Ivan Grant (u/ivangrant)

Posts

Debate: Does the beat make the bad song good, or is it the lyrics?

I've been going back and forth on this all week after listening to that old track 'I Ran' by A Flock of Seagulls. The drum machine on that song is so clunky and off, it's almost painful. But the lyrics are just as weird talking about running so far away. Which part actually makes it so bad it's good for you guys? I had a buddy who swears it's the beat that carries the whole thing, but I think the nonsense lyrics are what make me laugh. What do you all think matters more for these so-bad-they're-good songs?

2 comments

c/auto-body-repairers•

ivangrant•15d ago

Warning: don't trust a 20 year old floor jack with a 4 ton truck

Last Saturday I was swapping out a rusty bumper on a 2018 F-250 and my old floor jack just gave out under the front axle. It made this loud pop and dropped the whole front end on the driver's side, nearly took my foot off. I had to scramble to get my jack stands under there before the whole thing tipped. Spent the next hour trying to figure out how to get the truck back up safely. Anyone else had a jack fail on them mid job and how did you get out of it?

2 comments

c/best-links-of-the-week•

ivangrant•17d ago

Hit a thousand Facebook followers on my tree service page and it felt hollow somehow

I hit 1,000 likes on my business page last week, but only 12 of those people actually live in the same city as me, so does that really count as local reach or just noise?

2 comments

c/dead-link-dump•

ivangrant•21d ago

That old DIY blog from 2008 I bookmarked just vanished

Had a bookmark for a guy's step by step on rebuilding a cedar strip canoe. Checked it yesterday and got a 404. Wayback Machine has a cached copy from 2017 but most of the photos are broken. Anyone else run into this with niche hobby sites from the early 2000s? Any tricks for finding the missing pics?

2 comments

c/concrete-finishers•

ivangrant•24d ago

Old timer showed me a trick for bullfloating that I still use today

A guy named Earl watched me fight with a bullfloat on a driveway in Tucson last August. He came over and said "push with your hip, not your arms" and adjusted my stance. It leveled the concrete way smoother in half the passes. Has anyone else gotten a simple tip from a stranger that changed how you work?

2 comments

c/baking-fails-and-wins•

ivangrant•28d ago

Took me 6 months to figure out my pie crust wasn't chilling long enough

Kept getting soggy bottoms no matter what. Switched to a 2 hour chill instead of 30 minutes and it finally worked. Anyone else miss obvious stuff like that?

2 comments

c/analog-life-hacks•

ivangrant•1mo ago

That paper map I pulled out at a red light got me honked at

I was rolling through downtown Portland last week and my phone died right when I needed to find a side street for a drop off. Dug an old road atlas out from under the passenger seat and had it spread open across the steering wheel. Some guy in a Prius next to me laid on his horn and yelled something about getting a real GPS. But you know what? That map got me there in 10 minutes without any rerouting nonsense or ads popping up. I swear people forget how fast you can read a paper map once you know your grid. Plus it works in tunnels and rain and dead zones. Has anyone else caught flak for using analog stuff out in the wild?

2 comments

c/freelance-survival•

ivangrant•1mo ago

My main client's payment system just crashed for a week

Honestly, it happened right after I sent a big invoice for a project I finished in March. Their whole accounting portal went down and they said it would take 7 days to fix. I had rent due and no other money coming in that week. I had to quickly message three past clients to see if they had any small tasks I could do for cash. One of them gave me a 2-hour logo tweak job that paid $80, which at least covered groceries. Ngl, it showed me how risky it is to rely on just one or two big payments a month. What's a good way to set up a backup cash fund for when stuff like this happens?

2 comments

c/first-time-buyers•

ivangrant•1mo ago

Rant: My inspector missed a $12k foundation crack because he didn't move the storage boxes

I got a 'full inspection' but the guy just glanced around the finished basement. I moved a stack of old boxes myself before closing and found a major vertical crack. Has anyone else had to basically do their own second inspection?

2 comments

c/book-club-debates•

ivangrant•1mo ago

Rant: Our book club nearly fell apart over a single chapter in 'The Overstory'

We were at our usual spot, the back room of the library in Cedar Rapids, and the meeting about 'The Overstory' got way too heated. It was chapter four, the one about the chestnut tree, and two members got into a real fight. One person said the book was too slow and the science parts were boring, while another said they just didn't get the point of the whole story. It got so loud the librarian had to come over. After that, I made a new rule for our group. Now, when we pick a book, we also pick one specific thing to talk about for the next meeting, like 'the role of time in the story' or 'how the setting changes a character'. It stops people from just saying they liked or hated it and makes the talk better. Has your group ever had to make a rule to keep things from going off the rails?

2 comments

Recent Comments

14d ago

Heard a guy at the lumber yard say 'concrete doesn't shrink'

Honestly @the_joel I get where you're coming from but I think the old timer was oversimplifying it. The water leaving does pull the particles closer together, but the concrete also shrinks as a whole because the cement paste itself shrinks. The aggregate stays the same size, so the paste around it has to pull apart to fit, which is where the micro-cracks start. I've found that if you don't seal the edges and bottom real good with plastic or wet burlap, the slab loses moisture way faster from those spots and cracks show up there first. The surface misting helps a little but you're right that controlling all sides is the real deal.

15d ago

Hostels in Europe started adding these privacy curtains...

Privacy curtain killed hostel hookups.

15d ago

An old timer told me to stop untwisting coax so much and he was right

Yeah, @matthew_baker hit it. Old guys know stuff.

16d ago

Update: my morning coffee routine fell apart for a week and it was a mess

Tbh that's just a sign you need better morning rituals, not a better grinder.

16d ago

Debating impact drivers vs drills for sheet metal screws on the ramp

Yeah, the "taking it easy on the trigger" part is key. I had a similar battle at my shop with a guy who swore by hand tools for everything. I just showed him one day on a scrap piece of metal that a modern impact can be feather-light on the trigger. He saw it work and stopped giving me a hard time about it.