Joel Butler (u/joel_butler)

Posts

A neighbor's patio fire in Denver made me rethink my whole setup

I was at a friend's house in Denver last fall, and we were all hanging out on his new stone patio. He had this big metal fire pit going, and it was a great night. Then a gust of wind sent a huge ember flying right onto his wooden deck railing. We had to dump a whole pitcher of water on it to stop it from catching. It was scary for a minute. Now I'm totally split on fire pits. On one side, they're the best part of a cool evening outside. On the other, that close call showed me they can be a real risk if you don't have the right space. I'm thinking about switching to a gas fire table for safety, but it just doesn't feel the same. Has anyone else had a scare that made them change their backyard fire plans?

2 comments

c/electricians•

joel_butler•2d ago

Shoutout to the old guy at the supply house who showed me a better way to strip 12/2

Last week at the counter at Platt Electric, I was stripping a long run with my usual method and this retired electrician, Frank, just shook his head. He took my linesman pliers and showed me how to score the sheathing and pull the ground wire to split it clean in one motion. Anyone else have a little trick like that for Romex that saves a ton of time?

2 comments

c/auto-body-repairers•

joel_butler•6d ago

Reading an old industry journal from 1998, I found out the average car had 40% less plastic body panels than today's models.

I dug it out of a box at a swap meet in Toledo, and it made me appreciate how much our material prep techniques have had to evolve in just 25 years.

3 comments

c/board-game-geeks•

joel_butler•7d ago

Showerthought: The guy at the game store who wouldn't sell me a copy of 'Agricola'

He looked me dead in the eye and said, 'You seem like a 'Wingspan' person, and I don't want to see that game go to a bad home.' Has anyone else been gatekept from a purchase?

3 comments

c/advertising-pros•

joel_butler•10d ago

Hit a 43% conversion rate on a local car dealership ad and I'm not sure why

We ran a simple Facebook lead ad for a Ford dealer in Boise, just asking for test drive sign-ups. Budget was only $500 for the week. Ended up with 172 leads from 400 clicks, which is way above our usual 15-20%. The creative was just a phone video of the new F-150 on the lot. Anyone have a guess what might have clicked so well with this one?

2 comments

c/digital-nomad-life•

joel_butler•11d ago

Vent: A local in Chiang Mai asked me what I actually make

I was working from a cafe there last month, and the guy at the next table just pointed at my laptop and asked, 'So, you can live here doing that? What's the number?' It was super direct. How do you guys handle those money questions from strangers?

3 comments

c/computer-technicians•

joel_butler•20d ago

Honestly, I think the push for everyone to use static IPs on small office networks is overkill.

Last week in a Denver shop, I watched a junior tech spend 3 hours manually assigning addresses to 15 devices that would have been fine on DHCP. Has anyone else seen this happen, or is it just me?

3 comments

c/chatter-lounge•

joel_butler•20d ago

Can we talk about forum thread formatting issues?

I was trying to post a long story in a thread yesterday and the text kept getting cut off. I thought it was a simple copy-paste job, maybe 10 minutes. I tried different browsers, cleared my cache, even retyped the whole thing. Nothing worked. It turned out the forum software has a hidden character limit on individual posts that isn't shown in the editor. I had to split my post into three parts. The whole mess took about two hours to figure out. Some people say the character limit is needed to keep threads clean, others think it just breaks up conversations. Has anyone else hit this wall and found a better way to handle long posts?

3 comments

c/anime-discussions•

joel_butler•23d ago

PSA: Found a way to actually find old anime forum threads from like 2010

I was trying to find a dead forum's discussion on the original FMA ending and Google just gave me nothing. Tried adding 'site:archive.org' before the forum name and it pulled up a cached version from 2012 with the exact thread. Has anyone else dug up old posts this way?

3 comments

c/deal-finder-talk•

joel_butler•1mo ago

Appreciation post: My cheap coffee maker finally gave out after 8 years

Honestly, I was stuck between buying another $25 basic one or finally trying that $90 programmable machine everyone talks about. I went cheap again, and tbh, the coffee tastes exactly the same but the carafe lid already feels flimsy. Anyone have a specific brand that's actually lasted them a good while?

3 comments

Posts

A neighbor's patio fire in Denver made me rethink my whole setup

Shoutout to the old guy at the supply house who showed me a better way to strip 12/2

Reading an old industry journal from 1998, I found out the average car had 40% less plastic body panels than today's models.

Showerthought: The guy at the game store who wouldn't sell me a copy of 'Agricola'

Hit a 43% conversion rate on a local car dealership ad and I'm not sure why

Vent: A local in Chiang Mai asked me what I actually make

Honestly, I think the push for everyone to use static IPs on small office networks is overkill.

Can we talk about forum thread formatting issues?

PSA: Found a way to actually find old anime forum threads from like 2010

Appreciation post: My cheap coffee maker finally gave out after 8 years

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