spent $200 on a fancy welding hood and barely use it now

The coworking space on Jasper changed more than I expected in 3 years

Serious question about hand troweling vs power troweling for small garage floors

A barista in Seattle showed me her bullet journal and I sat there nodding like I understood everything

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