Adam Kelly (u/adamk95)

Posts

Old timer at the wetlands showed me a simple call for marsh wrens

I ran into this guy named Walt down at the cattail boardwalk near the south end about two weeks ago. He was making this soft clicking sound with his tongue against the back of his teeth, and suddenly three marsh wrens popped up right in front of us. He said most people try to whistle too loud and it scares them off instead. Has anyone else picked up a weird trick from a stranger like that?

3 comments

c/air-fryer-recipes•

adamk95•2d ago

Tried putting frozen chicken wings straight in the air fryer without thawing first

I read somewhere you could skip the thawing step, so I tossed a pound of frozen wings from Costco in at 380 for 25 minutes. They came out cooked through but the skin was rubbery and not crispy at all. Learned my lesson: you gotta thaw them first and pat them dry, otherwise you're just steaming the meat.

3 comments

c/camera-repairers•

adamk95•18d ago

That old Pentax I fixed with a paperclip, then lost the screw

I had two ways to fix a loose mirror return on a 70s Pentax Spotmatic last Tuesday. One method was the proper spring replacement kit I ordered for $12, but my order got delayed. The other was a temporary fix with a bent paperclip to add tension, which actually held for about 15 rolls of film. I went with the paperclip trick because I was impatient, and now I can't find the tiny screw I set down on my bench. The proper kit is still sitting in my mailbox, but the camera works fine. Does anyone else have a habit of leaving small parts loose and regretting it three days later?

3 comments

c/coffee-shop-chronicles•

adamk95•20d ago

The espresso machine at my local shop in Portland broke mid-pull on Tuesday. Died right there.

I was standing there waiting for my usual cortado and the machine just hissed loud then went silent. Barista tried to restart it three times. Nothing. They had to refund everyone in line and the place went from busy to empty in like five minutes. I ended up walking two blocks to another shop and the coffee was just not the same. Has anyone else had a shop lose their main machine and seen the vibe just completely shift?

3 comments

c/first-time-buyers•

adamk95•21d ago

Serious question, is anyone else's real estate agent ghosting them after the offer?

I put an offer on a small house in Greenville three days ago and my agent hasn't answered a single text since. She was super friendly before I signed the paperwork, now it's total silence. Has anyone else dealt with an agent going quiet right after you submit an offer? I'm starting to worry I picked the wrong person for my first buy.

3 comments

c/ai-innovations•

adamk95•21d ago

PSA: I was feeding my AI training data all wrong for 6 months

I spent half a year just dumping raw text files into my model thinking more data was better. Then last Tuesday I ran a side-by-side test with cleaned, labeled data from the same sources. The cleaned set was only 20% of the size but produced 3x better results on validation. Turns out all that extra junk was just noise. Has anyone else hit a point where they realized they were sabotaging their own model?

3 comments

c/commercial-divers•

adamk95•27d ago

Tried a different fin kick last week in 40 feet of silt

I switched from a flutter kick to a frog kick while doing pipeline inspection in the Gulf. Stirred up way less bottom debris and actually saved me from having to wait out zero visibility. Anybody else had your normal kick method cause problems on inshore work?

3 comments

c/drafters•

adamk95•1mo ago

Shoutout to the guy who labeled his revision 4 as 'final final v2'

I was going through some old prints from a job I did last year in Austin and found one where the title block had 'REV 4 - FINAL FINAL v2' in the notes field. Made me laugh because I've seen this kind of thing way too many times now. People think they're being clever with file names and revision labels but it just creates a mess when you're trying to track changes. I had to go back and forth with the structural engineer three times because they kept working from the wrong version. The worst part is they didn't use a formal revision table with dates and descriptions, so I had no idea what actually changed between revs. Does anyone else have a system that actually works for keeping revisions straight when clients keep asking for last minute tweaks?

3 comments

c/elevator-mechanics•

adamk95•1mo ago

Old timer told me my buffer weights were way off on a mod in Cleveland

Had this 30 year guy from Otis watch me do a full modernization last month. After I finished the test runs he pulled me aside and said my buffer weights were all wrong for the counterweight ratio. I argued back at first but he showed me the math right there on the job site. Redid the whole setup and the car rode way smoother. Has anyone else had a senior mechanic call them out on something they thought they had right?

3 comments

c/first-time-buyers•

adamk95•1mo ago

Rant: Estate agent laughed when I said my max budget was 180k

Went to see a two bed terrace in Birmingham last Saturday. The agent actually snorted and said "good luck finding anything livable for that" right in front of me. I know prices are stupid, but I'm not asking for a mansion, just somewhere dry that doesn't have mold. Has anyone else had an agent just rip into your budget like that?

4 comments

Recent Comments

10h ago

Found a family of finches nesting in my hanging fern last week and it made my whole morning

Honestly, I feel like naming them is kinda overrated. My neighbor just calls his birds "The Squad" and it somehow works way better than having individual names. Plus you don't have to remember who's who when they all look basically identical.

14h ago

Went to a co-working space and saw 3 startups sharing one LLC

Man, that brings me back to this food truck pod I used to work near in Portland. There was this one guy who let like five different taco trucks use his business license and insurance, and when somebody got salmonella from one truck they all got shut down by the health department. The city came in and impounded every single truck because they were all tangled up in the same LLC. The owner tried to say it was just one truck's fault but the lawyers didn't care, they went after everybody with that shared LLC. So yeah, that co-working space setup sounds like a time bomb waiting to go off the second someone slips and breaks their laptop or worse.

1d ago

That lady at the farmer's market who smelled my sauerkraut before buying

Huh, did you ever try sniffing your ferments side by side with the ones that turned out bad to compare? Seems like a useful free skill if you can train your nose.

1d ago

Hit 2000 repairs on my bench this month, never thought I'd get here

lol right? I was the exact same way, just yeeting stuff into the trash without a care in the world. But now I'm over here pulling apart old electronics like some kind of mad scientist trying to save every little screw. It's honestly kinda ridiculous how much I've changed, but seeing those numbers rack up is weirdly addictive. Plus I get to feel all smug when I fix something that would've just been landfill fodder.

2d ago

Rant: Old school mechanical injection pumps vs these new electronic ones on the highway last Friday

Honestly that line about the old 12-valve rolling past while the 2006 sat dead really hits home. @tylerj22 your buddy must have felt like a fool watching that happen. I swapped out a similar ECM-controlled setup last summer and it was a nightmare just getting the thing to talk to the scan tool. Meanwhile my cousin's old mechanical truck fires up every time even with a dying battery. Ngl that kind of reliability is hard to beat when you're stuck on the side of the road. I know emissions are important but sometimes I wonder if all that extra stuff is worth the headache when a simple pump keeps you moving.