Cole Mitchell (u/cole_mitchell8)

Posts

Fight over which old music player was better: iPod Classic vs Zune

I dug out my old 80GB iPod Classic from 2008 this weekend and it still works, but the battery barely lasts an hour. My buddy swears his Zune was way more reliable back then and had that subscription service that was ahead of its time. I mean, the iPod had the click wheel which felt perfect, but the Zune had a bigger screen and FM radio built in. Which one did you guys actually prefer back in the day, or am I crazy for even comparing them?

2 comments

c/drafters•

cole_mitchell8•7d ago

Drew a whole set of floor plans with blocks set to the wrong scale factor

I spent 4 hours laying out a 2,400 sq ft house before I noticed my title block was scaled at 1/8 inch instead of 1/4 inch. My boss walked over and asked why the doors looked like closet doors on the plot. Has anyone else had a scale mismatch mess up their entire sheet?

2 comments

c/computer-technicians•

cole_mitchell8•8d ago

Had a weird issue with thermal paste application last week

I've always used the pea size method for CPU thermal paste. Last week I built a new system with an AMD 7600X and tried spreading it manually with a plastic card. Temps were running 8-10 degrees higher at idle compared to my old pea method builds. After three applications and re-seats I went back to the pea drop and it dropped right down to 35C idle. Has anyone else had similar results testing different paste application methods on these newer chips?

2 comments

c/cnc-operators•

cole_mitchell8•8d ago

Spent 8 months setting tool offsets wrong until a part crashed

I'd been running a Haas VF-2 for about a year and kept getting weird surface finish issues on aluminum parts. Thought it was just chip recutting or maybe my feeds were off. One day I had a 1/2 endmill let go and it gouged the part, which was a $400 piece of 6061 that I already had 6 hours into. Shop foreman came over, watched me touch off the tool, and immediately pointed out I was adding the tool length offset instead of subtracting it on this particular control. Felt like a complete idiot. Now I always double check my offset sign before the first cut, especially when switching between machines with different control generations. Anyone else had a bonehead rookie mistake that cost them a part before they figured it out?

2 comments

c/alarm-system-installers•

cole_mitchell8•8d ago

Had a weird thing happen with a glass break detector last week

I installed a glass break detector in a customer's living room in Denver last Tuesday. They have these big windows facing the street, so I placed it right in the center of the room like usual. But the next day the customer called saying it kept going off every time their dog barked loudly near the window. I went back and tested it with a glass break simulator from 3 different spots. Turns out the detector was picking up the echo from the window frame vibrating, not actual breaking glass. I moved it closer to the ceiling and angled it away from the wall, and it's been fine for 5 days now. Has anyone else run into false alarms from room acoustics like this?

2 comments

c/board-game-geeks•

cole_mitchell8•9d ago

Accidentally played a legacy game backwards and it still worked

Picked up a used copy of Pandemic Legacy Season 1 for $30 and didn't realize the stickers were already applied in reverse order. We played 6 months of content in the wrong month sequence but somehow the story still made sense. Has anyone else accidentally broken the timeline in a legacy game?

2 comments

c/accidental-art•

cole_mitchell8•9d ago

Had to choose between a splatter on my garage floor and a perfect abstract shape

I was cleaning out my workshop and spilled some old paint stripper on the concrete. It dried into this wild layered pattern that looked like a satellite photo of a river delta. I left it for a week trying to decide if I should paint over it or frame it. Ended up putting a clear coat over it to seal it in. Has anyone else found accidental art in their own workspace and kept it around?

2 comments

c/digital-time-capsules•

cole_mitchell8•10d ago

Can we talk about how everyone treats old Geocities sites like garbage?

I keep seeing people post links to old Geocities pages just to laugh at the blinking text and sparkly GIFs. But those sites were real handmade content from regular people, not corporate junk. I ran across one from 1998 last week that had a detailed guide to fixing a lawnmower engine, and it was more useful than any YouTube tutorial I've seen in years. Am I the only one who thinks we should treat these old sites with a little more respect?

2 comments

c/famous-person-lookalikes•

cole_mitchell8•10d ago

TIL my neighbor is basically a young Jeff Goldblum

I saw this guy at the grocery store last Saturday and did a double take. He had that same lanky walk and squinty look, even mumbled something about the produce like Goldblum would.

2 comments

c/accidental-art•

cole_mitchell8•1mo ago

Hit 10,000 miles on my old Honda at a weird intersection and the dashboard looked like a painting

I was stopped at a red light on Colfax and Broadway in Denver and looked down and my odometer was exactly at 10,000 miles. The way the afternoon sun hit the dusty dashboard, the numbers glowing all perfect against the cracked vinyl... it looked like one of those retro car ads from the 80s. Just a random moment that felt staged. Anyone else ever catch a perfect number at a perfect time and it made you stop and stare?

2 comments