My brother-in-law said 'just buy the ETF and forget about it' three years ago... I wish I'd listened

Back in 2021 I was sitting on $15,000 cash and trying to pick individual stocks. My brother-in-law Mike, who works at a plumbing supply, kept telling me to just dump it all into VOO and walk away. I thought I knew better. I bought some random electric vehicle stock and some cloud computing thing I saw on Reddit. After two years of panicking every time the market dropped and watching my picks tank 40%, I finally sold everything and threw it into VOO. That was 14 months ago. My account is up 22% and I barely check it now. The stocks I picked? Most of them are still down. Has anyone else had to eat crow after ignoring the boring advice from a family member?

Found my grandpa's old hand plane in the basement last week

I was cleaning out some boxes and came across this old Stanley plane from the 1940s that belonged to my grandpa. It was all rusted up but I spent about 3 hours last Saturday sharpening the blade and getting it back in working order. Used it to trim down a door that was sticking in my hallway in Indianapolis... worked way better than that cheap electric planer I bought from Harbor Freight. Anyone else have luck restoring old tools instead of buying new ones?

Unpopular opinion: the Cahokia mounds parking lot tells a better story than the site itself

I drove down to Collinsville, Illinois last Saturday and spent 20 minutes just standing in the gravel lot, looking at how they crammed 200 cars between a highway and a burial mound. The contrast between the ancient earthworks and the modern mess of asphalt and exhaust fumes is more honest about American archaeology than any reconstructed stockade wall. Why do we spend millions on visitor centers but let the actual approach to a UNESCO site look like a truck stop?

Found out my 'pro' SEO tool was showing me fake keyword data

I was tracking a keyword that supposedly had 2,000 monthly searches, but after digging into Google Search Console I saw the real number was 47. Turns out the tool was estimating based on old clickstream data from 2021. Has anyone else caught their analytics tool being way off like this?

Tried forge welding with a borrowed hammer and it nearly ruined my billet

I was working on a Damascus billet last weekend and couldn't find my good cross peen, so I grabbed this old rusty hammer from the corner of the shop. Big mistake. The head was loose and it bounced off the steel instead of hitting clean, which left cold shuts all through the layer. Took me 3 extra hours to grind those out and re-weld the stack. Has anyone else had a bad tool mess up a forge weld like that?

Got schooled by a guy at my local shop about bagging comics

I used to just toss my new pulls into a plastic grocery bag and call it good. Then last Saturday at Cosmic Collectibles in Austin this older collector saw me doing it and nearly had a heart attack. He handed me a proper comic bag and board combo and showed me how to tape the flap without wrecking the cover. Does anyone else still see people treating their books like trash at the register?

Heard a guy at the shop say "G-code is just spicy directions" and honestly that changed how I look at every program I write now lol

My grandma's biscuits vs my instant pot hack ended in flour everywhere

So I had to decide between making my grandma's from-scratch buttermilk biscuits or trying a quick instant pot version I saw online. Grandma's recipe uses 2 cups of White Lily flour and a cold stick of butter cut in, and it takes forever. I tried the instant pot route Saturday morning and the biscuits came out dense and gummy, not fluffy at all. Has anyone else had better luck with pressure cooker biscuits or is it just a lost cause?

Found a trick for wiring 3-way switches that saved me 45 minutes on a job in Akron last Tuesday

I've always struggled with keeping the travelers straight on 3-way circuits, especially in old houses where the colors are faded or just random. Used to take me forever with the meter checking every wire. Then an old timer I was working with showed me to just take a sharpie and mark the common screw on the old switch before you remove it. Sounds stupid simple but I never thought to do it. Saves so much backtracking. Anyone else got a simple marking trick like that?

Took a $7 can of beeswax and fixed 40 years of rust on my hand planes

Spent years trying every spray lubricant and sanding trick I saw online until a guy at the flea market told me to rub straight beeswax on the sole, and now my No. 5 glides like butter on wet glass, has anyone else ditched the chemical stuff for simple solutions?