Bought the cheap fitness tracker over the Garmin, huge mistake

I needed a new watch to track my runs and had to pick between a $40 no-name brand from Amazon or the Garmin Forerunner 55 for $200. I went cheap to save cash, thinking all pedometers were the same now. After two weeks, the heart rate monitor was off by like 20 beats per minute compared to my gym's machine, and the step count added 3000 steps if I just waved my arm. Total junk. I returned it and got the Garmin last month, and the GPS is spot on, even on my route through Riverside Park. Anyone else get burned by a budget gadget that just didn't work?

Rant: Saw a guy at the Midwest Book Arts Fair last year using a laser cutter for all his covers. Everyone was raving, but I think it's a shortcut that kills the craft.

He was making these intricate geometric patterns on bookcloth, and the crowd loved it. Said it saved him 15 hours a week. I asked him if he ever hand-tools anything anymore, and he just shrugged. It made me realize we're losing the hand skills. My shop in Toledo still does everything with a finishing press and brass tools. It's slower, but the book feels different. Am I the only one who thinks the 'maker' tech is pushing out the actual making?

Spent 4 hours on a dead PC that just needed a CMOS reset

Customer brought in a machine that wouldn't post, no beeps, nothing. I swapped PSUs, RAM, even the CPU before I finally cleared the CMOS with a jumper. Has anyone else had a BIOS corruption present like a total hardware failure?

I finally caved and bought a proper finishing press for about $350. It saved my last project.

Vent: I thought fixing a color banding issue would take an hour. It took me two full days.

I was working on a big space scene for a client in Seattle and the gradient in the nebula kept showing these ugly lines... like steps instead of a smooth blend. I tried everything in Krita, messing with dithering and bit depth settings. Finally figured out I had to work in 16-bit color from the very start of the project, not just on export. Anyone else run into this with deep space or sky art?

Serious question, did anyone else have to pick between a big tablet or a small one?

I mean, I saved up for a new drawing tablet and was stuck choosing a 16 inch screen or a 12 inch one. I went with the smaller XP-Pen model and it's way easier to carry to my coffee shop sessions. Has anyone else tried drawing on a smaller tablet and liked it?

Rant: I found this old map site by clicking random links on a library computer

Honestly, I was just killing time at the downtown branch last month and started clicking 'related links' on some local history page. Ended up on this site that just has scanned fire insurance maps from the 1920s. Has anyone else ever found cool stuff just by clicking around like that?