Spent $300 on a solar phone charger that barely works

I got this portable solar charger online for a camping trip, thinking it would be great for off-grid power. It took a full sunny day to get my phone from 20% to 60%, which is way slower than the ad said. The battery pack inside it also died after maybe five uses. Has anyone found a good solar charger that actually works like they claim?

Shoutout to the tech at the Whirlpool training center in Knoxville

I was at a class there last month and saw him fix a weird washer error code by just unplugging the main board for a full minute. He said the newer models with the 'W' series boards can get stuck in a soft reset loop. I've tried it on three jobs since then and it worked every time. Has anyone else found a simple trick like that for clearing codes without swapping parts right away?

My first real program actually worked after three days of trying

Last week, I was sitting at my kitchen table in Phoenix trying to make a simple number guessing game in Python. I kept getting this one error where the loop wouldn't stop, and I was ready to quit. I watched a video from a guy named Corey Schafer, rewrote the whole thing from scratch, and just kept hitting run. On the third day, around 2 AM, I finally got it. The program asked for a guess, checked it, and told you if you were right. It was so basic, but seeing that terminal work perfectly made me feel like I'd climbed a mountain. Has anyone else had that moment where a tiny program finally runs without errors?

I used to hate working with old rope in cold water until I switched my cutting method

For years, I'd just hack away at waterlogged polypropylene with a standard dive knife, especially on winter jobs in Puget Sound. Last month, a guy on the barge showed me his titanium serrated blade and let me try it on a 2-inch line. The difference was huge, it cut through in one clean pull instead of ten messy saws. What other small gear changes have made a big difference for you on cold water jobs?

I finally spent $40 on a changing bag for loading my film and it saved me from ruining three rolls in my bright apartment.

Has anyone found a cheaper or better way to load film without a darkroom?

Back in 2017 I paid $40 for a city museum pass in Prague and it was a total waste

I bought it thinking I'd see everything, but the lines were still long and I only ended up using it for two places. I rushed through a gallery just to feel like I got my money's worth, which kinda ruined it. Now I just pick one or two spots I really want to see and pay at the door. Anyone have a better system for those multi-attraction passes?

Hit 50 rewatches of the 'Soul Society' arc in Bleach... and I'm starting to see things differently.

My brisket flat turned into a stubborn brick for 14 hours straight

I was trying a new rub with extra coffee grounds for a cookout in Memphis, but the internal temp just would not budge past 165 degrees no matter what I did. After messing with the fire, wrapping it in three different ways, and nearly giving up, I finally realized my thermometer probe was faulty and the meat was actually done hours earlier. Has anyone else had a piece of gear fail so badly it ruined your whole cook timeline?

Just hit 10 pounds of finished compost from my tiny balcony bin... and I'm weirdly proud

I started my little worm bin about five months ago, mostly just to cut down on trash. I never really thought about the actual weight of what I was making. But this morning, I scooped out the finished stuff into a bucket and weighed it on my bathroom scale... a solid 10 pounds. That's a full grocery bag of dirt that didn't go to the dump. It got me thinking, though. On one side, that feels like a real win, a direct result of all those coffee grounds and banana peels. On the other side, it's kind of a drop in the bucket compared to what a house with a yard can make, and it took a long time. Is the point of apartment composting more about the personal habit and reducing waste, even if the output is small, or should we be focused on maximizing yield in our limited space? What's the real goal here for folks in small spots?

Chatted with a volunteer at a dig site in New Mexico who showed me a tiny, 800-year-old corn cob