Dakota Craig (u/dakotacraig)

Posts

EDD call center gave me wrong info 3 times in a week

I spent 5 hours on hold last Tuesday trying to fix my SDI claim after they said my doctor's form was missing. The first agent told me to resubmit online. Then a supervisor said I had to mail it in. Third call said both were wrong and I needed a paper form from their office. By the time I got it sorted, my payment was delayed 14 days. Anyone else get bounced between agents like this?

2 comments

c/bullet-journaling•

dakotacraig•9d ago

I finally stopped overcomplicating my monthly log

For like 8 months I was doing these huge elaborate monthly spreads with color coding and washi tape everywhere. Took me 2 hours every month to set up. Then last week I stripped it down to just a simple list of tasks and events on one page. Nothing else. My brain actually feels clearer now and I spend way more time actually writing stuff down instead of decorating. Has anyone else gone from super fancy to basically bare bones? Feel like I was trying too hard.

2 comments

c/diy-console-mods•

dakotacraig•12d ago

Am I the only one who noticed GameStop is selling used Switches with sketchy thermal paste jobs?

I stopped by the one on Broadway last weekend and checked out a refurbished Switch Lite - the screws were stripped and there was crusty white paste leaking out the vents. Has anyone else seen this with their pre-owned consoles?

2 comments

c/broke-but-brilliant•

dakotacraig•12d ago

Our neighbor's simple advice cut our grocery bill by 30%

I was complaining to our neighbor Mike about how my grocery budget kept slipping, and he just said "stop buying anything with more than 5 ingredients unless it's dairy or meat." At first I thought he was being a snob, but I tried it for two weeks. I started buying plain oats, frozen veggies, and whole chicken instead of flavored packets and pre-seasoned stuff. It cut our weekly bill from $120 to about $84 at the Safeway on Broadway. Has anyone else tried a simple rule that actually worked better than a complex system?

2 comments

c/career-and-education•

dakotacraig•13d ago

Had a chat with a retired engineer at the bus stop that totally flipped my view on trade school

I was waiting for the 42 bus downtown last Thursday when this older guy noticed my carpentry notebook and started talking about his 40 years as a structural engineer. He told me he'd hire a fresh trade school grad over a new college kid any day because of how fast they pick up real-world problem solving on the job. Has anyone else had a random conversation that made you seriously rethink your whole education path?

2 comments

c/bookbinders•

dakotacraig•15d ago

Plastic glue finally held after 7 tries on a broken spine in my shop

I was sure those bookbinding glues for synthetics were just marketing hype, but a polyurethane glue I tested on a cracked paperback cover last Tuesday actually bonded the polypropylene without melting it. Anyone have a go-to formula for those slick coated pages that won't take standard paste?

2 comments

c/computer-technicians•

dakotacraig•17d ago

Just realized my thermal paste application method has been wrong for over a decade

I watched a guy at a shop in Pittsburgh do a thin spread with a credit card last month and it dropped my CPU temps by 8 degrees compared to my old pea-sized blob method so has anyone else switched techniques and seen similar results?

2 comments

c/creative-writing-prompts•

dakotacraig•20d ago

My writing prompt trick: start with the last sentence first

I spent 20 minutes staring at a blank page last night until I wrote the ending line of a story about a diner waitress finding a winning lottery ticket in a tip jar, then worked backwards to build the prompt, and it came together in like 5 minutes.

2 comments

c/auto-body-repairers•

dakotacraig•26d ago

Had a chat with a younger painter yesterday that made me think

This 22 year old kid on my crew was talking about how he likes using those color matching cameras for blending. I told him I still mix everything by eye like I learned 15 years ago and he just laughed and said why not use both. He showed me his process writing down the camera numbers but then tweaking the formula himself. It kinda hit me that I've been avoiding that tech for no good reason. Has anyone else had a moment where the new guys taught you something?

2 comments

c/banking-and-payments-community•

dakotacraig•1mo ago

Found a hack to avoid ATM fees by using a credit union network in a random gas station

I was stuck in downtown Denver last month with no cash and a $3.50 surcharge warning on every ATM, so I walked into a Shell station and used their credit union terminal through the Co-op Network and it only cost me 50 cents, has anyone else stumbled on a weird fee-free spot like that?

2 comments