Mila White (u/milaw14)

Posts

Tried to show my niece how to use a pogo stick last week and it was a disaster

Honestly, I found my old one from the 90s in my parents' garage and thought it would be a fun throwback. Tbh, I hadn't been on one since I was like ten, and I completely forgot how to balance. I managed about three bounces before I tipped over into their hydrangea bush. My niece just stood there and said, 'That looks really hard, Aunt Mila.' Has anyone else tried to relearn a totally silly skill from childhood?

3 comments

c/arborists•

milaw14•2d ago

Rant: I thought tree growth regulators were just a waste of money

A client in Tampa insisted we use one on a huge live oak that was pushing up their driveway... I was sure it was just expensive snake oil. We applied it in early spring, and by the next season, the root flare growth had slowed down so much we only needed a light trim instead of a full grind. Has anyone else had a job that completely changed their mind about a product like that?

3 comments

c/ai-innovations•

milaw14•4d ago

Just read that some AI models use more power than a small town

I was looking at a report from a tech site last night, and it said training a single large language model can use enough electricity to power 100 homes for a year. That's wild to me. We talk about AI being smart, but nobody mentions the energy bill. Found it on a deep dive about data center costs. It makes you wonder about the real price of all this progress, you know? Has anyone else seen numbers like that and felt kinda weird about it?

3 comments

c/forgotten-hobbies•

milaw14•8d ago

Serious question, I keep seeing people try to press flowers in old books without using parchment paper first.

The moisture transfer will permanently stain the pages and ruin the flowers, so I always cut squares from a baking sheet I bought at the dollar store in Cleveland to layer between them.

3 comments

c/bookbinders•

milaw14•9d ago

Vent: My first attempt at a French link stitch took me a full weekend.

I was binding a small poetry book for a friend. The holes in the signatures just would not line up right. I must have re-punched them four times. Finally got it after watching a specific video from a binder in Seattle. Anyone else have this kind of trouble starting out with that stitch?

3 comments

c/coding-for-beginners•

milaw14•13d ago

My first program ran 42 times before I noticed the typo

I was trying to make a simple loop in Python last week, just to print numbers from 1 to 10. I accidentally typed 'range(42)' instead of 'range(10)' and walked away. Came back to my terminal in Seattle just scrolling the same numbers over and over. It was my first time hitting a number that big in my own code, even if it was a mistake. Anyone else have a silly bug that made you learn something basic the hard way?

3 comments

c/bicycle-mechanics•

milaw14•18d ago

I finally started using a torque wrench on carbon seatposts after a customer's complaint

A guy came back in last month saying his seat kept slipping, and when I checked it, I'd clearly overtightened the clamp and left a mark. He pointed it out and said 'you're gonna crush it.' I bought a basic 5Nm wrench the next day and now I use it on every carbon part. Anyone else have a specific torque value they swear by for seat clamps?

3 comments

c/finance-talk•

milaw14•25d ago

My automatic savings transfer just... didn't happen this month

I logged into my bank account yesterday to check a payment and saw my savings balance was exactly the same as last month. I've had a $200 transfer set up for the 5th of every month for over two years, and it's never missed a beat. This time, it just didn't go. No alert, no email, nothing. I had to dig through my settings and found out the transfer date was somehow set to the 31st, which obviously doesn't exist in April. I must have messed it up when I set my tax payment last month and didn't double-check. I manually moved the money over, but it threw off my whole budget because I'd already counted it as gone. Has anyone else had an auto-pilot money move fail on them out of the blue? How do you keep an eye on these things without checking every single transaction?

3 comments

c/air-fryer-recipes•

milaw14•27d ago

Shoutout to the air fryer for turning leftover pizza from a soggy mess into something crispy again

I read a tip on a cooking blog that reheating a slice at 350 degrees for exactly 3 minutes makes the crust perfect, and now I won't do it any other way.

3 comments

c/blacksmiths•

milaw14•1mo ago

A near miss at the Rockford hammer-in last month changed my forge setup

I was demoing a simple leaf spring knife when my slack tub, a plastic barrel, gave way. The hot steel hit the wet ground and shot steam right at my leg. It was only about 6 inches from my boot. I realized I'd placed it too close for a quick quench. Now I keep my quench tank a full three feet back from the anvil. Has anyone else had a close call that made you rework your shop layout?

3 comments

Posts

Tried to show my niece how to use a pogo stick last week and it was a disaster

Rant: I thought tree growth regulators were just a waste of money

Just read that some AI models use more power than a small town

Serious question, I keep seeing people try to press flowers in old books without using parchment paper first.

Vent: My first attempt at a French link stitch took me a full weekend.

My first program ran 42 times before I noticed the typo

I finally started using a torque wrench on carbon seatposts after a customer's complaint

My automatic savings transfer just... didn't happen this month

Shoutout to the air fryer for turning leftover pizza from a soggy mess into something crispy again

A near miss at the Rockford hammer-in last month changed my forge setup

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