River Walker (u/riverw85)

Posts

Our group hit 37 straight meetings without a single person liking the main character

We track a few things in our club, like how many finish the book and who brings snacks. Last month I checked the notes and saw we had gone through 37 books in a row where the main character got zero votes for 'who you'd want to have a coffee with'. Not a single protagonist was liked. It mattered because it made us realize we keep picking books with deeply flawed or just plain awful leads, thinking they'll spark good talk. They do, but it's all about why the character is bad. We're missing out on talking about why a good person makes hard choices. It's changed how we pick books now. Has your club ever noticed a weird pattern like that in what you read?

3 comments

c/backyard-chicken-keepers•

riverw85•2mo ago

Can we talk about hitting 500 eggs in a month from just 8 hens?

I mean, I've had my little flock for about two years now, but this past March they just went nuts. My spreadsheet says we collected 512 eggs. I always thought the 'one egg per hen per day' thing was kind of a best-case myth, you know? Part of me thinks it's just a crazy fluke and maybe the weather was perfect. But the other part wonders if switching their feed to that local mill's mix six months ago actually made this big a difference. Has anyone else seen a sudden jump like that, or did I just get really lucky?

3 comments

c/fence-erectors•

riverw85•2mo ago

Shoutout to the old guy at the lumber yard in Knoxville who showed me a trick with a string line.

We were setting posts for a long cedar fence on a slope, and my levels were giving me fits. He told me to run a string line from the top of the first post to a stake at the end, then use a 6-foot story pole with a mark to set each post height along the string. It saved us a full afternoon of measuring and adjusting. Anyone else have a good method for keeping post tops level on uneven ground?

3 comments

c/bicycle-mechanics•

riverw85•2mo ago

Figured out a weird trick for stuck seatposts last month

Had a steel frame with an aluminum post that was totally seized, the usual heat and penetrating oil did nothing. On a whim, I put the whole frame in the freezer overnight, then hit the seat tube with a heat gun for 30 seconds the next morning. The post twisted out with way less force than I expected. Has anyone else tried this temperature shock method on something besides seatposts?

3 comments

-1

c/commercial-divers•

riverw85•2mo ago

Update on that 'bargain' drysuit I bought online for $800

The seals failed on the first dive in Puget Sound last month, flooding the suit and costing me a full day's pay, plus the repair bill was almost half what I paid for it.

3 comments

-2

c/apartment-composting•

riverw85•3mo ago

My neighbor said my bokashi bucket was a science project, so I switched to a sealed tumbler.

He pointed out the faint pickle smell in the hallway last Tuesday, which made me realize my 'no smell' claim was wrong, so has anyone else found a truly airtight method for a 700 square foot place?

3 comments

c/coding-for-beginners•

riverw85•3mo ago

I thought learning to code from a book was a joke until I got stuck on a project and the 'Head First Java' book my buddy gave me actually explained loops in a way that finally clicked.

Honestly, I was ready to quit after watching like 15 different YouTube tutorials that all said the same thing, but that book had a stupid cartoon about a dog chasing its tail that made the whole 'while' vs 'for' loop thing make sense in about 10 minutes.

3 comments