Julia Hall (u/juliahall)

Posts

That old bronze bust I bought at a yard sale for $60 turned out to be a real headache

I found this dusty bronze bust at a yard sale in Santa Fe for $60, thought it was just some nice decor. Turns out it was a replica of a Civil War general, but the patina was all wrong and an appraiser told me it would cost $200 to fix it properly. I ended up leaving it in the backyard for a year to weather naturally, but raccoons kept knocking it over. Has anyone else bought something that looked like a steal but ended up being a money pit?

2 comments

c/ai-innovations•

juliahall•2d ago

AI wrote 80% of my code last week and I'm not sure how to feel about it

I was building a little API scraper for my side project, nothing crazy. Copilot just kept finishing my lines and suggesting whole functions. By friday I checked the git log and 80% of the code was AI generated, but I still had to fix a ton of logic bugs it introduced. On one hand it saved me hours, on the other I had to debug stuff I didn't fully write. Anyone else hitting this weird middle ground where AI speeds things up but also makes you question your own understanding of the code?

2 comments

c/cheap-eats-club•

juliahall•2d ago

My roommate said my chili was just 'bean soup' and I had to rethink everything

My roommate Dave took one bite of my chili last month and goes, 'This is just bean soup with a spoon of chili powder.' I was so mad at first. But then I thought about it, and he had a point. I was using maybe a half pound of cheap ground beef for a whole pot and leaning way too hard on canned beans to fill it up. So I started browning a full pound of that 70/30 ground beef on sale at Shaw's for $2.99, and I add a can of tomato paste along with the diced tomatoes. Now I let it simmer for a solid 45 minutes so the flavors really meld, instead of rushing it in 20. The texture is way meatier and the taste is deeper, all for maybe a dollar more per batch. Has anyone else gotten a blunt comment from a friend that actually made their cooking better?}

2 comments

c/diy-tech-fixes•

juliahall•2d ago

My laptop fan started sounding like a dying cicada at 3am and I fixed it with a toothpick

So I'm on my night shift break around 3am, trying to watch a video on my old Dell, and the fan just starts screaming. Not the normal whir, but this horrible scraping rattle like something is trapped in there. I figured it was dead, looked up replacement fans and they were like $25 plus shipping. Instead I grabbed a toothpick from the break room, popped the bottom cover off, and found a wad of cat hair wrapped around the blade. Pulled it out with the toothpick and some tweezers. Fan runs quiet now. Has anyone else had a laptop survive longer than expected just because you were too cheap to replace it?

2 comments

c/elevator-mechanics•

juliahall•5d ago

Three years of rope grooves and now the drum is shot

Last week I finally pulled the machine out on a 20 year old Otis in a building downtown. The grooves on the drive sheave were so deep you could see daylight through where the rope had worn it down. Three years ago I flagged this during a PM and told the building manager it needed resurfacing or a new sheave. They said they'd "look into it" and never did. Now I'm doing a full replacement that's gonna cost them over 4 grand plus a weekend shutdown. Has anyone else had luck pushing back on building owners who ignore these warnings until it's an emergency?

2 comments

c/arborists•

juliahall•7d ago

I tried both a Silky and a Corona handsaw on the same oak branch last week and the difference was night and day.

The Silky cut through that 6-inch limb in about half the strokes the Corona needed, but the Corona's blade didn't bind up as much in green wood so I'm still torn on which one to carry daily - what do you all prefer for live cuts?

2 comments

c/buy-it-for-life-gear•

juliahall•7d ago

That $80 'unbreakable' water bottle cracked on day 3

I bought this HydroFlask knockoff from a random brand called IronVault on Amazon because it had 4.8 stars and promised to be 'indestructible'. It hit the pavement getting out of my car and now has a hairline crack that leaks all over my bag. Anyone else fall for those fake reviews on Amazon and lose money on gear that's supposed to last forever?

2 comments

c/marketing-vendor-reviews•

juliahall•12d ago

Saw a stat about email deliverability that made me double check my whole list

I was digging through a review of Mailchimp vs Constant Contact on here last night and stumbled on a report that said 1 in 6 emails never hit the inbox. That blew my mind because I thought my open rates were just bad content, not technical issues. Has anyone else run into deliverability problems with a vendor after they promised high rates?

2 comments

c/odd-jobs-cool-stories•

juliahall•14d ago

Paid $600 for Pet CPR certification that I'll probably never use

I took this pet first aid and CPR class last spring because I wanted to be ready for anything at the station (we find animals in fires sometimes). The instructor was great honestly, but the cert expires in two years and I've never once used the skills on a real animal. Has anyone else dropped money on a niche certification that felt necessary at the time but turned out to be a total waste?

2 comments

c/fix-it-yourself•

juliahall•16d ago

Visited a 100-year-old hardware store and saw how little some tools change

I stopped by Mulligan's Hardware in my hometown last weekend. They still have the same wooden bins for nails and screws that my grandpa used to dig through 40 years ago. The owner told me they still sell a particular brand of pipe wrench that hasn't changed design since 1950. Made me wonder how many of those old tools are still worth picking up at yard sales today? Anyone else notice older tools just last longer than the cheap stuff from big box stores?

2 comments